Yesterday it was green sea turtles. Today, it's starfish!
On June 27, 2025, the Center For Action And Contemplation published a reflection on the Alcoholics Anonymous community. I thought what Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom had to say was both powerful and inspirational. And... it was all about starfish!
Here is how Brafman and Beckstrom began:
Starfish have an incredible quality to them: If you cut an arm off, most of these animals grow a new arm. And with some varieties, such as the Linckia, or long-armed starfish, the animal can replicate itself from just a single piece of an arm.… They can achieve this magical regeneration because in reality, a starfish is a neural network–basically a network of cells. Instead of having a head, like a spider, the starfish functions as a decentralized network….
Onward to Brafman and Beckstrom's discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Let’s look at one of the best-known starfish of them all. In 1935 Bill Wilson was clenching a can of beer; he’d been holding a beer, or an alcoholic variation thereof, for the better part of two decades. Finally, his doctor told him that unless he stopped drinking, he shouldn’t expect to live more than six months. That rattled Bill, but not enough to stop him. An addiction is hard to overcome….
Bill had a huge insight. He already knew that he couldn’t combat alcoholism all by himself. And experts were useless to him because he and other addicts like him were just too smart for their own good. As soon as someone told him what to do, Bill would rationalize away the advice and pick up a drink instead. It was on this point that the breakthrough came. Bill realized that he could get help from other people who were in the same predicament. Other people with the same problem would be equals. It’s easy to rebel against a [counselor]. It’s much harder to dismiss your peers. Alcoholics Anonymous was born.
The organization models how to be responsible for self and others:
At Alcoholics Anonymous, no one’s in charge. And yet, at the same time, everyone’s in charge…. The organization functions just like a starfish. You automatically become part of the leadership—an arm of the starfish, if you will—the moment you join. Thus, AA is constantly changing form as new members come in and others leave. The one thing that does remain constant is the recovery principle—the famous twelve steps. Because there is no one in charge, everyone is responsible for keeping themselves—and everyone else—on track.… There’s no application form, and nobody owns AA
Nobody owns AA. Bill realized this when the group became a huge success and people from all over the world wanted to start their own chapters. Bill had a crucial decision to make. He could go with the spider option and control what the chapters could and couldn’t do. Under this scenario, he’d have had to manage the brand and train applicants in the AA methodology. Or he could go with the starfish approach and get out of the way. Bill chose the latter. He let go (emphasis added).
In fact, the "starfish" model applies not only for Alcoholics Anonymous. It fits for our lives together, in general. It fits our "political world." We have, as the title to the Brafman and Beckstrom meditation proclaimed, both "Individual And Collective Reponsibility."
Each of us, as individuals, has amazing possibilities. And yet... we are not just "individuals." We are "together in this."
By forgetting neither of these (neither our individual power and possibilities, nor our collective interdependency), we take action, both individually and together, to protect and preserve - actually to create - the world in which we ultimately reside.
To go back to the green sea turtles from yesterday's blog posting, let's start living up to our responsibility with respect to global warming. That means prompt and effective collective action, on a global scale - and collective action beings with... individual action! To deal with alcohol addiction, and to deal with the challenges of global warming, step one is to make up our mind to take action. Step number two? Find some friends, so we can support each other in taking the action, individually and collectively, that we know we need to take.
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