John’s Friendly Fire AMA (RW143)

When John first told Dan he was doing an Ask Me Anything (AMA) about one of his podcasts, of course Dan assumed he meant Roadwork. Finally John was doing something to promote Roadwork! He clicked the link, he got all excited, he gathered the family around, and it was all about this other frickin show that he does about war, Starship Troopers podcast or something like that. Dan had to shut the browser down and go away from the computer. The unique needs of each one of John’s four shows has been very difficult for him to manage because he wants to promote everything he does, but there are people who do listen to everything.

Roadwork has probably be most devoted audience, a collection of people who might be the most intimate with John, which makes it slightly difficult to promote this show widely with an AMA, like ”Hey everybody! Let's talk about last week's pedophile!” Part of the deal that he struck with Friendly Fire is that it is on a network with the Maximum Fun network fundraising culture and if John is sincere about wanting that show to succeed within the context of its home, then he needs to not be either prideful or dubious about the culture of that place. They chose to have the show on Maximum Fun because the other two hosts of that show already had a show on that network and John had always been adjacent to that culture because he would go to the MaxFunCon every year.

Judge John Hodgman is on there and John met Jesse (Thorn) through John, so he couldn't just stand against the wall at the dance and be like ”I don't dance!”, but he had to get in and do his part. They will see if it pans out and by the end of this month John should know whether Friendly Fire is going to meet his goals in terms of being a viable business.

John had previously done an AMA when he was running for office. It was an extremely positive experience that day because there was something about the quality of that AMA and the people who were helping him in particular. A kid named Zach Lubarsky, who was part of John's campaign, helped him weed through the questions. He would cherry pick questions that he thought were interesting and put them to John.

He was running the system and John felt like he had a really good conversation with the people and he wished his whole campaign had been more like that AMA and less like what it actually was, which was going to union halls and trying to convince the leaders of the Carpenters Union that John was not going to jeopardize union jobs on behalf of the environment or whatever their bête noire was at that moment. John would rather just run for office in AMA form.

John enjoyed this current reddit AMA so far. He doesn’t typically like reddit as a culture because there is a lot of negativity and people are just shitty and hide behind anonymity, but that hasn't been true for this AMA. It has all been interesting people asking interesting questions and John has been enjoying it a lot.

The most interesting people with the most interesting questions are people who email Roadwork After Dark. Dan got some feedback from the question they tackled last week. They haven't heard back from the author of the e-mail, but Dan felt like it did help some people, which is good.

Listener Feedback (RW143)

Hello John and Dan!
(This is from listener Tony in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tony is a teacher and says that he does not make enough in his salary for what he is asked to do daily with the children. He weighs 155 pounds.)
I am a Patreon supporter, longtime listener of all the great shows from Roderick on the Line to Back to Work and just wanted you both to know how much Road Work means to me. Dan, your accomplishments as a podcaster and creator and your sense of humor inspire me not to take myself anymore so seriously. John, your brutal honesty in public spaces like the podcasts you are on, your creativity as a musician and songwriter (I'm listening to When I Pretend to Fall for the first time as I write this) inspire me to write and face the stress and anxiety that comes with working in public education. I don't have any questions. I just want to let you both know that the podcast world is a better place because of you both.
Sent from my iPad

High five! The reason Dan read that isn't just to make them feel better, although that's part of it, but they love to get all of their listener's emails, they don't have to be questions. If you are angry with them or with John specifically‚ email them and tell them why.

Interactions with your neighbors (RW143)

Hi Dan and John.

My name is Greg, which you are free to use. I'm a 5’10.5” tall Australian male, 44 years, weighing 190 pounds, Earning $120.000 Australian. I didn't convert that to US dollars as it would inevitably be a smaller figure ($85.000 USD), I'm happy with the pronouns he/him. Can we go back to Stranger from a pie (see RW4)? To me it was one of the greatest insights into John's mind and also a time when you Dan were clearly enjoying learning about John himself. I, like my friend John, also live in a village among the other villagers, but I have always felt outside to a degree. I don't believe this is due to any aloofness on my behalf and I genuinely like most people I meet in my work and home life. I have tried in the past to get involved in community activities, but to be honest it bores me to tears: Sporting clubs, committees, etc!

Anyway, my point: I have a small strawberry patch in the garden and this summer has seen an especially good yield. I'm literally getting half a bucket load every two to three days. We, my wife and son also live with me, are on waving terms with most people in the street, are close to an older retired couple next door and associate a little with a young family over the road. I suspect this couple seem even less interested in neighbors than myself. After picking a large batch of strawberries I decided to go and unload them over the road. This took some effort on my behalf. Only the lady and one or two small children were there. She said she was delighted and the children would love them, but it was obvious this was a very uncomfortable exchange for her.

