A New Instrument for Social Action

In 1951 an outside body handed A.A. a description of itself, and A.A. printed that description in its own basic text without ever accepting it. The American Public Health Association gave A.A. the Lasker Award. The citation still sits in the back of the Big Book (p. 571), and it says historians may one day recognize A.A. to have been "a great venture in social pioneering which forged a new instrument for social action" — "one having a vast potential for the myriad other ills of mankind." Read what was being offered there. Not thanks for getting drunks sober. A role. An instrument for social action, with vast potential for other ills. That is a job description for a reform movement, written by people who meant nothing but good. A.A. reprinted it, was grateful, and did not take the job. This is the quietest capture there is and it requires no bad actor at all: an admirer describes you, publicly and generously, as larger than you are — and the description outlives the moment that produced it. Everyone who reads it afterward expects the larger thing.