Autonomous Unity Episode 040 - Radio Free Series: Tradition Eight Discussion

Welcome to autonomous unity on the fellow area with autonomy network. This is tradition eight. I know it's the ninth month We had bill over in Russia decided to wait for him to get back So we'll probably have two traditions podcasts this month I think we got 22 questions to get through don't know if we'll get through them all today But again, we're on traditions tradition eight which is Accommodic anonymous should remain forever non-professional But our service centers may employ special workers and let me uh Yeah, I just looked it up to make sure I quoted that word for word I did Yeah, but tradition eight I let you take it bill. I know you you got the questions. I finally got them up myself But uh, you got them up once you just get off Okay, let me um Let me get my questions here. I'm just copied them. Oh I'll read the first one while you're looking them up. It's uh, we've also got uh Paul and Herman and corn huska Eric on the line either one of them can jump in at any time they want they want to add to Or answer the questions as well, but it's uh the first question is what is the spiritual principle within the eighth tradition So why don't you take us off on on chub Yeah, I always struggle with these uh The ones that ask what the spiritual principles are within the tradition. I think within all the traditions the first ones always in an Inbony I think there's never just one um, I don't know uh more But like a way to phrase it in the positive but non professionalism um maybe humility Like of ego. I think a lot of times we think of strictly money when we we talk about professionalism, but depth not the only thing Professionals and refers to within narcotics anonymous It also refers to service titles um the fact that we should not have things like service resumes Uh, which is one of the biggest octet morons in our fellowship as a service resume in my opinion um But I've always readily admitted. I'm not the best person for Being able to articulate spiritual principles and I don't know why that is Maybe I'm just not a spiritual as I like to think I am but for me it would be the first of the formal standard in enmity Non professionalism uh, maybe humility like I said I'm sure other people have better better responses to that question than me He used to be here because I'm like But I believe that uh surrender unity and humility or mutual malpul the five-man remedy and uh You know, I take the main one and this one is probably like you said it's humility You know Just uh be enabled to humble our fellow sent and uh be enabled to accept who we are and accept What we are you know and um So Yeah, my fault. I that's all I can think of Well first of all tradition eight narcotics anonymous ring forever not professional, but I service centers may employ Special workers, okay I mean in assessor What we're talking about here is uh The total I'm in is talking about okay in this tradition All right Because if there's not an amnesty uh So even if that what you have today with uh What they call the main service center For narcotics anonymous called world service office that is considered a world's world service center, okay All right You know that is a difficult Situation there because you end you end up with no amnesty no love and and you're not so not even Special workers there All right, so what is uh, yeah That run through this here is when it says uh Some describe and then they have the fellowship made up of failures the mother programs the greatest that this is true many of our members have Success we thought we talked about many other programs and in many other ways Gales did not help us medicine with virgin and psychiatry seemed to have no answers for us that we could use We ourselves have said give us the ones you cannot do anything with give us your hardest cases We're welcome then with open arms somehow NA worked with the program to method to When other programs have failed What is about these that makes us so so we don't have any secret just special methods We don't have any through all remedies. We don't really have any other things that Others operatics What is about NA that makes us more widespread and successful program for out of the world? Gratitude simple is something simple practice because we don't have these things that is possible for us to Seed where others are pale What do we have we have our steps we have a mobility we understand and care we we are motivated we have each another I mean um And it doesn't build up as any hierarchy here, okay? I want to apply service. It's implying and amenity is it's implying giving So we have to have a gift of giving in our spirits is what it's saying, okay? So when you look at the spiritual principle the spiritual principle is giving up salt All right to give back that is a spiritual principle here in this tradition with the anonymity I think they're the two major ones that ring out through this tradition That people don't seem to comprehend I mean our service center today is scattered with professionals is not as when it says You know Our service centers may Employ special workers, okay special workers and then it goes on to describe them as type is you know people pick up telephones type You know secondary type situations where it's going to take 40 yards a week to perform them services where If you cannot get enough volunteers in you have to employ someone because it's a full-time job, okay? And what I do if it's limited to a place you're limited to the local fellowships ability to man that service center And that's why it let the option to be able to employ special workers because it's limited to The volunteer base of that certain areas within okay And that's why it was written that way, okay um But there's two spiritual principles that ring out the anonymity and and uh and that the giving Then we're the two major ones in that tradition that I see, okay? And I think we need to be very aware of them too and it's a spiritual gift that's given to us by God Through the steps that you know that 12 step is here is the spiritual gift that being able to give back You know, so what we've been given so freely and it rings right from back from Jimmy on when he had the host service center Done by violent kyrism because the service center up to 83 was total Totally run by by Trust that servants who committed and gave their time to run that office. It wasn't done with any professional services there So I mean that's how we were basing Creating this stuff and it was service centers where committees Upgroups could operate within and do services to get what it's your out answer telephone calls and get our message out there to the world It was done through volunteer base services from the local fellowship Right I want to read question two just because what what you're saying is already kind of answering that it says how to or in a Group supply the spiritual principle