She was impressed by the beautiful strawberries, but I knew what I was doing and I enjoyed the chocolate exchange. It was afterwards that I thought of the stranger from a pie analogy. I hope I haven't placed too heavy burden upon this poor woman, but at the same time I'm eagerly anticipating a return gesture. I guess I'm looking for some observations in our dysfunctional Western society and if perhaps small gestures like mine, even if they feel alien, can go some way to improving our lives? Thank you both for your honesty and friendship over the years!

Greg, a squadron leader donor
Sent from my iPad!

Almost the exact thing happened to John one time. He had a cherry tree that produced a bounty of cherries every year, but they all come at once, they are way too many cherries, and even if he gave some to every single person he knows they could not eat all the cherries. It is not like they could keep them around, but they are good for a little bit and then it is over. One day John went with a big bastic [sic] of cherries around the corner to the neighbors, a big family from Sudan were the women all wore hijabs. They hadn’t lived there for very long yet and John thought this was a nice way to say ”Welcome to the neighborhood!" and also: "Here are some cherries, everyone loves wonderful cherries!”

John was walking up the path to their house with a very visible bastic of cherries and the woman was sitting at the kitchen sink, looking out the window. They saw each other, John lifted up the basket of cherries, like ”Behold these wonderful cherries that I am bringing to you!” and she put her first finger up in the air and did the finger waggle of ”No no no no!”

She recognized John and she knew him, but she was saying ”No! I do not want you to come bring me cherries! However you think our relationship is going to evolve by you bringing me these cherries, it is not going to evolve that way! Do not ring the doorbell!” and they had this moment where John was standing in her path looking up at her kitchen window and she was looking down at him and he had a giant bowl of cherries and had to slowly turn around and go back up the path.

While walking back to his house he had to go out of her fence and then walk down to the corner and turn, and the entire way he was visible to her as she sat at her kitchen window. It wasn't just that he had this weird walk of shame with the cherries, but he was also very much thinking to himself ”What am I going to do with these cherries?”

John already had a palette of cherries in his own home and was just trying to get rid of one small giant bastic [sic] of them. He was conscious of her watching him walk away and maybe she was thinking ”I probably should have just let him bring me those cherries” or maybe she was thinking ”I hope that creep never comes up the path again!”

It definitely influenced how John acted two months later when he heard a hammering from the backyard from their side of the fence. He got a ladder out to look over the fence and saw her husband and another guy nailing a satellite television disc to the fence. John said ”There is no way for you to have known this, but I built this fence six inches onto my property, my property line actually is six inches into your yard, because I didn't want there to be any question about who owned the fence. I do not want you to hammer a big satellite dish on my fence.”

The guy that was doing the nailing said ”You know, well this is our side of the fence!” - ”No, you are not listening to me when I say that I have not ceded that side of the fence to you. I built it specifically so that it was not your fence. I did it before you moved into this house, but I will defend both sides of my fence against your satellite dish intrusion!” They both slump shouldered, shrugged, stopped what they were doing, and dragged their feet as they slunk away. John was like ”Yeah, well you know what? If you had accepted my cherries, maybe I would have worked with you on this!”, but there was no way John would have let them put a satellite dish on his fence, cherries or no!

Dan has a ”No solicitation” sign on his front door that is clearly visible from the sidewalk. He used to have a plaque in the center right below the window of the front door that said ”No solicitors”, but the front of their house gets direct Texas sunlight without there being any shade and the wooden door that had been there since the house was built in the 1980s had deteriorated quickly.

A few years ago Dan’s wife replaced the door with a very thick and heavy fiberglass door that looks and feels in every way like wood but it won't turn into a piece of crap after another couple of years. Dan couldn't reattach the plaque to that door because it was some kind of other material and his wife asked him ”Please don't attach it to the door!”, but he was able to find a ”No solicitors” sign on a little post that goes right next to the front door. It is impossible not to see it as you look at or approach the house.

Yesterday Dan saw a guy pull up in his van, wearing a yellow polo T-shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, and white socks with sneakers. He was holding a clipboard and was some kind of solicitor. This was right after Dan had gotten home and he had the garage open, taking his boots off and going in through the garage. The guy walked up to the edge of the garage and started soliciting Dan on something. Dan said ”No solicitors, sorry!” and the guy looked toward the front door, obviously acknowledging the sign, as if he were to say ”Oh right, that's what that sign must mean!” and he looked back at Dan and didn't know what to say.

