A Blinding Flash

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3.5 Premature Victory (The Dangers of "Super Success") There is danger that
movements focusing on reducing stigma prematurely claim victory in the
face of a positive media attention or sudden (but often superficial) shifts in public opinion.
The fastest way to kill anything in America is to turn it into a superficial fad that dies from distortion and overexposure.
The Washingtonians died, in part, from over-exposure, and one of the
greatest threats to AA came in the 1970s and 1980s at the very time that the
rehab/recovery fad was generating explosive growth in AA. The threat was that historical AA would be drowned in a sea of treatment psychobabble and commercialized recovery paraphernalia. The most insidious death of the recovery movement could occur if the essence of that movement died while the illusion of its
continued existence remained. This would be an invisible death--a death by value dilution and corruption.
Cosmetic change can pacify a movement and lead to claims of premature
victory. Such superficial change (tokenism) often masks the absence of fundamental change.
Social change is like personal change in that it involves the twin
challenges of initiating change and then sustaining that change over time. Social change, like personal recovery, requires a maintenance program in order to avoid regression and relapse.
It has been interesting to watch recovering people whose own transformation spans years of false starts and regressions get involved in advocacy and become impatient and angry at the slow pace of change in their communities.
Conversion experiences are rarer for communities than they are for individuals;
social change often involves the same slow stages of change that so
often mark the process of personal recovery.

http://atforum.com/SiteRoot/pages/addiction_resources/Recovery%20Movmnt.pdf



There was a blinding flash of anger, before anger became unfashionable, the subject of rehabilitation courses, something men did while women suffered. Something immature and grimy. The brick went straight through the front door window. He kept the taxi running. I'll only be a minute, he said. The flat's front door was down a narrow alley and at the back of the building. Their wrong? They had suggested he not do certain things at their place, not bring certain people. As he had introduced the pair of them, Jenny and Harry, he felt rightfully wronged. They wouldn't have even known each other if it hadn't been for him.

They were building up their lives, getting their act together. The rent was paid and they had their own place. Narrow alleys and strange acts in the middle of the night. They had been so warm, so cozy up there. Had there been a dog? Was everything alright? The whack whack whack of the crystal light pursued him through his dreams. Caravans pulled up on the side of outback roads. Unresolved, here was a point which had crystallised out of the confusion of their lives. Somewhere to call home. Somewhere to act like everybody else, dutiful members of the toiling middle class.

He was still out on the edge, the lone ranger, following his destiny down a glug hole, drinking desperately into the early hours of the morning, following dreams, growing older. But he had never expected to grow old, to shift from the hunted to the hunter. So when they said no to him, he was angry and hurt. And predominantly outraged. How could they, how dare they? Didn't they know his destiny was written in the stars, it would be his recording of events, his tracing of their lives, that would make them trails in the history of the world, who would make sure they did not go unnoticed, who would record their tiny, dismal lives for posterity.

And so it was that he asked the taxi to stop for five minutes. And he went round the back of the block of flats. It was about 1am. The flat, on the second floor, was in darkness. He found a loose brick in the wall down the side of the building, dank and covered with moss. He was determined not to think twice, he was so damned angry. How could they do that to him? Expel him from the inner circle? Just because his habits were getting out of control. Who the heck did they think they were?

So he hurled the brick through the window. It made a startling, satisfying crash and then his nerves leapt into his throat and he was back round to the taxi, and heading into town. He looked back. He could see a light come on. He could see a shadow in the window, Harry, or was it Jenny. He stayed away for many months. The taxi ride was full of the world, he chatted idly, pretending to be a normal person. Why did you do that, he thought later, they didn't deserve it, after all the struggle they had gone through to get the bond, to get the place together, their own cosy retreat.

But there was no cosy retreat for him. The taxi dropped him in Oxford Street and he kept on drinking, a serious binge where there was no tomorrow. He was determined to smash the world, and himself, to smithereens. He didn't know what drove him, the wild escapades, the despairing gestures, the flips in the crowd, darling, darling, good to see you. Driven into oblivion, driven into the shadows, he switched to bourbon and coke, the black drink for a black heart, and he drank and he drank until his body ached with the chemical load, and he could no longer remember, where was he, who was he, why was he doing these crazy things? The shattering glass echoed through the days, why did he do these wrong things, why had he been abandoned. He disappeared into the arteries of the city, lost to himself, unable to make friends, unable to connect, lost in purpose and in heart, lost soul. He could see the brick at the very moment it hit the glass.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/last-chance-for-mccain/2008/10/15/1223750129896.html

THE economy - and how to pull it out of its slide - is set to dominate the final presidential debate today, Sydney time, in what could be John McCain's last chance to get back into contention in the 2008 race.

