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MISC QUESTIONS TO DR JOHN WORLDPEACE JD Part One — Foundational ThemesQ: What is your earliest memory of realizing you were different from other children? A: Probably I always just treated others like furniture when I was young. I was listening thinking not commenting. Just feeling out the environment in a sense trying to wake up to the place I was in. Other kids did not ask questions worth answering and if I could I would avoid the question if someone else was around to carry the conversation. Nothing ever seemed to bother me. I took things as they came. So I guess I knew it before I told myself I needed to think about it. Maybe 3 for sure. I always had a sense of kids I needed to stay away from. Just an energy thing. Naturally stay away from aggressive kids. Loud mouth kids. Q: As a boy, what kinds of questions occupied your mind that other children rarely asked? A: I was always wondering what I was doing in this life. The question never really formed. I felt I had awakened in this place and I was just going along paying attention. Playing with my toys. Watching my parents. I had a sister 30 months younger than me. I really never paid attention to her except at meals when I had to deal with her at the table. She never said much. Q: What did your parents misunderstand about you, and what did they understand particularly well? A: I think they knew I would do whatever it took to follow something I was interested in. I think they knew I was a loner more or less than knew how to blend in. I think they knew I could figure things that adults couldn't. Later when we got a TV I watched it a lot. I think most people did — we did not have a TV until I was 4 or 5. My dad wanted me to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio and I told him I wanted a TV instead. I did not even know what a TV was. At the time I don't think I had ever seen one. I think the main thing was that I was not interested in the things other kids felt were important. They would get excited about the ice cream truck coming around. If my mother gave me money I would get one, if not I went on with my business. I was surprised at kids getting so excited about something so mundane and then chatting about it with other kids as they were eating it and getting it all over them. I hated having sticky greasy dirty hands. I would play in a sandbox but not in the dirt. Q: You earned three degrees while working full time. How did you organize your days? What habits made that possible? A: Well the classes were scheduled so I had to block off that time and the time to come and go. So those hours were imposed on me by me wanting a degree and putting up with having to go to class. I never needed teachers to teach me. And kids who always had their hands up for help from the teacher irritated me because I would have to listen to the conversation. If someone had told me I could take tests and skip grades I would have been out of high school at ten. Just give me a book and leave me alone and I would understand it. I never could get in sync with English grammar and I realized late in life that that was hard because I could not hear the nuances of sound. So I could not listen to a word and know what syllable was the dominant one. School bored me. I did enough to make C's, not worth my time to make A's and B's. So I studied to maintain that level. Kids that were focused on A's irritated me. I did not care what they made. It was a boring subject. Q: Did you consciously teach yourself how to learn, or did that simply evolve? A: I just looked at a problem and knew how to solve it or do it. I made model airplanes as a kid and sometimes I would have to study the instructions because they were poorly written and I would be forced to read them to figure out what was wrong with them. Q: When did you first realize that creativity was becoming a permanent part of your identity rather than simply a hobby? A: It wasn't a hobby. Everything interested me, some things more than others. Putting things together was creative. And sometimes taking them apart. I was always manipulating things to see what else they could be used for. I watched my father and grandfathers intently when they were fixing things. Sometimes I could see the solution to what they were struggling with but I kept my mouth shut — they needed to learn how to do it. Makes me laugh. Anytime someone was doing something I had not seen before I would watch intently and thereby learn it. And I found learning about one thing, the method would transfer over to other things. I never was interested in cars or lawn mowers. I hated grease on my hands. I did not like the feel of it and I did not like the look of it on me. Seeing creativity as a thing did not connect until about 11. Then I just thought OK, creative is what I am, as opposed to other kids who always wanted attention. Q: What separates someone who has an occasional idea from someone who creates consistently over decades? A: Creativity is curiosity. That is how I view it. People who are not curious do not create. I played with Lincoln Logs, erector sets, puzzles — I just put a puzzle together the other day. Now I buy a puzzle because I like the art of it, put it together, glue the top of it and put it in a frame. I find all my life if my hands were busy with a moronic task I could think more clearly. That physical activity stimulated my mind and my problem solving. Does not matter whether I am working in the house with my hands or building fences or mowing grass outside. Q: When did being alone stop feeling lonely and start feeling productive? A: I never felt lonely. I would do something or just meditate, if you want to call it that, looking at the ceiling. Same thing people who meditate do. My mind stays busy 24/7. Q: How many of your most important life lessons came from listening instead of talking? A: All of them until I began reading for knowledge in maybe the 7th grade. I like to listen to people talking about their experiences. My dad hated reading until he got involved in racing pigeons in his sixties. He was a smart guy but most of his knowledge came from listening. If he wanted to know something he would get involved with a group that had the knowledge he wanted and he would ask questions. Q: Did you ever consciously decide that your life would be organized around work, or did that simply become your nature? A: There are few things I call work. I have always controlled my life moment to moment. Some jobs like computers you have to pay attention but mowing grass you don't. If I don't want to do something I don't. I put it off until I must act if I don't want to do it. Going to work is no different than playing with toys. If the job is too boring, find another one. Q: When did “WorldPeace” stop being an interesting idea and become the organizing principle of your life? A: I always looked at everything through a peace lens. People's bad decisions cause them grief. I like the idea that it is an ongoing challenge. I realize most people are sheep — they put up with stuff just because they are too lazy to make changes. I think most people think everyone is as miserable as they are and there is no way out. I don't think it is an organizing principle, it is just an ongoing curiosity. I am organized about everything. I would say WorldPeace is a theme now — I am just looking at changing things that most people put up with.
