AA and the blue-covered paperback book contrast willingness
and willpower. And my cogitation, plus some relatively recent sobriety support
experiences, say this is wrong.
They're complementary and intertwined.
Sobriety willingness gives the power for willpower that is
sometimes all that is to avail when an addictive voice whispers temptations.
Sobriety willingness provides the willpower to subsume those addictive voices,
those addictive subselves, the "what I don't want to do" portion of
Paul and Augustine's lament, the less desirable internal neighbors in Walt
Whitman's multitudes or however one expresses that.
And, we do contain multitudes, or at least small
neighborhoods; modern philosophy of mind and cognitive science talk about
subselves.
So, that's why willingness and willpower intertwine. The
willingness to give a sober self or subself more room in the neighborhood is
part of what empowers it.
The sobriety support experience that stimulated my thought
is that sometimes, what seems to be an abundance of willingness may hide a lack
of unity of mind, or even, to get to the willpower issue, may hide a
**desired** lack of unity of mind.
And, I've seen somewhat related issues outside the sobriety
world.
Years ago, at my group of suburban Dallas weekly newspapers,
we hired a person to be the news editor of one of them when we got an opening.
Said person was making notes for himself all the time about being organized to
do this or that ...
And, amidst all the notes and reminders to himself to get
organized, never actually DID get organized.
And, I don't think was even fully conscious or cognizant of that.
I expect to write further on this in the future.
