A New Instrument for Social Action

A.A. was praised as a new instrument for social action and never took the job, and that refusal is why its good spread. The Lasker Award citation of 1951 sits in the back of the Big Book (p. 571): historians might one day see A.A. as "a great venture in social pioneering which forged a new instrument for social action". An instrument for social action is a tool for changing society, which is the job description of a reform movement. It was meant as praise. A.A. printed it and kept doing one thing. Bill W. told what that restraint bought (A.A. Comes of Age): "We saw that the more A.A. minded its own business the greater its general influence would become." Medicine, religion and psychiatry began to borrow its ideas, while A.A. lent its name to no cause but its own. Minding its own business is what keeps the door open to the drunk: a man who needs A.A. tonight does not have to agree with anyone's plans for society to walk in. Today the capture comes as praise: programs and campaigns that describe A.A. as a platform for their cause, a partner in their mission. Test it tonight: when someone describes A.A. as part of something bigger, ask what the bigger thing wants from it.