within the home loop and and so Bill is already talking about how The service centers were to be managed at a local level and obviously There may come a time and I don't know what today's technology. I can see Flyby whole computers in the internet well before the internet and and early age computers. They had these You would want one world service office or World service center whatever you want to call it to to coordinate The shared efforts of the groups, but the way technology is now Every every local fellowship or nearly every local fellowship is capable of printing and And you know, we we talked that old about four or five years ago about the possible need for An alternate type of service office to go along with the Alternate service informational structure and we can't the conclusion the way drop shipping works now and And we don't need warehouses and literature can be printed on demand or Or stored off site with the companies we contract through that. There just doesn't seem to be a need If we're keeping the the Contact near the local fellowship. It doesn't seem to need be a need for one service office at this point I Let me add in their chubs. Okay, because we're actually happening. Okay already Is how do the NA home groups ensure that NA stays down professional? What we are doing through the fellowship service conference through the groups that are participating within there I just showed you a page on radio free of Development of the covers for our our IPs, okay? That's being done through groups and through people's computer sitting in their own offices like my computer, my office, I'm communicating with Eric and Eric and the -- oh, Herman, I got to get the right name, okay? All right, is it Herman or Herman? But I'm just joking there, okay? But we're participating together and developing these covers and then there are types in the IPs to be consistent with what's in them with that changing them. And now we're getting them posted online where groups can download them. And like he was just saying, he got them up on that their Google Drive thing for people to get them to. And it will be posted on our web pages as in our new Develop and Militator page, okay? So people can go in there and get them. And it's going to be the responsibility of the groups on how they're going to do these things. And we are actually creating what I consider which we're developing and we'll come through to conference soon or later from the groups that we're developing a virtual office, okay, in the long run for groups to participate. And any home group will be able to participate and get this. They're doing a negotiation with our printers, okay? To get the gray books, get the baby blues now. They're doing all the negotiation and we're getting them drop shipped here in America now. And they're getting them drop shipped different places. I mean, Sweden's getting their books drop shipped from a different printer in the same country, okay? They get their literature in, okay, with the books, okay? And the IP, though, you can really do on high-tech printers in your own office now. You can put them in an office in your own house now. And these things look, I mean, I took them to the group and Bill C. Go look at the IPs and he says, "Oh my God, I need to see this." And he goes, "I hate to say this. They look professional." I said, "Well, they're not. They're done by amateurs, okay? All right. It's just our technology, it's a professional level now that we can use technology to develop something that looks really great." And I said, "Yeah, we can use what a group should be taking responsibility now to get this stuff done. And we're actually creating an online virtual office in the long run through the internet." Right. That's exactly what's been happening. I think we even kind of discussed that a little about how that, you know, it's far more developed now. It's just been developing naturally as a result of what groups and addicts have been doing. I think we talked about that back then. It was most likely the virtual setup as this thing progressed. And you don't tell right into question three, you've recorded how the NA Home Groups insured that NA stays non-professional. I'll tell you right now, and I'm just going to let everybody know. The origination point for this podcast, I'm sure you download it in different places. I know people pass it around and post it in other places. And we don't care if you do that. But swanpodcast.com, I'm going to go ahead and put a picture on this podcast page for this particular episode of those IPs that Bill is talking about. They look more professionally done than anything NASA is actually putting out right now. And like Bill said, it's been done all volunteer effort on people at home computers and printed out. I don't think those were done by a professional printer at all. And we can use professional printers under the traditions. We can employ or contract with places, but we've got more professional looking IPs right now than anything NASA is putting out completely through the volunteer efforts. And I think that's because it's a labor of love and people put more into it. Yeah, it's an exciting deal right now. I mean, it's so exciting. But what we're doing, you know, says what make like the third one says how to home groups ensure that N.A. stays non-professional. We are already doing it. Okay. It's like you said that third question. I've already answered a lot of that. But it's like exciting and it's going to be neat when you have that picture to the MIP right in this podcast. All right. That people will be able to listen and see online. And you know, it's just an amazing thing that's happening before our very eyes because we discussed these things when you first start coming to the conference shops. Okay. We start discussing these things. Well, you and I have been discussing them. But since I've met you online, okay. And so talking back and forth that this virtual all the stuff if we develop it and we do it by the groups is going to be a really beautiful thing because we're setting up examples of how groups can do things, not how committees do it, but how groups do it and develop things before our very eyes. And you know, I'm so excited about going to Europe to the European Fellowship Service Conference now because we're going to start talking about how do we either react with the Fellowship Service Conference from the European one? How do they keep their economy and take care of what needs to be done in Europe but still with the literature stuff. You know, it's country is going to have to approve their own translations. That won't be done by the Fellowship Service Conference. But when it comes to content and information, we have to approve it as a whole for all the groups. And but they'll approve their own translations, you know, and they need to take that and have their own economy in that area and stay out of being professional, but being amateurs, being