The Philosophy of Courage - Alcoholics Anonymous. AA, Meeting ...

Economics and the political worldLeon’s solution to the world’s economic problems was that people should betaught to stop focusing on consumption (a selfish desire which was destructive of humanpersonality) and turn instead to thinking about productiveness (which encouragedcreativity and innovation, the fruits of true personhood). Economics neededto be personalized, where employer and employee (and even business rivals) startedregarding one another as persons. Absolute Love was the only power which couldtruly heal economic conflicts. [chapter 4, section IV]Traditionally, politics was the art of manipulating human fears. But a changedhuman society would use Quiet Time and group guidance to discover God’s will,based on the principles of Absolute Love, Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute Honesty,and Absolute Purity.On the topic of crime, Leon argued that it did no good to punish criminals justfor the sake of punishing them. Criminals, like those who suffered from other formsof mania and insanity, were people just like us, only more so. We might indeed haveto place certain kinds of criminals behind a cordon sanitaire (quarantine line) wherethey could be prevented from entering the rest of society and harming people. Butwe then needed to send people with changed lives in to work with these people andteach them about Absolute Love and so on, until their lives had been changed, andthey could be allowed to reenter normal human society.The only way to eliminate war—the ultimate mania or insanity into which adiseased economic and political system fell—was to produce a changed society inwhich total holiness had permeated every human heart. [chapter 4, section V]Philosophy and artThe proper task of philosophy is not to not engage in endless argument, but toexpose error. Truth does not need to be discovered, because it stares us in the faceonce error has been removed. The primal errors are denying the existence of God,believing that the self (and its selfish desires) is real, and refusing to face the realityof the Cross: the path of surrender and acceptance which leads to true God-consciousness.Bad art—the kind of art which Leon believed dominated the modern world—glorified sex impurity, protest for the sake of protest, scorn and contempt, meaninglessnessand absurdity, and every other variety of negative God-feeling. Thechanged artist would pray instead, and attempt to portray true God-consciousnessand the nature of the Cross. But the changed artist would be above all “the artistof laughter,” who celebrated the ability to laugh at ourselves, which signified thedefeat of that old soul-destroying fear which kept us locked in blind selfishness andegotistical self-centeredness. [chapter 4, section VI]26