Daily Reflections · November 28
Attraction, Not Promotion
Today’s three sentences come from the Twelve and Twelve’s essay on Tradition Eleven, written by a man who counted himself among AA’s first promoters.
Today’s reading
The reading for November 28 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 180–181: three sentences in the essay on Tradition Eleven.
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Themes and asks
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The other way round
The passage names AA’s way of reaching the world and says it came out of hard experience. The essay around it says how it worked out: AA let its friends do the talking.
- When you first heard about AA, who told you? Were they selling anything?
- Where in your life are you still trying to talk people into things?
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Accepted first
What reached the member who wrote the reflection was being taken as they were, which AA, to their surprise, did. Before that, anyone who tried to change them got defiance back.
- Who tried to change you before you were ready? What did you do with it?
- Is there someone you’re working on right now? What would it look like to stop?
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A guardian
The essay ends by making every member a guardian of the Fellowship. The member who wrote the reflection puts it another way: the principle of attraction itself is in their keeping.
- When you talk about AA at work, at home or online, does it draw people in or push at them?
- Where might your name or face, next to the word AA, end up speaking for everyone in it?
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Born promoters
Read beside Behind the words: the essay admits that nearly every member had been a promoter by temperament, Bill W. counted himself one, and the earliest wording in his Grapevine pieces still left a little room for promotion. Put together, restraint looks like something AA learned.
- What are you promoting these days: your sobriety, your group, your sponsor, yourself?
- Where would saying less draw more?
Behind the words
Seldom, if ever
Today’s three sentences sit in the third of nine paragraphs in the essay on Tradition Eleven in the Twelve and Twelve (1953). Before them come the ringing telephones: callers who learned of AA from newspapers, radio, films and television, enough, the essay reckons, to account for half the membership. After them, the essay holds up a political party that advertises its leaders and a charity whose letterhead carries every distinguished name it can get, then turns to its own readers: “By temperament, nearly every one of us had been an irrepressible promoter”.
Bill W. counted himself among them. Writing in the Grapevine, AA’s monthly magazine, in October 1945, he went back to AA’s first argument about public relations, at Akron in 1937, when AA could count about forty recovered members. The promoters were for spreading the word to every drunk in the country, and fast. The conservatives answered that “the man of Galilee had no press agent,” only word of mouth. “We promoters (and I was one of them)” argued back, and out of it, he wrote, AA decided to publish a book.
Looking back, he gave both sides their due. Without the conservatives, he wrote, the promoters would have “gone hog-wild and spoiled everything”; without the promoters, probably few of the members he was writing to would have heard of AA yet. Even so, the earliest wording in his Grapevine pieces still left a little room for promotion. In March 1946, closing a piece on anonymity, he wrote that AA’s public relations should rest mainly on attraction, and on promotion hardly ever. By the Twelve Points that spring, the first form of the Traditions, the hedge was gone.
In October 1948, writing on the Eleventh Tradition in the Grapevine, Bill opened by counting AA’s blessings in the press and radio, so kind that AA was in danger of being spoiled: “Our reputation is already so much better than our actual character!” Promotion, he went on, held hazards too great to risk: one bad blunder in public could turn thousands away.
More on the Akron vote of 1937: The barest majority, in By the Carload. How the Twelve Points were written: Twelve Points, in Rule 62. On what AA learned the hard way: The short form, in Rule 62, on the members who put their names in the papers, and On the air, in A Bunch of Actors, on the radio lectures that never went national.
The line, draft by draft
How Bill W.’s Grapevine pieces and the Traditions worded AA’s public relations, in order, with today’s passage marked. The underlined words are the ones to compare. The lines are this page’s, apart from the quotations.
- 1946
March · The Grapevine, on anonymity
“mainly rest upon the principle of attraction and seldom, if ever, upon promotion.”
The last line of a long piece on how far members should go in dropping their anonymity.
- 1946
Spring · The Twelve Points
“guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion.”
The first form of the Traditions, in the Grapevine. The same point asks for “modesty and anonymity” toward the outside world.
- 1947
September · Bill’s talk in Memphis
“characterized by personal anonymity.”
Modesty drops out, and an added sentence keeps members’ names and pictures out of broadcasts, films and print. The attraction line stays as it was.
- 1948
October · The Grapevine, on Tradition Eleven
“should be based upon the principle of attraction rather than promotion.”
Bill’s essay on the Tradition, which goes on to rule out press agents, promotional devices and big names.
- 1950
July · The short form, adopted at Cleveland
“based on attraction rather than promotion”
Cut down from the long form starting about 1947 and printed in the Grapevine before the convention, which adopted it with the other eleven. The words are as the Twelve and Twelve prints them.
- 1953
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions Today’s passage
The essay on Tradition Eleven, in its third paragraph.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. The essay on Tradition Eleven (the reading cites pages 180–181), and the Tradition’s short form.
- The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “The Book Is Born,” October 1945 (Akron, 1937); “Our Anonymity Is Both Inspiration and Safety,” March 1946; “Twelve Suggested Points for AA Tradition,” April 1946; “Traditions Stressed in Memphis Talk,” October 1947; and “Tradition Eleven,” October 1948. The editors’ introduction (Bill’s articles on the Traditions of 1952 and 1953, reprinted in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions).
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the short form, and Cleveland, July 1950).
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. November 28 · aa.org
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Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.