It’s Time for a Twelve-Step Program for Misinformation
Cultivating an intuition not driven by fear and ego, but the often hard truths that bind us in commonality and belonging
Note: We’ve turned commenting on for this post to all subscribers and look forward to hearing your thoughts.
I’m not an alcoholic, but I don’t drink. The reason is that I’ve encountered far too much violence, destruction, and loss as a result of drunken stupor to want to take part in it. I was somewhat of a wine snob at one point in my life when I lived in the wine country and had access to some amazing collections. But then I had a relative who descended further into alcoholism, and I had no idea how to talk to him about it or what to do for him.
Eventually I found my way into a twelve-step program for friends and family of alcoholics. The motto of the program was to keep the focus on ourselves, not the alcoholic — to recognize that our serenity in life is not dependent on whether the alcoholics in our life drink or not and to find a way of supporting them in their sobriety, or if they choose to keep drinking to “detach with love.”
More than eight years in the program and I grew hugely from it. I also came to see alcoholism, and addiction in general, as a metaphor for so much of what’s not working in our world.
At one point in my recovery I decided to read the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, as I wanted to understand the disease more fully. The first 168 pages describes the twelve-step program of AA and how it works. The rest of the book is a collection of stories of alcoholics who found sobriety after (usually) long periods of chaos. The stories blew my mind. So many of them were tragic and heart wrenching. So many of them descended to incredible lows before “hitting bottom” and becoming willing to do whatever it took to get sober and stay sober.
The biggest takeaway I received from reading the Big Book of AA (among many) was that in each of the stories the alcoholic knew what he or she was doing. They knew they were making bad decisions. They knew they were harming themselves and others around them. But it wasn’t enough to just know it. They had to want sobriety so deeply that they became willing to do whatever it took, which means getting a sponsor and working the steps, not merely going through the motions, but really working the program. Not easy, in fact terrifyingly difficult, but effective.
Not to wax on about the disease of addiction and the virtues of twelve-step, but instead to share that this reminds me of something. Something called Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network (FNN). The $1.6 billion defamation case currently being litigated. This case is landmark and will not likely be forgotten in the annals of history for its profound implications.
Dominion Voting Systems sued FNN after Fox News Channel repeatedly hosted guests that purported to have evidence of widespread voter fraud, giving oxygen to the narrative that the 2020 presidential election had been stollen. As the litigation is proceeding, briefs and testimonies are being released revealing that FNN’s on-air personalities did not in fact believe what their guests were saying. In November of 2019 Laura Ingram wrote to Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry, but she is.” Powell was part of President Trump’s legal team and a strong proponent of the election lie narrative.
More recently, quotes from Tucker Carlson reveal his disdain for former president Trump, and numerous FNN producers, on-air personalities, and even Rupert Murdoch knew what they were putting forth was a false narrative.
So why say it? Why paint a picture for the American public that an election was rigged when they were fully aware that there was no actual evidence to support the claim?
The picture revealed in internal communications was very simply to maintain their ratings by giving their audience what they want, a constant flow of suspicion of liberal politics. The evidence reveals they knew, and know, what they’re doing — that it was about maintaining their influence, and by extension, the continuous flow of advertising revenue.
So, where does that leave us? Who do we believe? And what of the First Amendment?
The First Amendment question is highly complex and always will be because the big challenge is in determining who shall be the arbiter of truth and who enforces it. Since no single individual or government agency is infallible we are without a reliable referee, and this unanswerable question is why we will continue to have news outlets putting forth false narratives and getting away with it.
Where this leaves us, however, is with a huge but not insurmountable challenge to go within, to seek to find our internal voice of intuition and give rise to it.
But just saying, “Trust your intuition,” is not enough. It sounds empowering, a little beautiful, maybe even a little flowery, but actually doing it is not so easy. Likely all of us can conjure stories of times when we heard the little voice inside, didn’t pay attention to it, and calamity befell us. Maybe it’s happened repeatedly. Maybe over time we get a little more trusting in the voice, but there are still times when our thinking mind drowns the intuitive voice in yeah-buts and what-ifs.
So, what if we had a twelve-step program for misinformation? It might look something like this,
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over misinformation — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore our ability to perceive the truth.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Her.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our propensity to accept and promote misinformation.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our propensity for misinformation.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove our propensity for misinformation.
Step 7: Humbly asked Her to help us perceive the truth.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed by our harboring and promoting misinformation and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10: Continued to question our beliefs, to seek the truth, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Her, praying only for connection with God’s truth.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we try to carry this message to those with a propensity for misinformation, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
We would go to meetings and hear others share their stories of misinformation they believed and promoted and how they saw through the confusion to the light of their own intuition — an intuition not driven by fear and ego, but the often hard truths that bind us in commonality and belonging. We would focus on a daily practice of seeking truth, not merely glomming to what others tell us, but inquiring within. When we get it wrong we promptly admit it and make amends. When we get it right we sit in the joy of truth. We help others who are committed to the journey of truth. And we never forget how important this path is to our shared human evolution from fear to love.
If you’ve enjoyed this post please like, share, and subscribe. The way the DEEPER side of things reaches a wider audience is through word of mouth. Thank you for your support.