Hyde's Mr. Burroughs

[Anonymous]

Most importantly, I learned that any doubts I had about any of this[Hyde] – any reservations I may have harboured about whether I really belonged in AA [at Hyde]– were naught but symptoms of the disease. "Denial", they called it,[What did they call it when you were not on the program?]

  The one thing I would quibble with is the notion that AA is boring.  One of he funniest night I had in my life was with Nina Carbone at the Brunswick AA meeting.  It was a speaker meeting.   There was a guy there that was telling stories about how he dresses up like a bishop with the pointy hat and the crozier and when out bar hopping in Portland.  It was hilarious.  That was the exception.  Most of the stuff is sad bastard stories about beating the wife and puking on bed.

[Ursus]

AA [Hyde] works for some people, but it doesn't work for most. That's fine. Where it becomes almost criminal is in the fellowship's [school's] dogmatic insistence that those for whom it does not work are losers in the face of God. Exactly how many poor, desperate souls have ended their lives with a head full of AA [Hyde] bogeymen we will never know.

Yet we must humbly reflect that Alcoholics Anonymous has so far made only a scratch upon the total problem of alcoholism. Here in the United States, we have helped to sober up scarcely

five per cent of the total alcoholic population of 4,500,000.

(N.Y. Med. Society on Alcoholism, 1958)

http://www.voai.org/Success%20Rate.htm[/list]

[Anonymous]

I think you have to take those number with a grain of salt.  !0% of the US population are alcoholics according to AA dogma.  I asked my sibling if that has been involved in the program for over thirty years "Is Uncle George and Alki?
"Yes.  He is just very controlled"   It is like asking a Jehovah's Witness if non-believers are damned.  AA has been a great help to my brother/sister and it has been a curse.  Many people in the fellowship are chronic smokers and they enable each other.   I was after him/her to quit for year.  he has quit but has lost most of her / his lung capacity.  That was one of the reasons I quit AA.  I quit smoking and after about a year I could no longer abide the smell of cigarette.

[Ed Legg]

proorfreedin is not being too bery good all are mistakes being mine respiration to have. Your pardon will be mine if you grant it so please grant it to me, Better proorfreeder I am yours in the future to promise. Cross your heart.

[Ed Legg]

Here this should do the trick

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... yringe.jpg

[Ursus]

Like the cherry red, Ed, but boy, did that pic screw up the formating, lol!  Think the horizontal max is 'bout 600 px, you can size it down if you use HTML instead of BBC...

Ya know ya got two nozzle options with that baby! :lol:

[Anonymous]

And I think this cause is institutionally designed to be enforced and to survive independently of any personality.

National Commitment:  An obedient citizenry that conforms -- with but minor questioning -- to Administrations of corporate greed and political/economic consolidation of the few.

Your description is of the status quo.

My science-fiction scenario of Hyde triumphant would be the reformation of the American high school into something part boot camp, part church. Academics would be a ghost of its former self. High school would be a persecuting society that cultivates unanimity of opinion among students, peers, and parents and wouldn't tolerate dissent. With the closure of the free market of ideas, there would be an overall dumbing down of the school community. Graduates would carry their mind set into business, politics, religion, etc. Civil war (with the disaffected elements) always on the horizon. Not a pretty picture.

[Ursus]

My picture was really more of an Orwellian scenario, scarier due to its believability and mundane, almost ordinary qualities, but I think we do not differ so much at the heart of each of these prospective depictions...

Really, I think it is going on right now, creeping ever more imperceptibly towards the Brave New World, and has been for some time.  The national pulse is beating, beat by beat, into a long swing of a conservative, control-oriented society.  Trends in education alone: No Child Left Behind (aka No Child Left Untested), Zero Tolerance (control the little buggers every chance you get), Character Education (only viewpoints deemed respectful of the status quo will be tolerated)... Taken to their extreme, which is not so far off, these trends do not bode for a vibrant, creative society, conducive to the furthering of new strides in progressive thought or tolerance for those different from ourselves.

That kind of world will suffocate itself, but not before it has made a lot of money for the conservative elite.

[Anne Bonney]

My picture was really more of an Orwellian scenario, scarier due to its believability and mundane, almost ordinary qualities, but I think we do not differ so much at the heart of each of these prospective depictions...

Really, I think it is going on right now, creeping ever more imperceptibly towards the Brave New World, and has been for some time.  The national pulse is beating, beat by beat, into a long swing of a conservative, control-oriented society.  Trends in education alone: No Child Left Behind (aka No Child Left Untested), Zero Tolerance (control the little buggers every chance you get), Character Education (only viewpoints deemed respectful of the status quo will be tolerated)... Taken to their extreme, which is not so far off, these trends do not bode for a vibrant, creative society, conducive to the furthering of new strides in progressive thought or tolerance for those different from ourselves.

That kind of world will suffocate itself, but not before it has made a lot of money for the conservative elite.

 :nworthy:  :nworthy:  :tup:  :tup:  :tup:  :nworthy:  :nworthy:  :nworthy:  :nworthy:

[Anonymous]

Here this should do the trick

why doncha undo the trick and resize?

[Anonymous]

Here this should do the trick

why doncha undo the trick and resize?

I second the motion. I tried reading the AA article and lost patience.

[Ed Legg]

Hey ,

 Sorry guys.  I did not realize how big of a douche bag that was.  It is almost as big as Joe Gauld!


Hugs

[Ursus]

Thanks, Ed!  That previous version was a whopping 1500px!  Very funny...

[Anonymous]

hard-liners who'd corner you outside the meeting and tick you off for not attending regularly enough [being committed enough].

  "I really question your commitment"  He said to me that spring after noon.  He was a lanky kind of effeminate boy from down the Maine coast.  I was making a hail mary pass to get out of the shit house at Hyde in my final semester.  He shot me down cold.  We was in the Senior leadership crowd.  I did not stand a chance.  He did me a favor.  I have heard some things about this now middle age man that cause me to question his commitment.  I don't think he had a peaceful easy feeling when he found out what the real deal was.  These thing are gone forever over a long time ago ... oh yeah. Just a little sour grapes. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth Stol'n on his wing my sweet Hyde years.
Hey got to run to see Napoleon.

oblek sightations :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_Easy_Feeling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton

[Joseph W. Gauld]

There is the cause, and devotion to the cause is like devotion to a religion. There are definitely religious overtones. A case in point is Mrs. Burroughs and her belief that "deep down you [offtrack students] are awful people." The goal of the cause is a complete remake of one's moral character, as in any religion. And, there are positive injunctions ("the principles"): courage, integrity, leadership, curiosity, concern: the five commandments if you will. And there are negative injunctions ("the rules"): all the don't dos. People embrace these principles with religious conviction. (Never mind that in doing so as Hyde requires they violate them.) The five principles (chosen at random; they could just as well have been family, fatherland, and property, or what have you) are what gives focus to this religious conversion, what it crystallizes around. But I think this cause is supposed to be greater than any personality. And I think this cause is institutionally designed to be enforced and to survive independently of any personality.

Damn straight it's fambly, fatherland, and property!!  It's MY family, an' MY country, an' MY property!  An' don' y'all miserable limp-wristed touchy-feely panty-waists fergit it!!  I started off my all growed-up career in sales and in "making a lot of money and becoming 'successful.'"  And I'm a true blue American; I never steered offa my original course.  I jest expanded it to include rewiring kids' brains as part of my own personal "destiny."  Hazelden done me well in more ways than the obvious, har har har!!

Salutin' to the Cause,
Joseph W. Gauld, The Educator