Comparative Table of Contents

DISCLAIMER: Cogniventus.com has not been approved of, nor endorsed by, and is not affiliated with, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. or any service entity of A.A.W.S., Inc. This website’s currently Featured Project, “FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED,” is not A.A. Conference-Approved Literature; it is non-fiction commentary submitted here for non-commercial single-use, and gives Fair Use citations, for educational purposes, of limited sections of the 2nd Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1955, which has been in Public Domain since 1983.

The Navigator’s Notes:

“While I thank God that I was privileged to be an early member of A.A., I honestly wish that the word `founder’ could be eliminated from the A.A. vocabulary…When you get right down to it, everyone who has done any amount of successful Twelfth Step work is bound to be the founder of a new life for other alcoholics.” from As Bill Sees It, # 67: Thousands of “Founders” 1967

—Most of the material in in the 11 Chapters that are presented here as “FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED” functioned as an exploratory Oral Tradition within The New Founders Group of A.A. between 2006 and 2014, and was formalized as a Written Tradition in abbreviated form on the 75th anniversary of the 1939 publication of “Alcoholics Anonymous.” Although originally intended for internal use within the Fellowship as a new Basic Text from which to recover from A.A. sobriety that has gone awry, whatever the reason, we at Cogniventus became increasingly aware of its applications for alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike and, with the legal transfer of intellectual property to us before the organic, voluntary, and glorious dissolution of the New Founders Group, decided to release it in a broadened and deepened form for your approval, disapproval, or indifference.

—“A Scientist Speaks Out” functions as a semi-respectful counterpoint and arguable update to “The Doctor’s Opinion.“

—In their 1939, 1955, 1979, and 2001 Prefaces & Forwards, each corresponding Edition of the Big Book gave what it believed to be interim updates in those 62 years of A.A.’s history. We reject those updates—and the politically correct introductions and juggling of diverse stories following the 164 page Basic Text—as irrelevant and immaterial. Since every group in A.A. is autonomous, there is no such thing as “Alcoholics Anonymous” as a coherent political or historical entity even though, by necessity and convention, we must continue to refer to it by the only name we have.

“So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most anti-social, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholics Anonymous group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our recovery program, even anti-each other—these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so!” Bill Wilson, 1946.