Optimism (The Big Book of AA)

 As I was wandering through the internet the other day, I found out that you can get the whole "Big Book" for Alcoholics Anonymous online for free.

Here's a pdf, but there are other HTML versions and stuff, even an ASL video version, all legal.

I don't know a ton about AA. I know a few guys who have done it and said it worked, and some that said it's a scam. Either way, I appreciate the availability, and I'm working my way through it here and there. I don't expect to do a chapter by chapter or anything.

What I do want to want to do is take a minute to look at the first paragraph:

WE , of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics PRECISELY HOW WE HAVE RECOVERED is the main purpose of this book. For them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. And besides, we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.

I don't know about modern AA, but I think it's pretty fair to say that the original group was a legitimate group of sick people trying to support each other, and other people with similar problems.

The tone here reminds me of a lot of the other self-improvement/education adjacent stuff that I've look at from the first half of the twentieth century. Compared to more modern stuff, it's just much more positive. There's no "hustle", there's no "everything is shit, but I'm going to tell you how to get ahead", it's people (seemingly legitimately) trying to help people. I'm not saying no one made a buck off of it, but the idea that you can get better and I want to help you seems genuine. I think there's a greater tone of respect, which I have questions about.

On the one hand, I've read a lot about how Adler and others believed anyone could become educated, improve, etc. On the other, it feels very much like it's upper class written for other upper (or maybe upper middle) class people. Is it just a greater culture of respect generally? Would Adler address some blue collar working stiff who bought a book even though he barely made it through sixth grade that way? Or did he think/know it'd mostly be bought by other educated people, so he addressed them, even if he felt it could be helpful for others? I don't think it's a scam (I'm gonna say it's for everyone, but I know it's just for other posh college boys), but I do wonder who the intended audience is for things like this.

Casually Completing Classics:1984 Part 6 (TWO)

 Oh boy, it's one of those books that's divided into parts and the chapter numbers reset. Couldn't at least do 2.1? 2.I? B1?

Winston sees the girl at work. She hurt her arm on a "kaleidoscope" that they use to make/transport their trashy prole novels. I looked it up, and kaleidoscope does not mean something else in British. Earlier in the book:

 Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.

It's like a robot Madlibs? Mechanical LLM. Mechanical LLM would sell as a short story idea. 

She slips him a folded up paper. He hides in the bathroom until he calms down (without reading it) then goes back to his desk, mixes it in with the other papers, and works for a while.

Eventually he unfolds it. It says "I love you" because of course it does. This woman he's met like 3 times and just incel glared at is in love with him, because reasons.

He thinks about her naked, with less murder this time (but still some murder). He's convinced it's not a trap, at least. 

We learn that no one sends letters anymore. They use preprinted post cards, kinda like the ones you use for correspondence chess.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

She disappears for a while and he's worried about her, but she comes back. They manage to meet at lunch and plan to go to the Victory Square, where they briefly hold hands and see some prisoners.

This whole scene brings the logistics of actual dating/fucking to mind. We know that you're not supposed to love your spouse or enjoy sex, but how do they keep population numbers in the party from collapsing? Do they promote proles? Are there enough people surreptitiously, awkwardly fucking to keep the numbers up? 80 years after the novel was written, with much of the developed world struggling with demographic issues, this part seems less predictive/likely than the rest.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 5 (Chapter 8)

 This is a long, kind of weird, chapter.

Winston goes to the prole part of town, where he asks an old man at a pub about the before times. He doesn't do a great job of asking questions, and the old man does a worse job of answering. He gets upset, leaves, and goes to the antique store he got the diary in. The guy there is happy to tell him about the before times, but Winston seems less excited then you'd expect. He's interested, to be sure, but he just freaked out on someone for not doing the same thing this guy is doing and he's not that into it.

Blah blah women hating.

He sees the "young and lusty" woman and fantasizes about killing her again (no rape this time).

WIP, FIS, IIS count: 3

I feel like you could cut most of the old man (and a good chunk of the antique shop) and this chapter would work just as well.

A Varicose Ulcer

 

Gross

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 4 (Chapter 7)

 This chapter starts off with a pseudo-epigraph from Winston's journal, "If there is hope [wrote Winston] it lies in the proles."

And then it's mostly him saying they just need to RISE UP. The party doesn't even bother trying to indoctrinate them, or even surveil them fully. (This is a different from the modern age, where the lower class is the easiest to surveil, since they're attached to smart phones 24/7.)

I like that jus primae noctis has become a right of the capitalists in the urban legends of the oppressive future. 

It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

People talk about how prescient 1984 is, but I don't see this quote passed around a lot, and I think it's relevant. How many people today feel like nothing even matters? How much of the stuff people do obsess over obviously doesn't? He then goes on to describe how they're in a boring dystopia.

It's "the lonely hour fifteen". I'm starting to wonder if they're just in 24 hour time.

It's starting to sound like Oceania is just "The West". They talk about working with New York and Canada.

This is also the, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." chapter.

I think people think too much about the thought police parts of 1984 and not enough about the denying reality parts.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 3 (Chapter 6)

 It's a sex chapter!

I will definitely be making fun of Wilson's attitude towards women and sex when I teach this book. He's got a incel-vice going on, and he seems like the kind of guy who says, "these females" or something. He definitely mad that the woman he paid to fuck is "post wall" as they say. And, of course, his ex-wife is the dumbest person he's ever met.

Villifying sex seems to be something that authoritarians across the political spectrum can agree on. Can't have sexy music, eh Tipper? 

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 2 (Chapter 5)

 Winston goes to lunch. He hates everyone in the canteen. Production is up (even though it was down yesterday, doublethink)! The girl he wanted to rape/murder yesterday sits behind him and looks at him.