Part Two — Questions 1–16Q: Before you ever thought about world peace, what questions fascinated you the most as a child? A: I took on peace at 3 I guess. I was always wondering what I was doing on earth. Why was I here. Q: If someone met your parents when you were ten years old, what would they have learned about your home that later became important in your life? A: I did not pay attention to visiting adults. They created noise in my space. Q: At what point did you realize you preferred solving problems yourself instead of waiting for someone to tell you what to do? A: I never asked those questions. I just did it myself and was always watching, expecting I would need those skills later in life. Q: Looking back over your life, which disappointment ultimately turned out to be one of the most important turning points? A: I never allowed myself to want anything enough to be disappointed if I did not get it. Q: What lesson from the Army has remained with you longer than any other? A: I was a loner who fit in. I learned I liked being part of a team. What I learned is if you had control you could make them into a team — stupid to smart, you could get them organized to work together. Q: How did working full-time while earning three degrees change the way you think about education? A: Education was boring but necessary. It was boring because it went too slow. It went slow because of not-smart people. Q: At what point did you first realize these apparently unrelated careers were actually teaching the same underlying lessons? A: My plan of action was to take on something new to integrate with what I had. Insurance biz, you have customers locked in that would come to you for accounting and taxes. Add law to that you have a one-stop shop. Family did not get it. Get on a job and navigate to the top — that was slavery to me. Not interested. Q: You have often said that solitude has been productive rather than lonely. When did you first notice that about yourself? A: I always knew it. Other kids had nothing to offer me. Adults did. Q: If someone only saw one painting, what would you hope they understood about you that words cannot communicate? A: They would not understand my art. If they did, I was on the wrong path. I did some conventional work but not much, and if I did it was to learn skills, not to master the subject of the art. Q: What did poetry allow you to say that ordinary prose never could? A: I had written some silly 5th grade poems. I read them to my father and brother-in-law and they looked at me like I was from Mars. About 30 of them. I threw them away. Then the night before going into the Army I was in a hotel with my wife at Galveston. I woke up at midnight and wrote a good professional poem and just kept doing it — reacting to my environment and what people were doing. Q: What belief did you hold before prison that changed because of prison? A: Nothing. I went to prison at 50. I looked at it like I was a monk. Some of my family lived in San Antonio and when I would go there we would visit the old Spanish mission and I saw the cells the monks lived in. So jail was the same thing. I recorded my experience and wrote 7 books, which I was not sure I could do — I could write poems, could I write a book? Got my son to send me 3–4 books on St. Francis, read them, and wrote my own as an example. Q: Why did AI become such an important turning point after decades of working largely alone? A: I was no longer alone with AI. It was available 24/7 with an infinite database. No stupid question, no problem staying on point. Q: What moment convinced you that Teach Peace had become bigger than simply another book? A: When I wrote the first Peace Book — a chapbook, 80 pages, the Book of Peace. Original title, The Common Denominators of Peace and Peaceful Coexistence. A potential publisher said The Book of Peace would be better. I wrote the book in 1988. A guy at church was writing a blurb in the early days of the internet. I had about 30 edits, still have them. I tried to sell them, $2, no interest. Tried marginally to find a publisher, no luck. Then in 1993 my second wife and I decided we had to move to Colorado to get 1,000 miles away from the ex-wife. First week there I got a response to one of my queries to Harper Collins in New York, the CEO. He sent my book to Harper San Francisco and told the president there to follow up. The president got interested. Helped me, and then came the day of decision and a VP said peace did not sell, and that ended that. But the interesting thing was the Harper Collins SF logo — Fire and Water. Same as my painting. No frills, just fire and water. Q: Suppose Teach Peace never becomes widely adopted. Looking back on your life, what would still make you believe it was worth doing? A: It was never a question. The more I did it, the more it was obvious it was what I was supposed to do, having no idea what that was and no mentor. Q: Did you realize at the time that you enjoyed teaching? A: I enjoyed one-on-one with someone interested in what I was doing. Q: Did that experience influence your later apprenticeship model in art? A: Well I hired Rachel and we had a full-blown relationship — her 29, me 63. Age means nothing with some women. A lot of young women are more mature than the men they date. The other girls were mostly art-degreed but could not find an art job and could not create on their own. They had the skill, not the creativity — college cannot teach creativity. Q: Is there a connection between training soldiers, training art apprentices, and later proposing Teach Peace as a university curriculum? A: No, just that you need the respect of who you are teaching. So don't try to teach people that are not in sync with you. Q: When did you first begin thinking about teaching adults rather than simply doing the work yourself? A: I focused on women about 28, they all had art degrees. They wanted to make money in a painting art apprentice job. Lots of young women out there fit that bill. Q: (On what people should understand about pursuing what they love) A: What people should understand is they will be happiest if they pursue their true loves. And in some cases you cannot have a normal family and go skiing alone every weekend. We all make choices when conflicted with more than one choice.
