| | Hello again, Andy.
Alcoholism is not a disease. It is self-destructive behavior that an alcoholic can stop if he musters the will to do so. I'm gonna try to reason with you. I'm not an old hand at Objectivism, so I might get some of this wrong. Please remain open to the point I'm trying to make, and if there are fallacies in my reasoning, let me know. Here's a thing: you talk about mustering the will to stop drinking. Okay.
Will is a thing that exists. It's a function of our material bodies. Even though science has yet to discover the physical seat of will in the body, it is nonetheless a real function. So like anything else that exists, that is real, it can break or stop functioning all together for mechanical reasons. How can you say that the malfunctioning of will is strictly a moral issue?
It seems a lot of people on this board propose "volition" as this all-powerful, unstoppable, always prevailing force in a rational mind. Doesn't that smack of mysticism even a little bit? Can't the will, as a function of the living mind, break or be impaired? What would you call a systematic degradation of the will, complete with syndromes, symptoms and various cures if not a disease?
To call alcoholism a disease only gives an alcoholic the excuse to postpone blaming himself for the cause of his problem.
Okay, until very recently I knew next to nothing about Ayn Rand and Objectivism. When I read her preface to The Fountainhead I came across the strange passage where she quotes Nietzche at length and then goes into even greater length to differentiate her own view from that of Nietzche; not her finest rhetorical hour, it struck me on the face of it to be kinda silly. I could have stopped at my very glancing acquaintance with her ideas and malevolently proclaimed, "She's a fascist in denial!" You've heard this kind of ignorant smear based on half-truths plenty of times I imagine.
Well, this idea that understanding alcoholism as a disease is nothing more than a way for a drunk to excuse himself is every bit as misinformed and malevolent. It's nonsense. AA is so set against the kind of excusism you describe that they've got a folksy derogatory term for it: "stinkin' thinkin'." It is well understood that making excuses for your drinking is the fast track to a relapse. AA and its methods are a lot more complicated than you imagine.
AA and Objectivism came out of the same cultural moment and evolved in some startlingly similar directions I've noticed. Both focus on reality-based self-esteem; on taking personal responsibility for our lives (no one can do it for us). Both concern themselves with pains-taking personal accountability.
One of the reasons perfectly reasonable people can be so ignorant about AA is that AA has a tradition of privacy and has intentionally kept the details of their methods out of the public consciousness for decades, out of respect for personal privacy. Oprah-fication has changed this, and many old timers in AA approve of that even less than you do, I assure you. But AA has a tradition of non-interference with the choices of others, so what some members of AA decide to do with their lives is no one's business but their own. Sound familiar?
As with the popularization of any movement, plenty of nonsense gets mixed in with the real deal along the way. There are differences, stark differences to be sure, but I was surprised to see how similar a lot of Objectivist thinking is to the recovery thinking I was already familiar with.
For what it's worth,
Kevin
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