Dan didn't go into detail of his policy that he will never buy anything that is solicited to him at his house. If you are knocking on his door it is either because Dan knows you or because there is a true emergency, which Dan would never believe because he is too wise to the ploys that people use. If Dan doesn’t know you, he is probably not going to open a door for you no matter what. He knows his neighbors and would recognize them if they came walking up to the house and they would say ”Hey Dan, it's Dave!” and Dan would know that it was Dave and he would open the door. If that is not you, you are probably a solicitor. They get a lot of solicitors!

Dan is perfectly fine with talking to a neighbor or inviting them in or or whatever, but if he doesn’t know the person he doesn’t even bother to answer the door. Dan thinks it is weird that John’s neighbor wagged her finger at him, it feels like what a mean teacher would do to a student who was about to do something really wrong and was about to screw up.

Dan thinks their listener wanted to know if John thought they were doing something wrong. It sounded to John like their listener was relishing the awkwardness and wanted to know whether this social gesture was actually a hostile antisocial gesture by virtue of being against his nature and being clearly against the other person's nature. He had now entered into some sort of death spiral where they were both against their natures, trying to be hospitable and neighborly to one another when really they just wanted there to be a truce.

John’s mom adopted this kind of truce with all of her neighbors based on ”Do not bring me anything or ask me to join you for anything. If I give you something, if I offer help or a bowl of fruit or whatever, there is absolutely no obligation implied or otherwise that you would reciprocate!” and she would bring you a bowl of cherries and she would say ”I do not want these cherries, you taking them will be doing me a favor. You are not indebted to me. Please also keep the bowl because I don't want you to feel obligated to bring it back. I bought the bowl at a thrift store specifically to put these cherries in it because I don't want a second transaction” She lived there for 20 years and over time her neighbors understood and they all got along great. Their listener is actually relishing this new style of introversion that he is working on, making his neighbors so uncomfortable and unhappy that they will have this settled once and for all.

Dan being a Buddhist (RW143)

Hi Dan and John!
Your podcast is very enjoyable and enhances my life. I find a connection with my own music and creative process while listening to you tell stories and intellectually and emotionally wander. I hope you answer my follow-up questions. I think they are good ones. Please correct any sloppy grammar or edit it any way you want.

In Episode 135 Bonus Dan mentioned he was a Buddhist. Can you recall the moment or age you first called yourself a Buddhist? What book or human teacher led you there? Any specific experience?

Dan started calling himself a Buddhist about six months after he had a daily Buddhist meditation practice. He was really still trying it out, he was seeing if he liked it, if it was something for him, and after doing it for a while he felt like he wasn't good enough to be worthy of it. At what point would you call yourself a guitarist? Owning a guitar doesn't make you a guitarist, playing guitar sometimes doesn't, when when do you transition from ”I’m a guy who knows five chords!” to ”I'm a guitarist!” After Dan was doing it for about six months he started ”identifying” as a Buddhist, which is a very non-Buddhist thing to do.

Dan had Generalized Anxiety Disorder and his therapist at the time recommended breathing, which would calm him down during a stressful time. She lent him a CD from Dr. Weil (see RW108, probably this one) who talks about different breathing techniques that you can use to relax and help yourself feel less stressed. You can do them any time you want! On the CD he also got into more detail about breathing, the breath, yoga and how they use breathing and meditation. The technique helped Dan tremendously when he was feeling stressed out and he was able to get a break from that feeling even if it only lasted five or 10 minutes, but it was five or 10 minutes that he was less stressed out.

Dan started doing some research and it seemed like most of the people who were talking about breathing and meditation were Buddhist people, which was interesting. Dan didn't want to do yoga, it wasn't appealing to him at the time at all, but he liked the idea of meditating. When he was a kid his mom had taught him what he always thought of as meditation, which is what he now knows as TCM or transcendental meditation. No offense, but it is the hippie kind of meditation. Dan always remembered liking that and the Buddhist people kept talking about meditation and how good it is for you. This breathing thing that Dr. Wilde had told him about had worked, so how bad can it be?

Dan found a site that is still there by a wonderful Sangha in Redwood City outside of San Francisco that it is called IMC (Insight Meditation Center). The kind of meditation Dan does is called Vipassana, which roughly translates to English as mindfulness meditation or insight meditation. It is part of the Theravarda Buddhist tradition, which is very different from Zen or from Tibetan Buddhism and meditation. There are basically two wings of Buddhism: Mahayana and Theravarda. Mahayana includes Zen and Tibetan Buddhism while Theravarda Buddhism is as close as possible to what the Buddha actually taught when he was alive.

