benign anarchy: no musts, only the parachute — "compares the totally optional basic suggestions…"
compares the totally optional basic suggestions in Boston AA to, say for instance if you’re going to jump out of an airplane, they ‘suggest’ you wear a parachute.
Context
The program's paradoxical governance: it enforces nothing and forbids nothing, yet is "sub-rosa dogmatic," because the suggestions are optional in exactly the way a parachute is optional to a person already falling. The trap in "Do exactly as you please" is the conditional that follows — "if you still trust what seems to please you" — which the addict, by definition, cannot. AA's authority works by handing the will back to a person whose will is the disease, knowing the offer is really no offer at all: it's all optional, do it or die.