Cooperating Without Affiliating

Cooperation is not the problem. A.A. has always cooperated. The problem is that cooperation has a direction of travel and no natural stopping place. It begins with an institution sending people to a meeting, which is good and which A.A. wants. Then the institution needs to know they attended, so a sheet gets signed. Then the sheet becomes a requirement, and the meeting turns into a place people are sent rather than a place people come. Then somebody at the institution needs to know which meetings are suitable, so a list is kept, and A.A. groups are on it or off it by criteria A.A. never wrote. At no point did anybody affiliate with anything. But the group's function has been quietly redefined by an outside process, and the group now has an interest in staying on the list. A.A. names the boundary in its own service structure (A.A. Service Manual) as "cooperating without affiliating," and the word carrying the weight is without — because cooperation left alone does not stop where affiliation begins. It carries on in the same direction until somebody notices the difference is gone.