The vice in this world has the twin jaws of fear and hope. Fear of losing that which one imagines that one has and hope of getting that which one imagines that one needs.
The screw on the existential vice tightens and slackens as our personal and collective experience of life plunges us into situations that require virtue as the only slackening educator.
All physical vice has this one tap root, this one release.
Just like a workshop vice, there is also an emergency quick release for the existential vice jaws that overrides the screw when virtue seems unable to reverse the turn of the narrative thread.
To access the emergency quick release, it is a matter of realising the true nature of a situation.
In a workshop situation, that realisation that something was wrong might be immediate, clear and painful.
In the existential workshop, pain is similarly the touchstone of spiritual progress, we fail our way forward.
When the jaws of a personal existential vice stick to the point of calamity and refuse to open to the normal virtue resolutions, then the 12 Step Programme has proven itself to be a Universal Spanner capable of returning movement to the stuck screw.
When a whole culture has become stuck and the collected virtue of generations fails to be enough to avert impending calamity, then a global diction resolution is needed.
The preparation of the place of reception for that diction resolution is happening, the transmission has been in place for some time.