My Experience of Tradition 1

My Experience of Tradition 1

“Unity comes from a choice to tolerate, not from a demand to conform.”

It is the free decision of each individual in AA whether they will sacrifice their conscience on a matter to the conscience of another or to the majority, and peer pressure does not help this process, only education and experience does.

The whole point of a conscience is that I am not required to conform to another person’s or group’s conscience. As far as trusting a group conscience: trust cannot be demanded, only given. It is not achieved through pressuring people to trust the majority. Quite as important to AA’s unity is allowing the voice of the minority to exist freely in opposition, and to be well heard, no matter what the majority of people believe or decide.

The hardest thing in AA is to work at Intergroup, Region or Conference successfully with people whose conscience contradicts my own. It is this difficulty that sometimes leads fearful members cry out “We need more unity!” when in fact all we need is more courage and tolerance.

Unity does not just come from conformity but from accepting non-conformity. This is no less true for a country – where people may vote different ways, and believe different things, but still call themselves citizens of that country – than it is for Alcoholics Anonymous. The level of conformity required for AA to function effectively is remarkably low provided we make use of the spiritual and practical principles of the Concepts, Traditions and Steps.