Twelve-Step Recovery Program for a Nation Addicted to Apathy
Americans Anonymous
It doesn’t take long after waking up and checking the news these days before one metaphorically jumps out of the chair screaming,
“This has to stop! How is America not on strike shutting this all down?”
The question is genuine. But when we think clearly and look at history, we know the answer. It’s decades of:
“If-you’re-not-successful-it’s-your-fault” propaganda conditioning Americans to turn against themselves;
Government collusion with corporations to suppress union formation, undermining workers' ability to organize;
Conservative policies that gutted public services, widening the income gap and making risk-taking increasingly precarious for working people; and
State crackdown on any activist movements that threatened capitalism or white male supremacy, making advocating for basic human and environmental rights seem radical or fringe.1
The other phenomenon driving this epidemic of inaction and passivity is the infamous “death by a thousand cuts” or boiling frog effect, where the public gradually adjusts to harm over time, crossing red line after red line until we find ourselves effectively numb to a situation that any sane society would consider intolerable.
The truth is, we would never have gotten here at all if the civic immune response wasn’t already compromised. The red lines have been crossed for decades.
The New Revelation
The latest article that got me riled up was a piece by W. A. Lawrence in Glass Empires titled URGENT: Kennedy Signed Off on a 22% Social Security Cut.
I didn’t get more than a couple paragraphs in before my nervous system was in a five-alarm response.
First came the usual outrage at the elite predators who contrived this evil decades-long scheme to allow Social Security funding to run out.
But, as usual, this outrage was short lived and immediately transformed into horror at the lack of public response.
People in my own family—people that may one day depend on these programs—doing nothing. Trusting the institutions. Assuming someone else will take care of it. Believing there’s nothing that they personally can do but vote for a lesser evil.
Then, like clockwork, the rage began to redirect itself from upwards at the perpetrators to sideways at the collaborators doing nothing. Naturally I grabbed my trusty keyboard to share the article with the same question I ask like a broken record every time another assault goes unanswered in this country.
Are we all going to take this lying down? What are people doing? How are they walking around like it’s a normal [insert day of the week]?
And then, the deeper grief and rage:
How do you look into people’s eyes knowing they are actively harming not only their own self, but also you and everyone around them through their silence, inaction, and refusal to see?
It was in this moment, after months of asking this same rhetorical question, that an answer emerged unexpectedly—when I imagined a connection between people in denial about the fascist coup, genocide and climate catastrophe unfolding around us, and people in denial about an addiction.
How do you look into their eyes?
I thought about how, when someone is trapped in an addiction cycle—say, a heroin addiction where they’re stealing and gambling to support the habit, unable to recognize their downward spiral and taking anyone that enters their orbit down with them—people often distance themselves in part for precisely this reason:
You can’t easily look in the eyes of people who are in active denial. And the more you care about them, sometimes the harder it is.
You can’t look into their eyes and stay silent without feeling like you’ve betrayed yourself and them. That feeling can be unbearable, leaving you with two options: distance yourself, or say something. And when you say something, the addict in denial often lashes out and creates the distance on their own.
Either way, communication breaks down. Distance is created.
Occasionally, communities stage interventions to force awareness or a decision—usually to go to rehab or a twelve-step program—through a form of collective pressure or ultimatum. But those recoveries can be short-lived. Usually, you can’t force anyone to wake up. Lead a horse to water and all that. More often, the person has to hit rock bottom all by themselves.
When the Denial is Existential and Impacts Everyone
But what happens when another person’s addiction and blindness impacts everyone around them? What happens when it doesn’t matter whether you distance yourself or not because our collective survival depends on all of us acting?
What if the planet depends on them waking up? What if the stakes include the likely extinction of the human species, but not after a detour into a dystopian technofeudal hellscape filled with surveillance drones and concentration camps?
Accepting other people and “letting them go their way while you go yours” feels almost ridiculous in light of the fact that all of our actions impact one another, collectively, all the time. That’s simply the nature of reality, and always has been. For example, my purchase of an iPhone in the United States at the current price is directly related to the child labor and deaths resulting from earth mineral mining in the Congo, Sudan and other resource-rich areas in the Global South.
What we are dealing with is an epidemic of widespread addiction to apathy, individualism, distraction, and numbing out. A refusal to see and act to prevent the heinous crimes being committed by a ruling class that’s leading the human race off a cliff. An addiction to complacency, the belief that one is powerless and action is futile.
On the one hand, those of us that are ostensibly sane, relatively speaking, are still a little insane in the sense that we keep expecting people in active denial to suddenly wake up and act differently. We might benefit from an Al-anon-type program that helps people surrounded by addiction find some measure of peace within the madness. A traditional 12-step program might help us calm our nervous systems, maintain self awareness, acknowledge any part we’ve played, access a higher consciousness within ourselves, and refrain from going verbally ballistic on the still-asleep.
On the other hand, if we were to seriously sit down and envision a 12-step program specifically for those suffering from apathy addiction, denial and the belief they are powerless to change the world, the traditional programs would fall short.
So I’ve taken a stab at it to get the ball rolling.
12-Steps for American Apathy Anonymous (AAA)
This 12-Step Program is for Americans struggling with the apathy and complacency engineered by the ruling class that has us scapegoating the vulnerable, falling for propaganda that puts profit over human life, and otherwise excusing and tolerating inhumane systems of oppression and violence inflicted on ourselves, our communities and people around the world—systems that are increasingly pushing human civilization and the planet’s ecosystems towards collapse.