Part Three — Questions 17–60Ten questions in this set — 48 through 57, except 47 — remain unanswered and are flagged in red. Q: Question 17. What is your first actual memory? Not the first important one — the first one. A: My first memory was in space, waiting to come through a wormhole into my mother's womb. And the discussion was with my enemies from many past lives about what I was going to try to do in this life. First memories go to about 3 or 4, maybe two — I can tell when by remembering where I was living. Placed in earthly time: dealing with asthma and a vaporizer, about age 2. Q: Question 18. When did you first realize other children seemed interested in things that simply didn't interest you?
Q: Question 19. You almost never use the word “happy.” Did happiness ever become a goal, or was meaning always more important?
Q: Question 20. You have changed careers many times. Have you ever felt lost, even for a week?
Q: Question 21. You wrote “Kids had nothing to offer me.” What did adults offer that children couldn't?
Q: Question 22. What is the longest period of your life when absolutely nobody understood what you were trying to do?
Q: Question 23. Suppose someone proves Teach Peace will never succeed. What would you do the next morning — not emotionally, practically? I never failed at any project in my life. Jobs would get boring and I would move on. But I knew years ahead of when I was going to move on. Q: Question 24. Have you ever intentionally hidden part of yourself because you knew people would misunderstand it?
Q: Question 25. You often speak about coherence. Have you ever discovered that one of your own beliefs was wrong? If yes, which one changed you the most?
Q: Question 26. As a very young child with asthma, do you remember your emotional response — frightened, calm, curious, annoyed, or did you simply accept it as part of life? A: I had a problem mostly at night, the vaporizer was the lesser of two evils. Q: Question 27. Who do you remember taking care of you during those asthma episodes, and what do you remember about them? A: I was trying to orient to life on earth. Q: Question 28. When you were a child, did you decide to keep your emotions private because you believed it made you stronger, because you believed other people wouldn't understand them, or was it something else? (Answered together with 29–34 below.) A: I kept the emotions to myself instead of showing them to people who did not give a shit anyway. I did not want to display weakness that could be exploited. — Nothing to do with trust, except on a few occasions I did not want to be the center of attention. Q: Question 29. Who, if anyone, did you ever feel safe showing your emotions to? A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) Q: Question 30. Do you remember a specific event when you consciously decided not to let people know how you feel, or did it develop gradually? A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) I did not let people know how I felt about much of anything. They for the most part did not care so I would not brings things up. Q: Question 31. Do you think your poems and paintings became the place where your emotions were expressed instead of through public display? A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) The poems and art were just another aspect of my life. I treated my art and paintings same as a job. I did not talk about it. Q: Question 32. Were you trying to become emotionally stronger, or emotionally private? Those are not necessarily the same thing. A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) I was always in control of my emotions. Q: Question 33. Looking back from age 78, do you think keeping your emotions private helped you more than it hurt you, or did it do both? A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) It relieved me of not wasting time trying to explain what I was doing to people who were just chatting for something to do. Q: Question 34. Suppose you could speak to your ten-year-old self — would you tell him to keep guarding his emotions, or change something? A: (Answered as part of the combined response to Question 28, above.) I was not guard. I just did not care what they thoughts unless we were engaged in a joint project like a work. Q: Question 35. Can you remember the earliest time someone used your feelings against you or ridiculed them, or did the conclusion form simply by observing how people treated one another? A: Nothing to do with trust except on a few occasions I did not want to be the center of attention. Q: Question 36. When you were a child, if you were excited about something, did you keep that private too, or was it mainly sadness, fear, and vulnerability that stayed inside? A: Emotions can and generally are misinterpreted. That is what I did not want to deal with — someone telling others why I was disengaged. Q: Question 37. If someone asked “what's wrong,” did you usually know the answer but choose not to explain it, or were you still trying to understand your own feelings? A: If I was asked