committed through our 12 step and carrying the message. Yeah, so I'm really excited, man. This stuff is exciting the hell out of me right now. Yeah, the fourth question, it says it says we may create service centers. Do we have to create them? The simple answer to that is no. That's why it says may create them. Right. And I think there was a day when I'm not saying that there's not even a use form now there, there may be very well some specific needs for service centers in local fellowships. But I think we've already kind of addressed it at the national level. It is becoming less and less a need. The only real need I can see is one central point that somebody in the community can say, OK, if I want to go to a physical location to make contact with NA. Where it is. It's not dependent on home groups that may move around or a meeting that may come and go where they have collectively said, OK, we're going to rent this little space where people can come to us and contact us physically in their time of need. But other than that, yeah, we don't have to create them. I think we kind of had to create them at a certain time just because of the need, but according to the conditions, no, we never had to have them. And I don't know if anybody else would have anything to add to that because it's pretty simple. I'll affect the next question says may we dissolve them if we create a service center and it answer that would be yes. I'm going to let anybody else who wants to respond on that because Camilla very simple. Yeah, they're very simple questions, but they what these questions were meant for, OK, was to create a. Walk for the groups, OK, these questions, maybe we dissolve them if we create a service center, of course you may, but people need to look at the facts and look at it. Why did we create them? Are they serving their purpose? OK, and if not, do we have the right to dissolve them? Yes, we do. But a lot of groups don't know that, OK, that they have that right that is all that's not serving them anymore. And that's to create dialogue, OK, for groups to be able to get into dialogue with this stuff, OK, because not enough groups to, we will over questions like that in their communication. And they take it for granted like they're stuck in it with the service centers and we create them also we got to keep them. Well, no, we don't have to keep them. That's the issue, OK. And people need to understand we don't have to create something that's not, you know, serving us and as violated every principle we're about. And as we discussed this issue, I think that's an issue we need to discuss more in depth, OK, that if, you know, because people seem like they're handicapped, they're handicapped with this whole issue with knowledge in corporate, like we're stuck with this thing. Well, we're not folks, we're not stuck with them and we should not have ourselves committed to something that we're not stuck with. Yeah, and we should not be held in bondage to that either, OK, and people seem to get held in bondage that we got to make this thing work. Well, it's not server is no longer why do we keep such a thing like that? Yeah, and I think we need to be having throughout the fellowship as a whole not just through the fellowship service conference. We don't have to create something like that, OK, all right. If we're going to create something, what do we want to create and how are we going to make it accountable to us? Is what we need to be looking at in the fellowship service conference, European fellowship service conference as we develop more, how are we going to do that and make sure, you know, we safeguard it. Now that's why I think you know, simple questions like that you can take a little bit deeper, OK. Yeah, yeah, you definitely can and I almost feel like just read over the list that the follow up questions are going to go. They're not the follow up questions, but the questions as they they're going to kind of go deeper into those very issues. that your point not right there. One thing I'd like to say, I think that a good percentage of the fellowship does recognize that they can dissolve service centers and walk away from these centers and even structures. But I think you hit it on the head. You said we need to make this work. I think there's a bit of an emotional attachment and an idea that you're outside the delegation stream. That's created by the concepts if you walk away from this. But I think the major reason that the SSP failed was that the fellowship recognized that the way that was alerted it would irrevocably officially put nozzan control of not just all the services, which they're already in control of. It's never been official that it creates this where they're not only completely controlling the services, but they're establishing the boundaries, all the demographics, the ways in which groups must associate and come together to make decisions based on geographical boundaries that they're going to predetermine. I think the fellowship realized we're giving them a degree of power which they don't possess even though we've been letting them exercise that. I think the fellowship did realize that actually took it to the next step. We see all those same things going to be implemented. It's going to be like the concepts where it's that power's never officially been given, but the groups are kind of surrendering it to them anyway, letting them do what they want. The next question says what type of non-professional workers may our service centers employ? I'm not going to give a direct quote because there's this fine line between knowing our history and the predecessors that we're grateful to and that we acknowledge every time we read our traditions and actual endorsement. But when they load a longer form of the traditions, they address that and they said that they, "I'm going to use the term addicts the way we talk about it." They defined it professional as receiving pay for counseling other addicts. They said, "All those certain service positions may be well paid." I think they use the word "well recompense" that they needed to be things that only in a situation when they can't be accomplished with volunteer work and it can never be paid 12-step work. I don't think I know we've definitely gotten into the situation with the World Service Office with the way they are directing the fellowship, the way they are handling the outreach efforts as opposed to the groups. They are being paid to do the 12-step work right now. Our predecessors also talked about not having to employ non-addicts. So it's very clear that it's okay to hire them within the fellowship and we don't need to, we need to follow the traditions the way they're written but just because they self a certain way in their long form doesn't mean we need to do the same thing. I think it's important to know the intent of the people who wrote these traditions originally and it's definitely, it's well defined. When we have people writing