The 72-year-old senator from Arizona is facing daunting poll numbers, which will sharpen the dilemma for him on tactics: should he go after his rival, the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, on issues of character by raising associations with people like the former Weatherman William Ayers? Or will attacks distract from his economic message which is the overwhelming preoccupation of voters?

On the eve of the debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, The New York Times/CBS poll found the Obama-Biden ticket leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 per cent to 39 per cent among likely voters. A week ago, before the Town Hall debate in Nashville, Tennessee, the margin was just three points.

The big gap has opened up because independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between Senator McCain and Senator Obama over the course of the campaign - are now lining up more solidly behind the Democratic ticket, with Senator Obama having an 18-point lead in this group.

These startling results are echoed by a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. It found Senator Obama leads Senator McCain 50 per cent to 41 per cent among likely voters.

Not surprisingly, the Los Angeles Times poll found the economy was the dominant issue with 69 per cent of voters of both persuasions. The Iraq war was a distant second and health care third. Senator McCain said on Tuesday that he did plan to raise William Ayers in the debate as Senator Obama had dared him to, but the event is likely to focus squarely on who has the better formula to revive the economy.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24504519-643,00.html

KEVIN Rudd stands accused of bank-bashing after vowing to penalise financial institutions that lavish executives with multi-million-dollar pay packages without requiring them to follow responsible investment practices.

And the Prime Minister will ask the governments of the world to follow his lead to link bank capital adequacy requirements to executive pay levels to discourage high-risk investment of the type that triggered the financial crisis.

Australian banks have angrily rejected the idea, insisting they are profitable and, unlike overseas counterparts, not lining up for taxpayer-funded bailouts.

"There is no evidence that Australian bank salaries packages have weakened our banks," said Australian Bankers Association chief executive David Bell.

"In the current credit crisis, this performance is a testament to the sound management of Australian banks."

Mr Rudd made his call for the world to reject "extreme capitalism" in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.

It came a day after he raided his $22 billion budget surplus to fund a $10.4 billion stimulus package to boost economic activity in the face of the global crisis, which has caused bank collapses and wild swings on stock markets.

And at the weekend, Mr Rudd guaranteed bank deposits.

Yesterday he said: "As we contemplate the impact of this financial crisis on real economies, real people and real lives, it must galvanise us to act in the future so that we never allow greed and lax regulation to put us in this position again.

"To put it simply, when markets fail, government must act."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24503801-5013404,00.html

THE nation's reliance on China to carry it through the impending global slowdown has been dealt a blow, with mining giant Rio Tinto saying it no longer expects the engine of Australia's resources boom to bounce back this year.

Rio Tinto chief executive Tom Albanese said yesterday a post-Olympics slowdown in commodities demand would drag on longer than the company had thought just two weeks ago and the company may slow mine expansions.

"We expect to see Chinese economic data in the third quarter of this year showing an exaggerated economic slowdown because of the Olympics effect," Mr Albanese said. "It now seems clear that any bounce in net demand will be delayed until next year." The pessimistic prediction from Rio Tinto came as the Australian share market weakened as concerns about the global economy overwhelmed investor relief at the co-ordinated banking rescue efforts around the world.

And the US economy was yesterday declared to be in recession by a senior Federal Reserve official, Janet Yellen, who said growth had slowed to zero in the September quarter and was set to fall sharply in the last three months of the year.

The S&P/ASX200 weakened after reports of her assessment that "the economy appears to be in recession", ending the day down 35.2 points at 4300.

Japan's market also weakened yesterday on concerns about growth, while London's FTSE was down 3 per cent in early trading last night.

Although the cost of insuring banks against default has tumbled following the rescue packages in Britain, the US and Europe, improvements in bank funding costs have so far been small.

"In the US, bank funding spreads only eased by 10 basis points over the last week and are still in excess of 300 basis points (3per cent above their cash rate), which is still completely dysfunctional," ANZ interest rate strategist Katie Dean said.



This is a lamp at Michael's shop. I couldn't work out what was wrong with the mobile phone camera, turned out to have tomato sauce all over it.