Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth.
~John Locke
Any thoughts on this?
~John Locke
Any thoughts on this?
Freedom is the ability to change one's mind and get away with it. (author unknown)
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A. WHAT DO YOU SAY AFTER YOU SAY HELLO?
This childlike question, so apparently artless and free of the profundity expected of scientific inquiry, really contains within itself all the basic questions of human living and all the fundamental problems of the social sciences. It is the question that babies "ask" themselves, that children learn to accept corrupted answers to, that teenagers ask each other and their advisors, that grownups evade by accepting the corrupted answers of their betters, and that wise old philosophers write books about without ever finding the answer. It contains both the primal question of social psychology: Why do people talk to each other? and the primal question of social psychiatry: Why do people like to be liked? Its answer is the answer to the questions posed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war or peace, famine or plenty, pestilence or health, death or life. It is no wonder that few people find the answer in their lifetimes, since most go through life without ever finding the answer to the question which precedes it: How do you say hello?
B. HOW DO YOU SAY HELLO?
This is the secret of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Judaism, of Platonism, of atheism, and above all, of humanism. The famous "sound of one hand clapping" in Zen is the sound of one person saying Hello to another, and it is also the sound of the Golden Rule in whatever Bible it is stated.To say Hello rightly is to see the other person, to be aware of him as a phenomenon, to happen to him and to be ready for him to happen to you.Perhaps the people who show this ability to the highest degree are the Fiji Islanders, for one of the rare jewels of the world is the genuine Fijian smile. It starts slowly, it illuminates the whole face, it rests there long enough to be clearly recognized and to recognize clearly, and it fades with secret slowness as it passes by. It can be matched elsewhere only by the smiles of an uncorrupted mother and infant greeting each other, and also, in Western countries, by a certain kind of open personality.
*[Footnote: Oddly enough, in my experience, such smiles are most frequently seen in girls in their twenties, with long black hair.]
This book discusses four questions: How do you say Hello? How do you say Hello back? What do you say after you say Hello? and, principally, the plaintive query, What is everybody doing instead of saying Hello? These questions will be answered briefly here. The explanation of the answers will occupy the rest of this psychiatric textbook, which is addressed first to the therapist, secondly to his patients as they get cured, and thirdly to anyone else who cares to listen.
1.In order to say Hello, you first get rid of all the trash which has accumulated in your head ever since you came home from the maternity ward, and then you recognize that this particular Hello will never happen again. It may take years to learn how to do this.
2.In order to say Hello back, you get rid of all the trash in your head and see that there is somebody standing there or walking by, waiting for you to say Hello back. It may take years to learn how to do that.
3. After you say Hello, you get rid of all the trash that is coming back into your head; all the after-burns of all the grievances you have experienced and all the reach-backs of all the troubles you are planning to get into. Then you will be speechless and will not have anything to say. After more years of practice, you might think of something worth saying.
4. Mostly, this book is about the trash: the things people are doing to each other instead of saying Hello. It is written in the hope that those with training and talent for such things can help themselves and others to recognize what I am calling (in a philosophical sense) "trash," since the first problem in answering the other three questions is to see what is trash and what isn't. The way people speak who are learning to say Hello is called "Martian," to distinguish it from everyday Earth-talk, which, as history shows from the earliest recorded times in Egypt and Babylonia to the present, has led to wars, famines, pestilence, and death; and, in the survivors, to a certain amount of mental confusion. It is hoped that in the long run, Martian, properly learned and properly taught, will help to eliminate these plagues. Martian, for example, is the language of dreams, which show things the way they really are.
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Eric Berne, "What Do You Say After You Say Hello?"
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