our literature, that's people being paid to write literature, that's paid for your 12-step work. There's no question about it. When we have a World Service Office handling outreach, setting guidelines, telling groups how they're going to do it. If you've got an H&I committee at any level, telling the groups or the levels above it what to do, we've got that backwards. I think it's more than fitting that we've come to traditions or something we grow and expand on and understand more and it doesn't mean they become looser. I think over the years we've developed an understanding deeper than that of what our predecessors have that it does run further than getting paid. It has to do with these titles. The pseudo-professionalism, the prestige that comes along with the control and even the money and the property. When you associate a member of narcotics and I serve on these committees as professional credentials in a public fashion and sit on the boards of treatment centers, we're obviously making money from our 12-step efforts at that point. When it comes down to what the specialist workers that may be employed, very simply, it can never be anything that has to do with carrying our message, but only those mundane tasks that we just simply couldn't put into volunteer work alone to do. I mentioned answering telephone. There are certain things. It's never the composition. It might be back in the day. It might be the type setting, but it's never the composition of the work. That's always a fellowship effort. It might be answering the telephone as far as the outreach goes if we have a service center, but it's never the outreach itself. I'm sure Bill can expand on probably a lot more concise with what I'm saying. I tend to be more wordy than I need to be or error or harmony. I'll turn the time over to you all. If we're going to look at the old traditions, all right? We're going to look at them. We've got to remember what the. When you look at. When you look at. What a previous fellowship wrote? Yeah. When you look at that there. You've got to look at what version. Are you going into the original page of text? Are you going into the gray book? Are you going into. Which book are you talking about? Is what you've got to look at? Yeah. I didn't mention this specifically. I'm mentioning something that was written. We know when we read our traditions in the meetings and we talk about the experience of our. The hard-worn experience of our predecessors. We're not referring to Jimmy Kinnon and that crew. We're referring to the 1940s when the traditions were composed. I think they were adopted in 1952 by a previous. That's actually a direct acknowledgement of that fellowship without endorsing them, without naming them by name as the source material for our traditions. Much in the same way. And again, this is not to be political, but if you were to study the United States Constitution to know certain things mean, you might need to read some federal papers. You're definitely going to need to read the articles of consideration and you're going to need to know some stuff about British law as well because they take terms from those documents. And I'm not talking about. Then I'm just going to say, I'm not talking about what AA wrote as NA doctrine because it's not. But if we're going to understand these traditions and how we apply them in our early days and what our early members' understanding of these traditions was, when we're talking about like Jimmy and Greg and Joe and a lot of these people, we have to know what they were taught and what they understood and what these things originally meant. Because I think we have an expanded meaning in NA. Just because AA defines it as simply pay, I think professionalism is a lot more than whether or not you're getting paid. It has a lot to do with the way we conduct things. And again, service resumes to me are definitely a form of professionalism that would not be included in that early definition, but which are experiencing the hope of Thomas and Dangerous. Yeah, well you're getting into some real-in-depth stuff that's later what is turned into, okay? All right. Well, and we're talking about what type of non-professional work has made our service center's employee, the original intent, okay, had to deal with secondary old-state work, okay? Yeah, take 100 per simulation, which I answered earlier, would take accumulation of 40 plus yards a week in time where we could not provide the services within that local fellowship. We have to remember when the office was first created, it was not created as a real-world service office. It was created in a trunk of a car, okay? Yeah. And they used to take the literature with them from place to place. And then it developed into an office space that Jimmy and his board that he put together started and it was supposed to stay non-professional at all cost originally, okay? And if they were going to hire someone, it was the answer telephone, like we hire our area hired, our groups hired here, we hired an agency to pick up the phone and say narcotics anonymous, and what can we do to help you, okay? All right. And it had nothing to do with what do you want to call up. Had nothing to do with anything else except that we would answer it and then they'd hook us. And then the system where it was set up and that phone call would come to my house, they'd just patch it through to my house, okay? It didn't go anywhere except my house, okay? That phone call. So it goes to my house and then I would get back a hold of the service, okay? And they would transfer the call to me and I'd say, okay, I'm going to call up the phone I would say hey, narcotics and animals, what can we do to help again? All right? Yeah. And then the addict would say, you know, tell me what's going on with their lives, okay? And I would answer the phone call and then the addict would, you know, talk to me about what their problems were, okay? What we could do to do a 12 step call to get the help them, okay, instead, okay? Yeah. And that's how that happened. Okay. I want to explain something for our younger listeners because I think a few people are going to be lost on this with why in the world would you need to hire an agency to answer the phones for you? And even, you know, people who are maybe close to my age that don't quite remember how things used to be because sometimes I forget, we'll go back to a time before answering machines before you had this voicemail before you could get on Google and set up a phone number that rang to a different voicemail that was about narcotics anonymous and they can leave you a message. This is strictly people had land lines. Now, you're an addict back in the 1970s or early 80s and you want to get a hold of NA and you see this number listed in the phone book or the newspaper or whatever. And I'm going to call this and the other guy on the other end who this is his home phone line because it costs a lot to have a second line