"Do not ask WHY": the anti-Cause doctrine and the unironic truth

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU

• When: 8 November YDAU (the White Flag meeting's later speakers)
• What: Boston AA's epistemics, dramatized through the meeting's testimonies. The Message must be the truth, unslanted and "maximally unironic" — "An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in church" — so the Filene's-complaint-desk drunk's hiding-under-the-desk story kills, while the rehearsed ego-performer dies. And causal attribution is forbidden: the Raquel-mask stripper's aetiological horror-story and the freebasing mother's dead-infant confession both hit the anti-Excuse wall — the Why of the Disease is a labyrinth of Self-Pity ("Why Me?") and Denial ("Why Not?"), and the maxim is "Do not ask WHY / If you dont want to DIE." What's asked instead is not explanation but a daily practical recipe for remembering you have the Disease; "check your head at the door." This doctrine governs how every recovery beat in the thread is told.