Characteristics of an ADIO Philosophy
It is important to realize that everyone has a world and life viewpoint. Even the supposed absence of a viewpoint is a viewpoint. There is probably only two viewpoints what we in chiropractic world call the ADIO Viewpoint and the outside-in viewpoint. It often seems like people have more than two viewpoints. This is because people often combine aspects of the ADIO with the outside-in creating almost innumerable hybrids of a viewpoint of life. There combination are often caused by a lock rational and logical thinking. In other words people often think and act in a way that is inconsistent with their world and life viewpoint. They usually do so because of emotion, or habit, or tradition. In fact we all on occasions act in a manner inconsistent with our viewpoint regardless of what it might be. B.J. spoke often of this when be talked about clergyman who preached about God on Sunday but rejected the chiropractic philosophy.
There are a number of characteristics of an ADIO philosophy. This essay by no means covers them all. But it may be helpful to understand a few. The first, I would like to explain is the idea that There are absolutes in life. Often those that hold to an ADIO philosophy are accused of seeing everything in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good or bad. While that is not accurate, the fact is there are absolutes and we need to recognize these absolutes. The outside-in philosophy teaches that everything is relative. The situation ethics of Joseph Fletcher and other modern philosophers have convinced people that there are no absolutes. It is true that there are gray areas, issues that are relative but because of that we cannot conclude that there are no absolute issues. Everyone ultimately recognizes that something is wrong, somewhere a person steps over the line of right and wrong. But the outside-in philosophy says that point is different for everyone.
The second characteristic of the ADIO philosophy is that Nothing can occur without a cause and that it makes sense to address the cause whenever possible. The outside-in does not see a cause in the sense that we do or that addressing the cause is any more important than treating effects. To them the cause of the world and its inhabitants is random chance. The cause of disease is bad luck or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so as to catch a germ or some such nonsense. The ADIO philosophy recognizes that there is a cause. However, we also recognize that at some point you must acknowledge a causeless cause or a First Cause. Logic would demand it. That leads to a third characteristic. The individual embracing an ADIO philosophy Understands and accepts that there is an authority greater than the educated mind of man.
In chiropractic we refer to that authority as a law, particularly the law of organization or universal intelligence and in the living organism, the law of life or innate intelligence. Just as the U.S. Constitution is the authority in this country, so are these laws the authority in the world. That is not to say there is not an authority in the world or a cause for these laws. But the recognition of, naming of, or worship of this cause, while part of an ADIO philosophy is outside the perameters of the chiropractor philosophy. We end with innate and universal intelligence. The outside-in philosophy considers the educated mind of man to be the ultimate authority in matters of life health and social conduct. There are other characteristics of the ADIO philosophy and as we get further into it in future essays, they will be explained. v18n2