in your home at this time. And they have to, I think at this point literally rewire it. He picks up the phone and says hello because 1% of his calls are less or coming from this NA health line and the person on the other end goes, oh fuck, they printed the wrong number, I doubt the wrong number and they hang up. They need somebody on the other end of that line who can pick up and say narcotics anonymous. You had these answering services with switchboards who had the capability of multiple numbers without rewiring because that's how they made their money. They can then call Bill and say, hey, we got an addict online. He connects. It gives us that point with the community. This is the level of technology we had. This was something that if we're going to run a health line, we need to have somebody on the other end of the phone picking up and saying, you know, narcotics anonymous. And quite frankly, a home you can't afford to employ not just 40 hours a week, all the hours that there are and a week 24 hours a day. You need to pick up the phone just for that purpose, but an answering service that has a certain number of operators that answer the phone in a number of different ways can pull those resources, make a profit, and at the same time, we get those things accomplished. And I think it's just important for people to know why that type of a service center or that type of a service if you want to call it that was important back then, why we had to have it. And we have our younger people, have no clue the way technology used to be. The stone ages that we were living in at one point, you know, the telephone was about as good as it got and it was hooked to a wall. You know. It still works today, though, jobs. That service center. Yeah, it still works today because the problem is, okay, the problem is, okay, that addicts a lot of time to be responsible, okay. They'll sign up for a call, you know, to be available and they're not there, okay. So what that did for us, okay, what it actually did for us, okay, was they'd have a list of all the people and say it's all cell phones today. They'd have everyone's cell phone number, okay, there, and they'd just transfer the call and they'd have five or six people that's supposed to be on at that time to be able to hold the one and then they'd have the emergency number with me, okay, because I was there all of time, you know, yeah, yeah. And that way the addict got service and it's really a cheap, it was really not an expensive system we paid around $100 a month for that system, okay, to be established, all right. Yeah, and it could help us with it. It could help to employ somebody, you know, 48, even back then minimum wage, say, say, minimum wage was $3 an early 80s, $3 an hour to have somebody 24/7 on staff, you owe over $100 really quickly. Yeah, well that's what it was, okay, it was just an amazing, amazing stuff, okay, that we could do, okay. Be able to do that and have the service provided, okay, that it would provide a service that was immense for us, okay. You know, and it works and it was, yes, we employed a special worker for that agency, but the number of professionals are really the ones that did the work, okay. Professional students who worked for us, okay, you know, and that was a difference. I knew, I said all along, Bill will say this far more succinctly than I could because I'm trying to quote all this deep literature that, you know, from a predecessor fellowship and talk about mundane tasks and it's exactly what Bill is saying, that the heavy lifting to work, the carrying the message is done through the voluntary efforts by us, it's the answering the telephone, you put it great, the secretary of duty, those are the things the special workers do. They don't carry the message, that's what the groups do. Right, they didn't do any of the carrying the message, they used higher narcotics anonymous, how can we help, and then they get the information passed to the addict and then the addict would take care of it, okay. Right. And we get all the services, okay. In that sense, they would just pay operators, say, high narcotics anonymous, how can we help, okay. Yeah. And then they had a list of protocols that our groups gave them to operate by, if this public information, here's the addict you call for public information. If it's an H&I facility, you call this, here, these people are okay. You know, and they'll sort it out for you, okay. And that's all they did was answer a high narcotics anonymous, can we help? They get the brief information and then they would know the protocol and how to deal with it, okay. And it worked out perfect for us, okay. I think the little Apple area still uses that service today, okay. That same service. Oh, wow. Yeah, there's still use available, okay. It's the same system that we set up in nearly the early 80s. They're still using the same system, except now they tied the cell phone system into it with it. Right. But no professional carries our message at all in any form. And that's the way it should be. No professional should be carrying our message. We should be doing it ourselves at the group level. And if the groups can't do it single, they combine it as groups together to create an area where groups communicate back and forth on carrying that message, okay. And how to do it best for all the groups to be able to fulfill that purpose. And that's what this was about, okay. So I think it's really neat when you think about it. You know, what type of professional workers may have service centers employees should be secondary. You know, it's like we employ a printer in another country to print books for us, okay. They print the books. They do not provide the service. Our groups get the books out. They don't put what's in the books, okay. We give them exactly what we want to print it. We can't print that book, but they can. All right. And that's where you get your drop shipment in, okay. So you have drop shippers. You're employing a truck and company to pick it up and say, "Newark airport, they're picking it up at Customs." And they're bringing the books to us and then we're shipping the books out to groups. The same thing we did before when I used to deal with another service center, okay, that we employed. I would go there and I would send all the orders. I was actually doing it online then to that corporation. Then they were shipping them out to various print shops and then print shops would drop ship them to you purchase books in Utah. They'd be dropped ship to jobs and then jobs would get the books out to other groups. That was a system we employed and what they were employed to do was print books and ship them. That was it. That was their only job. And they did no other service for us as a print material. We want to print it. So they are a type of service center we employ to do work for us. We directed them. We directed what we wanted done and how we wanted it done. Right. And this is us employing