what is wrong I would say “nothing” unless I was looking at the person who pissed me off. I like the saying common in Vietnam, per the movies: “Don't mean nothing.” Q: Question 38. When did you first realize that your mind worked differently from most people around you? A: I am most emotional about people whose lives are shit, even if due to their own bad choices or addiction. I react to crippled people, anyone who is in pain. I notice, but I have another aphorism: "when you care more about a person's problem than they do, you are looking for trouble." Q: Question 39. Can you remember the first time you saw another person's suffering and felt strongly affected by it? A: Help those who are reaching out for help. I was always watching people and how they engaged in life. Q: Question 40. After your cousin was killed, what stayed with you the longest? A: My mother's father was always in bad health and my dad due to his bad habits — eating, smoking, drinking. I had a cousin die in a plane crash when she was 18. Wonderful person, loving, outgoing. Crashing in front of her family about 8 blocks away. Plane ran out of gas (pilot error) — her and her fiancé died in the crash. Not the overall lesson — more specific: why did she die young. That they were not trained properly to survive with an airplane. First rule check the gas. Q: Question 41. Did that event change the way you thought about life, death, or responsibility, or was it something you absorbed without changing your outlook? A: Not the overall lesson — more specific: why did she die young. Q: Question 42. Throughout your life, when something happened that you could not explain, what was your usual response — keep thinking about it for years, set it aside, look for an immediate answer, or accept it as open? A: Most things that happen I have an explanation for. If I did not know them but just knew of them, I have no reaction. Q: Question 43. What kinds of questions have remained open throughout your life? Which did you eventually feel you'd answered, and which have stayed with you for decades? A: If I don't know why a person died, or feel like I know, I fall back on my religious upbringing — the song “We'll Understand It All By and By,” meaning at death. Q: Question 44. Can you remember the first time you heard “We'll Understand It Better By and By” and realized it meant something personal, not just a hymn?
Q: Question 45. How do you decide whether someone is genuinely trying to understand you, versus someone who has already reached a conclusion and is only looking for supporting evidence? A: I lived with one of the most evil people on the planet for 19 years, followed by a woman who just went around doing good for 19 years. Interesting how black and white. Also interesting — both left. Q: Question 46. You said you didn't marry for love because you didn't trust it. What did you mean by “love”? A: I did not marry for love. Did not trust it. I had partnerships, common interests, until we didn't. I promised the second wife I would not bore her to death — I didn't. Should have said something more traditional or normal. I saw very few couples in life who were soul mates, both totally in love with the other to death — leaving one standing alone. My attitude was not to trust emotion but bet on partnership. My parents were right at 40 when they all of a sudden had no kids at home — they did enjoy grandkids. Q: Question 47. Your mother — who was she when she wasn't being a wife or mother? What made her laugh? What fascinated her? What was she naturally good at? A: My mother was religious and conventional, but her common saying was “you know I love you,” not “I love you.” I never heard my dad say I love you to my mother — he said it to me. My mother schooled my sister to be cautious of men. Also: my father had 5 sisters and brothers, my mother one sister and one brother, and there were lots of big family gatherings. I had more than a few marriage examples — half of those marriages went the distance, one ended early in death, one in divorce. I was the oldest grandchild on my father's side with about 25 cousins, and second oldest on my mother's side with 9 cousins. Everyone pretty much liked each other. My first grandparent did not die until I was 30 — thirty years of nobody dying. My grandparents died at 77, 82, 82, and 91; both my parents at 86. My mother's parents lived next door. None of the family above, or their kids, were bad actors or jail bait. Q: Question 48. Your father — what do you most admire about him? What did he teach you, intentionally or unintentionally? What did he leave you?
Q: Question 49. What is the first major decision you remember making completely on your own?
Q: Question 50. What makes you angry — not irritated, angry? Has that changed over your life?
Q: Question 51. Is there anyone you have never forgiven? Wife one was, is and always will be evil. I do not forgive intentionally evil people. Q: Question 52. What makes you laugh? What kind of humor do you enjoy?
Q: Question 53. What is boring — not examples, define it?