We understand that people do not operate in a vacuum; other people’s addiction to apathy has a material impact on our own and others’ well-being. We therefore have a responsibility to continue working to shake people out of their denial, whether through facts, data, emotion or moral appeal, which over time may help dispel the delusion they live under. The goal of the program is to help awaken people to their own agency in creating a new world with dignity for all.
But efforts to awaken others must be balanced with the work of actually building alternative systems. We must understand that those of us who have recovered from denial can equally benefit by going through these steps regularly as a way to stay inspired, grounded, and model the process for others.
Lastly, we understand that this is not meant to replace traditional 12-step programs and other life-saving forms of support for the epidemic of addictions induced by systemic, cultural and generational traumas gone unaddressed for centuries.
Twelves Steps for American Apathy Anonymous
We admitted that we are far more powerful than we ever imagined, especially when we combine efforts with others.
Came to believe it was possible to take back our power and combine it with others to create a better world.
Made a decision to take back our power, never give it away to the ruling class again, and unite with others to bring about change.
Stopped blaming the poor (and ourselves) for the world’s greatest harms, and made a searching and moral inventory of all the ways in which the system is rigged and corrupt, along with the ways in which we have given away our power, failed to act, or protected the powerful instead of those most in need, including ourselves.
We wrote this down and emailed it to all our friends.
Were entirely ready to receive the courage to take action.
Took a moment to pray for the souls of the depraved ruling class, so that we might maintain the moral high ground.
Made a list of all the ways in which the ruling class has harmed us and our fellow citizens—along with the ways we may have inadvertently enabled it through our own silence or belief in our powerlessness—and became willing to find others walking this path to collectively take our power back.
Joined the resistance and took collective organized action to take power away from the ruling class and give it back to the people, while making amends (when possible and safe) to victims we may have scapegoated when we should have been blaming their perpetrators.
Continued to take inventory of the crimes against humanity committed by the ruling class, call them out each time, and acknowledge when we slip up and forget our own power or become complicit through silence.
Sought through reading literature to educate ourselves on history and the myriad of alternative ways to structure society, which are far better than this violent oppressive way that’s causing untold trauma and driving so many to substance addiction in the first place.
Having read enough literature to understand the battle of the ruling class against everyone else, and acknowledged there are other solutions, continued to unite in resistance and help spread the word to others.
As a former addict to apathy who once held the belief that it was not with my power to change the system at a structural level, these steps are something I continue to cycle through.
The Activity Prayer
God Grant me
The serenity to stare evil in the face without stooping to violence
The courage to work towards eradicating the evil I refuse to accept in the world
And the wisdom to see through the propaganda that tells me nothing can be changed
*****
Further Reading
An evolving list of resources for taking people-powered action:
~ About ~
Peaceful Return is a newsletter born out of the urgency to resist the fascist descent of the United States. Drawing from history, psychology, myth, and religion, it seeks to understand the roots of what we are facing—late-stage empire, collective trauma, moral inversion, and the corrupting force of concentrated power—and identify pathways to a better future.
The “Return” in Peaceful Return points to the need to return to our true nature—before imperial, violent narratives severed us from our basic mammalian birthright: the felt sense of worthiness to be alive. The journey is one of casting off the shame imposed on us from above—by those obsessed with power, domination and hierarchy—and reclaiming this birthright.
The “Peaceful” part indicates the intention of avoiding harm to others in the process. However, the journey is not easy. It requires a relentless resistance to every morally inverted system or thought structure that places power, property and profit above life, love and people.
~ Alternative Way to Support ~
For those that are overwhelmed with too many subscriptions, you can make a one time contribution at my “Buy me a Coffee” link. As an independent artist with minimal “day job” support, every little bit helps me keep going.
Even social democrats advocating for tax reform and single payer healthcare are often portrayed as hysterical or unrealistic, despite those policies representing the minimum many other Western countries provide their citizens.
SS funding didn't run out - it is a binder full of I.O.U.s from govt "borrowing" (read Theft) to fund the military, etc. People take it lying down because of collective wealth - they can't risk their lifestyle by joining a real revolution. Democracy needs a smaller population, it doesn't work at scale - politics became a spectator sport: see Democrats. The system kind of works in Switzerland because of higher education and more direct involvement in the political process, and leaders who are not idolized and put on pedestals. And even, in this system, those with good ideas are set to the side, while in China, in a meritocracy, you would be on the inside, building a better nation. You can't get there from here. Total re-work required.
I find that relatively few Democratic politicians are politically-practicing social AND fiscal progressives, with the ‘fiscal’ ensuring that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life. Those elected representatives are progressive only in regards to following/implementing ideologically neoliberal or ‘woke’ policy — primarily that involving race, sexuality, and the expanding category of gender.
Other than perhaps Barack Obama, it's doubtful any presidential contender or president — including and especially Donald Trump — has genuinely, publicly realized that Americans collectively want and deserve better than just either of the usual callous conservative or neo/faux liberal establishment candidate thus very corporate friendly president in the White House (something I believe they very likely will never get).
One almost gets the impression that the Republican and Democratic parties are still unaware of the non-corporately-commissioned polls showing that a majority of Americans favor the governmental implementation of some public programs, especially universal health care.
One would think the Democrats in particular would finally support thus implement a universal healthcare plan, so why is the DNC refusing to allow it — even if only by disallowing the fiscally progressive Senator Bernie Sanders to run as its presidential nominee, however many Democrat-voters want him? That is, other than the DNC being afraid of crossing the corporate lobbyists, especially those hired to represent the healthcare industry’s unlimited-profit interests, who make some of the largest donations to the party election coffers.