a service center that's not even in a service center for NA. We're talking about core profits. They're with applied a different way today. There's also something I need to clarify. And it just occurred to me and there's probably some addicts out there who are maybe reading the traditions they're having in front of them who are pulling out their hair screaming at their computer right now because the previous question talks about how says we may create service centers. That tradition does not say we may create service centers. It assumes that they were already created. That it's a nice tradition that talks about we may create service boards or committees. The eighth tradition simply says our service centers may employ special workers. I just want to be really clear that does not mean we need to or have to create service centers. It's just this simple. When these traditions were written the fellowship that wrote them already had existing service centers. It wasn't a question of if they were going to be created. They were there and they needed to address them in those traditions. There's still nothing in that tradition that mandates that the service centers be created. What World Service does, okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] they actually employ a printer in China. Okay? Yeah. They get all their books and they're from China to California and they ship them out and control the whole process for the whole fellowship narcotics anonymous and they take away the process from the groups of having any control over that. Okay? Right. This is some work talking about the groups actually established instead and the groups control that their whole thing, not your service center who is made up of professionals, okay? Right. Now, let's point out another very important aspect of professionalism is you're talking about the service center that's important in China. I happen to know, well, at least according to the 2014 figures, they're getting these books printed for a dollar and change or two dollars depending on whether it's hard or softback and they're marking them up. Now, is professionalism not also when a corporation, as opposed to an individual, makes a profit? And before you say, "Nos is a nonprofit corporation," don't read and understand about corporate law and the tax law. I mean, I just say to nonprofit corporation can make money the way NOS does and they do profit from our literature. They simply have to reinvest all of the money back into the organization. A lot of times you'll see, and I'm not going to mention, they'll put it into advertising, but another place that this money gets reinvested is in pay to these special workers, raises. So, are there literally people profiting on the printing of our literature? I don't know, are the world service center, does their pay increase beyond or more rapidly in the cost of living? No, for sure, because they won't release those figures. They guard them very, very fiercely, but you have a corporate entity profiting on our literature, and you have people employed by that entity, who by some accounts, and again, I can't verify anything for sure, but I've been told by someone pretty reliable, but starting a wage at that little service center, which is significantly higher than the average wage in the United States. And again, I can't corroborate that with official figures from NOS, but at the same time, we definitely have people profiting from our written literature, even if it's in a roundabout fashion. Well, we'll talk about it. And we'll go over now about it. Let's get to the next question, okay? Yeah, yeah. When we employ special workers, how do we ensure they do not get involved in our spiritual fellowship decision-making process? Okay. I think I've covered some of them, Arias, okay, but we employ special workers. How do we ensure they do not get involved in our spiritual fellowship decision-making process? It's real simple. The groups have to have total direct, and I hate using the word, but control over its service centers. Okay? They cannot set the service center up as, well, service offices today, okay? And where that board is, that board is only accountable to its board, according to California State Law. People need to understand when you were explaining it, and that's why I want to jump into this, okay? If you want to ensure that there, you've got to establish the guidelines, and you have to define its purpose, and how it needs to operate to ensure it, you know, that it's decision-making process is not involved in it, because, according to your World Board guidelines, they're only accountable to the laws of the State of California, not even to the laws of United States of America in an nonprofit status. They're only accountable to the State of California, and they have veto power over a whole fellowship, actually, okay? So for you to do this and set something up like that, if you have to set it up with straight adherence to the NA home groups, that a process that does not allow them, as we've done at the fellowship service conference, okay? We've done that at the fellowship service conference, where the mechanisms in place, if the conference start to go up, "Why?" Any GSR can bring it forth and say, "Hey, the groups are voting on taking its conference back, which happened already, okay?" All right? When they tried to a few years ago, pick over our conference, okay? And you need the mechanism in place already established, okay? And that your special workers are going to be accountable to our spiritual fellowships. You know, how do we hold them accountable? It's basically, we said the mechanism in replacing them, first of all, if that happens. The second thing is that it's strictly guidelines from the groups that give a mechanism for the groups to be able to do that, and not have any service special worker be unaccountable, you know, from us, that they don't get involved in any decision making. And that's how the fellowship service conferences set up that only the groups have voting power, only the groups make the decisions, and then have to go back to the groups to make them decisions. You need all that drawn directly up in your guidelines and your bylaws, okay, when you create them. That mechanism is in place, and it's full-proof. Okay, without doing that, you end up with what you have today, and that's what this whole thing is when you look at all these Facebook groups. There's, I mean, Chubs said it earlier, there's a lot of people out there basically doing it. They're informed, but what do they inform? Is they get caught up in that dilemma that we created this thing when they don't realize that we have the right to dissolve. But we have the right to replace it, which we've been doing as groups replacement. Okay, so, we've been replacing the development of a new service body that is directly accountable to the groups instead, and we have development that's a similar body in Europe, the same thing, and