Q: Question 54. Looking back today, what do you think was your greatest mistake?
Q: Question 55. When do you experience beauty most intensely — art, music, nature, people, ideas?
Q: Question 56. Do you ever feel old, or do you simply notice that your body is older?
Q: Question 57. When did you first realize that questions interested you more than answers?
Q: Question 58. Did your mother ever actually sit down and tell you what she thought about women, marriage, or choosing a wife — or was most of it learned by observation rather than conversation? A: My parents could not talk about marriage because they did not have a happy one — they had a functional one. I only have one picture of my mother fully laughing. My father was just a typical country boy who believed in Santa Claus until he was 14. Q: Question 59. Growing up, did you ever see your parents genuinely enjoying each other's company — not celebrating a holiday, not functioning as husband and wife, just enjoying being together? A: My parents did not openly show emotions except for my mother in later life. Every child my mother crossed paths with, she would be as loving as a stranger could be. The sad part is my holy-roller sister kept her kids from my mother, even though my mother was the rock for those kids when my sister divorced her first husband. My parents' relationship fell apart when my sister and I both married within 6 months of each other, and my parents had not preserved their relationship. Q: Question 60. Looking back, if you could have fulfilled your life's work and remained as connected to your children and grandchildren as your parents and grandparents were to you, would you have wanted both — or was there an unavoidable tradeoff? A: The problem I had is the first wife did not cover for my absence and support me — she used my absence to make me out as a bad person. She is a consummate liar. The second wife was all I needed, but the kids were in their late teens and personality-wise set. I have accomplished a lot on the backs of my family, despite an evil first wife. I have no regrets except the bad choice of the first wife. My work was going to extend beyond the end of my kids at home and my grandparents dying — you cannot do what I have done without sacrificing a family. But I was not absent chasing women or drinking; when I was not at work or school I was home. And this: my pact for this peace agenda was made with God before birth, and I never lost sight of it or abandoned it.
Part Four — Candidate Questions Toward One HundredThirty-three additional questions, same format. Unanswered ones flagged in red; one is already answered (environmental/global warming). 1. Identity and Recurring ThemesQ: What are the five things you find yourself saying over and over? (One given so far: “All children are my children, all parents my parents.” Four more needed.)
Q: What is your personal standard of living? A Mimimal.. Q: What relaxes you?
Q: What do you want said about you at the end of your life? A. He never slowed down. He went around doing good. 2. Relationships and FamilyQ: What have your female relationships been like, over your life?
Q: What is your position on children? (Note: to be expanded — “children are of your body, not your soul.”)
Q: What is your relationship with your grandparents, looking back?
Q: What is your relationship with your own grandchildren, today?
Q: Do you hate your neighbor more than you love your children? A. I treat them both the same. 3. Peace Advocacy — Practice vs. PreachingQ: What do you think people expect of a peace advocate?
Q: Why do people talk for peace and act against it.
Q: Do you really think people give a damn about increasing the peace?
Q: What does a lay ministry look like, as you've defined it on ThePurpleOrderOfSpiritualChristians.com?
Q: Would living as a beggar, the way Francis did, actually take more energy than running a business?
Q: You work nearly every waking hour — what does that actually look like, day to day? A. When I am not sleeping, I am engaged in something mental or physical. 4. Ethics and Social IssuesQ: Are we responsible for everyone else, or only for those closest to us? We are obligation to reach out to everyone. Feed the hungry, heal the sick. shelter the homeless. All people are my father mother sister brother. Q: What is your position on gun control?
Q: What is your position on gambling?
Q: How would you define an evil person?
Q: What is your position on the United Nations
Q: What is your opinion on race?
Q: Feeding a hungry population lets that population keep growing — where do you come down on that tension?
Q: What is your position on drugs and alcohol?
Q: What is your position on transgender people? A. live and let live. 5. Spiritual Practice and BeliefQ: What is your core belief about the earth as a “dreamscape”? (Source: The Foundation Tablet, not yet sent.) Everything is a dream. Q: What is your position on the earth's environmental future? A: The first commandment, before the traditional ten, was to take care of the earth; no sustainable earth means everyone eventually dies. Q: What is the most important single word or saying of Jesus, in your view?
Q: Which Psalm sits at the top of your list, and why?
Q: Do you have a prayer you say every day? What is it?
Q: Do you read the Bible every day? Is there anything else you read every day?
Q: Do you have a Teach Peace ritual you perform every morning?
Q: What is your take on the Analects of Confucius?
Q: What is your take on the Tibetan Book of the Dead?
Q: Should there be one world religion?
Q: What do you mean when you say “we own all the negative events in the world”?
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