THINGS FALL APART

THINGS FALL APART

All things evolve. Species, organizations and institutions.  We are all familiar with the evolution of weather with two fronts mixing to produce rain or snow. Patterns of weather over time are more or less evolutionary causing periods called Ice Ages or Inter-glacial periods. Similarly, we watched our country evolve from the  thirteen east coast hugging colonies to the bi-oceanic continental  superpower.

 Just so with organizations. They can start small or large and  ebb or flow with their membership or ideas. The reasons for these ebbs and flows may  stem from the same evolutionary pressures  as to  why species and populations evolve. And I find that recent events with my AA groups for instance, have led me to make this comparison with some interesting evolutionary theories.

Classic Darwinian evolution posits that species evolve because there are pressures on the  species which push them to stress and favor certain variations in that population.  So in Darwin's classic Galapagos finch population he described that the radiation the of Galapagos finch population into different habitats was based upon different beak variations. For instance, a long beak favored one variation over another to extract sap from flowers whereas a strong gross triangular beak allowed those birds to exploit a nut cracking habitat. Slow evolutionary forces permitted one genus (type of bird), the finch to inhabit practically all of the available habitats of the Galapagos Islands whereas other similar habitats on the mainland would be filled by many genera from many different originating species. 

There was another theory of adaptation which was promulgated by the late Stephen Jay Gould called "punctuated equilibrium", where some environmental cataclysm  would befall a species (such as a lava flow or the creation of a new river)  and although the result would wipe out most of the members of that species there would be some survivors who would have some adaptations that would allow them to thrive in the suddenly newly created environment.  Or perhaps that environmental change would separate two populations causing radiation of the newly isolated variability in the populations and with time two new species would form. 

During the past two years I have attached myself to a group of AA's so that I could develop a program that would maintain a regular but varied set of meetings. Meetings that would teach me the principles of the group and the ideas of the organization so that I could learn and grow. I could grow to understand myself and learn how to become a more sober individual.

And during the past two years, that group has variously swelled and shrunk for reasons of season, holidays and the natural tendencies that  tend to bring alcoholics into the group more at one time of the year than at others. Now is just such a time of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, "the triple witching hour" are the  time of the year that tend to bring those most at risk into the program either as a preventive or because they have been given their last chances with their families and have been forced into such a position.  

And under this pressure our groups sometimes swell, sometimes they break off and bud and new ones form because of "philosophical" or "irreconcilable differences" or just personality differences among the various members. These are the natural slow expansion types of evolution that cause groups to change, move and morph.

But then there are catastrophes that happen that cause monumental upsets in which the upheaval can cause destruction which can bring down the entire structure of groups.  Like a species, the typical AA group does not have the kind of internal structure like, say a corporate or organizational structure, that can withstand cataclysmic change.  And when disaster strikes there may not be any organizing principal or principals to reassemble the group. 

So in the case of our groups when our church burned down, it was interesting to see how in this demonstration case of punctuated equilibrium the groups surviving  best were those who had the strongest leadership and group cohesion.  Almost from the moment that they found out that there was a fire, they made plans to reconstitute their group in a new church in a new location the next day.

"Our" group, without that level of cohesion, flopped along and continues to flop along, like good alcoholics almost expecting things to get done by itself.  The few who do want to keep the organization going  lack the support since most  of the "former" members abandoned the group for the one with the most demonstrated organization.

The only people remaining, the " last gaspers" trying the keep the group together, hardly seem to want to survive.  They  barely want to make an effort to keep the enterprise going.  And perhaps the few who do make the effort do so only to have the final say in the running of the group.

This too is an evolutionary principle at work. Not just the "survival of the fittest but the survival of the remnants. They can go on for quite a long time and may even reconstitute itself after a while if it can hold out until fresh blood comes in.

I for one have found that in all this confusion and having made whatever attempt to keep the old group going, have decided that it is now time to put some new fresh ideas into my program and to start to go to new meetings.  It is not such a bad decision.  I am no longer alienated from my former men's group which used to suffer from a surfeit of "unbridled optimism". Today I just enjoy the fact that there is plenty of optimism to be unbridled about.  And with all this gloom about the economy and  newly experienced poverty and hardship, it is heartening to listen to stories of how men just like me have learned to rise above these setbacks.  Learning once again how to be gentle, kind, loving and accepting.

For just today, I had to walk out of my old meeting where it has been like pulling teeth to keeping it going. And I wanted to share, hopefully my joy, my insight, my hope . There were only four of us but I felt the meeting had been high jacked by someone who just had to talk about something, it does not matter what, who rambled on for about seven minutes after which she apologized saying "I'm sorry for rambling and going off topic", completely knocking all of what I cared to share out of my head.  And this was the second day in a row that this person did that.  I was so put off by this behavior that I did something I had never done before, I just stood up and walked out mumbling an apology about having to leave.

Whether I am wrong or right in feeling this way I don't know. But I just got up and walked out realizing I no longer can get anything out of this meeting among these same folks; I concluded I needed to be among new blood, and I walked across the parking lot into a meeting of thirty men where I happily spent the next half hour listening to a bunch of men spill their feelings about things I really needed to hear.

I had finally found a place to come home to for now.                                                

 © res 12/9/11