now I'm in Russia, and hopefully we'll be developing a similar body in Russia that will take total control over its service and for any professional worker that they choose or not to utilize that they'll have a way of mechanism to get rid of them and hold them accountable. And one of the key deals with that is we have no treasure at the Fellowship Service Conference. I'm not saying there won't be a need for that, but if the groups have, which goes back to the seventh tradition, have a direct accountability of and control the purse, and that's the fun flow that there's no, would it your being made for profit, that there's no mechanism from the collect funds there except for the groups to pay its own bills? And that can stop. That has more power than anything for the groups to control the fun flow and the power of the purse and say, hold it, we're not funding that. You're getting involved in our decisions, we're not funding that. We're not funding any decision you make. And matter of fact that the next conference we're going to replace these workers that are not falling our directives. And that's the simplest way to control it. Yeah, I think the first thing is the most important aspect that we're talking about, special workers. And just so it's clear, we're addressing two questions right now is when we replace special workers, we ensure they do not get involved in our decision making and the other one being, how do we hold these workers accountable? This goes into tradition seven as well as nine. You cannot allow a service body to be self-supporting. And I know you hear that sometimes at the conceptual concepts based service meetings they talk about service bodies being self-supporting. That's the problem. You cannot allow that to happen. They have to be 100% funded and dependent on the groups. That way the groups actually employ the special workers, not some bodies that finances itself through sale of our literature or fundraisers or whatever it is else they're doing with money that they think is theirs that actually belongs to the groups. Well, that's where you know, I really believe if you set it up where they have no mechanisms to raise funds, okay? No profit to your inventors, okay? The groups can hold them accountable and that's holding them accountable to our spiritual fellowship to the NA Home Groups, to the NA Home Groups, create this year where there is no way for them to be doing fundraisers to be able to take in a convention to fund their services, okay? Outside of the groups service body that they create, okay? And when they need something-- Yeah, when they want something funded they need to ask the groups, you know, it needs to come from the groups that, hey, or aid groups, that hey, we want to do this or we want to fund this. And then the other groups need to agree to fund it if it's a service body or a service center that's shared by multiple groups. And in that, you said if there's no way for them to raise funds and that is even cooler to you if we do have a convention, it's about something spiritual and carrying a message not making more money or get together. I don't even know if I would call it a convention at that point, just because of the way the meaning of the convention has taken on over the years in NA and it's something far different than what a convention was when I came in. Even though they were used for fundraising, they're far less spiritual now. It's far more about fundraising. Next question, so I'd like to hear some clarity on the topic of professional writers. Are they special workers or not? I have big opinions on this, but I think they're obvious. obvious how far the state is. them on the list you go bill yeah well first of all the way they're using it today okay there they're there's a their professional writers are that they're special workers I would say not because professional writers are established a philosophy for our fellowship okay which are not supposed to be established enough the way if if you're I don't believe we should be utilized in professional writings to start by professional writers to start with okay if you're going to use anything that consider a special worker it may be for simple editing but then I still hold my my I think we can do a better job anyway at the fellowship to understand what we're writing okay and we have other services now that you can use on the internet to spell check and things like that there you know and I think the fellowship itself knows a heartbeat of N.A. and I do not believe they are are are are special I do I believe they're they're a higher professionals okay that are intervening and establishing establishing philosophy in our fellowship which is directly taking us away from our primary purpose okay and I think that's up we got to be very aware of the world service is going to justify using them because they they're they're what they said we're cleaning up our mess okay well everyone understood that we're not writing for the world we're not writing for professionals we're writing for the addicts are still suffers okay and the addict who still suffers give a damn about a little critical error okay you know they're more concerned about councilman and and government reading hard stuff and saying oh these guys are are not too intelligent well guess what that's not intelligent folks are really changing the world in the message of recovery yeah these these dumb mother fuckers over here this for some reason are still these the only group of individuals on the earth that can figure out how to how to get somebody off heroin without putting them on another substance to replace it right these some motherfuckers over here that don't know how to write yeah they don't have the medical knowledge to know to replace heroin with the boxing or methadone right yeah they don't know how to continue the addiction and keep making the money I think there's a little confusion it goes from 90 to 10 I mean we'll have an okay there's no 10 oh okay now you're gonna run right so I think after we're out today okay that works we'll do a lemon but I want to add real quick we would not pay somebody to speak in our meetings that how is our written word different from from when we're yeah speaking in a meeting when I go and share so if I write it it's different and now I can be a special worker and there's something I want to point out I think it was you that said it but I know you are up on on the at the podium with one or two other people that it was in Texas a few years back I'm trying to remember the name of the exact city but you know which one I was talking about the one you were at when you were at yeah when I was moving from our line and we yeah yeah we were in port work yeah yeah we actually were moving from North Carolina to Utah to actually drove out of our way down to Fort Worth and then that stopped at the original place where the home group started in Perumpa on the way back up but they were you were up there talking and we're talking about you were you were drunk we weren't I was in the audience you were addressing this specific subject with a couple other individuals I think and it might have been vetoed but one of you said this and you were talking about a professional editor and I agree we might want to use a professional editor to make suggestions which the fellowship then decides on but when a professional editor looks and says this comma doesn't belong here that may be grammatically correct but what the professional editor doesn't realize is the person who wrote that or the open participatory committee who wrote that might already know that and when you are reading and you place a comma or a period where it wouldn't normally go it causes the reader to pause and reflect and sometimes there was a very good reason for the odd comma to be there because it let or the odd period to be there you left the point sink in it separated things it really it it was there to interrupt the flow of the reading on purpose even though that's normally where you wouldn't not normally where you would take a pause and then that that point was made at that conference that say hey sometimes these grammatical errors aren't really errors they're there because a lot of the words we use in English language are because William Shakespeare was intentionally violating the acceptable he made up words basically and now there are real words in English language because he made up words and then violated all the rules because it held more meaning and we have done that with our literature with the punctuation at times a lot of times the professional editor is going to ruin the intent because we were intentionally not following up a particular grammar rule or style right I talked about that many of times where we put certain things in there to stop you and say hold it think about what you just read basic thing started so that's a what I certainly hit a button that the conference recorded it's often started but we didn't lose it okay well we we you're right okay where a professional editor will say that don't be long there and we put it there on purpose okay and that's why I say when we do translations overseas have one of us that have been involved in this and understand what we're reading to help the translation process because clerical it would be totally wrong words at but spiritually it's right okay spiritually we want you to stop there and reflect and uh yeah it's just like some of the words we use are not clerically right according to the editor but they're right for us yeah because our our language is written spiritually not English correctness wise yeah it takes on a total different meaning and they can make suggestions only if you hire them and we can look it over and say yeah that's a good one but that one's not that actually stops the flow of what we want people to reflect on right and so you're right there okay and we did discuss that in Texas okay all right nothing it was veto and bow and i were up there then so are we going to address 11 and before we wrap up here uh we can it's it's 1.24 right now so we're a little over an hour and about 15 minutes okay so let's let's end and start with 11 because I want to start with 11 to me we'll want to start with 11 next time but I want to end with it right here kind of we'll okay we'll just pick it up it's almost like when you stop reading mid sentence because then it flows better we just have some of our services we now I'm going to I'm going to say something about this some of our services require skills or abilities we're unable to supply as volunteers most of us do not have the training necessary or the extra time required to fulfill these functions and I was feeling bad because what I really wanted to say was that sounds like horseshit and something nons would write and but I didn't want to hurt the feelings of somebody who had actually submitted that question and then I noticed it didn't quote patient marks and I think this actually is something written by nons that somebody's intentionally put up there because it is horseshit this thing about about in the in that's where I'm going to leave it that we lack the training is horseshit we've already been talking about our our our our I really believe hope is made by training I really believe okay and I'll start off with this next week okay we're going to do this next Sunday again okay okay because I'm not a time after that again okay uh uh you know for a while to October okay and then I'm out okay I'll be going to Holland for a week so but I got certain things coming up that I got to do on the weekends that'll be out of count but but I want to say here okay it's it's I can go back and forth on some of these things okay and uh some of them services that we do require um we can do 99 percent volunteerism okay there's 1 percent if we hire a facility okay uh and I'm saying the facility like I was over in in in rust okay that hired a facility where they hired uh uh some services to make sure the technology was there but they brought in non-professionals also then to actually run the profess that them services okay they hired the hotel who was a professional service okay to provide the room and uh they set the room up and things like that all the volunteer service that was done the NA community actually did all the recordings and put it on the recovery line of the whole weekend okay so it was a very good limited professional services there okay where that had the services and skills that we don't we don't own properties and and I'd like to touch on that a little bit more next week okay but I'm saying it's only 1 percent okay yeah and I agree I'm tempted to say more here but in the vein of what I was saying that's a good way to end it when we we have soft and then we're going to leave it here and then people can continue to have questions and it'll it'll be a good place to pick up question 11 right so unless there's an error for Herman that's That's what I'm seeing is 99% correct of what you're saying. one percent we need to look at okay. - Yeah, you're right. So let's wrap it up there. If Eric or Herman has anything to add along those lines or any others, go ahead and jump in. If not, we will be picking this up again next week. It depends on your time zone, but it'll be Sunday, noon Eastern, 10 Mountain, 11, Central, 9 a.m. Pacific and in Holland, I think it's 16. - 16 block Holland, Sweden. - Yeah, about a clock angler. And if you're in another time zone, you're gonna have to look it up. That'll be just coming Sunday by the time you listen to this. And it probably is posted within a few days. So that said, thank you for tuning in. You've been listening to autonomous unity on the solidarity with the Tommy Network, this one. And we will see you on the next podcast with we will again be tradition eight. - And it'll be 12 o'clock midnight in the, in the Skynook. - Skynook, cool. God, you won't want. (laughs)