Its proponents say it is the most ancient form of Buddhism and it centers on the poly-scriptures which were transcribed from what the Buddha actually taught. You study the texts, you meditate, you follow the eightfold path, and you are good to go. The Mahayana Buddhism was developed 500 years after the Buddha had died and includes Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, and pure land Buddhism. There are very different philosophies and teachings. People would argue that Zen is separate even from that, but screw you! There is also Vajrayana, which Dan knows almost nothing about except he heard people talk about it.

Christianity includes Protestants, Catholics, Baptists and all these different kinds who might have different opinions on things even though some of their fundamental philosophies remain the same and Dan shouldn't talk about that because he doesn’t know much about Christianity, but they are very different and so is Buddhism: There is not just one kind of Buddhism.

The mindfulness meditation style, which is part of Theravarda Buddhism, was very appealing to Dan. The place he went to, IMC, is at and there is another one which is [https://www.dhammatalks.org/ Both of those are great sites to go to and you can learn a whole lot about it. In Buddhist tradition all of their podcasts and recordings are free and freely given, which is always funny because Buddhist temples are usually based on donations and there is a concept in Buddhism and Theravarda Buddhism anyway which is called Dana, which means generosity or giving, and the interesting thing about this is:

By requirement all of the teachings of Buddhism have to be freely given because they are considered priceless and you couldn't pay for them. They are meant for everybody and have to be voluntary and freely given with nothing expected back. You shouldn't say ”I gave them that really nice Montblanc pen so hopefully he will get me that really nice tie that I have been hoping for!” That would not be freely giving something, but freely giving something is giving something with no expectation for a return. You give them the strawberries not because you think you want their oranges when they come season, but you want them to have these because it would make them happy and that in turn would make you happy. ”Here are some strawberries! If I never see you again, just fine, enjoy them! I don't want anything in return!”

If you are giving a gift to someone in South Korea you almost are supposed to downplay it: ”I had this old thing and it was taking up space and I really don't want it. It is horrible! It is the worst thing ever! Please just take it, you will be doing me a favor if you take it, get it out of here, It is awful, please in fact just throw it away, put it away, I don't want to know about it!”, to the point where if you give someone a gift they don't look at it, they don't open it, they don't even really want to thank you for it, they just put it away. Dan and his wife would bring them gifts when they were visiting and they would just be "All right, good!” and they would put in the other room and come back out without opening it or anything.

There is a wonderful book called Mindfulness in Plain English that you can download for free as a PDF or you can buy it. It is by a guy called Bhante G, which means something like "teacher monk". He goes by Bhante G because his last name is Gunarantana.

Being religious agnostic, Alcoholics Anonymous (RW143)

If John is a religious agnostic, does he put an equal belief or non-belief in a loving and caring God versus a hateful vengeful cruel head-tripping God, or is there more a belief or non-belief in a human-like God that combines these two extremes? If he follows the Alcoholics Anonymous tradition, does he acknowledge or deny that according to them there is bad juju invoked when anyone divulges publicly through any form of technology media, if they identify and associate AA to themselves or those close to them?

John throws ”agnostic”, ”God" and a lot of those terms around pretty liberally without ever really saying that he identifies with them or that he specifically identifies what he means by agnostic, God, or spirituality. John does not think of God as a personification and he also doesn’t make any kind of real sweeping generalization about what God is at all. He doesn’t sit and think like ”Oh it's vengeful!”, like a Hindu God with eight arms.

Part of the AA tradition is that God is just anything that isn't you and that is more powerful than you, which is a resonant idea. Just as with ghosts, John is perfectly capable of attributing some event to God or to a ghost without actually really believing in God or ghosts. It is important to retain the humility of a human being. The idea short of an actual God appearing before you personally or in the sky in the form of an undeniable flaming baby that everyone has to look up and go: "Yep there it is” is pretty silly. Throughout human history people said what God is or what God said.

If God wanted us to know things he wouldn't just tell one person and expect that person to spread the word, but God could appear to all of us simultaneously if he really cared. Any God who believes that the really important thing that he or she wanted to get across to people is that they need to have faith that he told one person all his hopes and dreams and that person put it down in a book and if we don't believe that one person then we don't have faith, that is just insane and doesn't hold water.

John’s relationship to God, to fate and to good things and bad things happening, is the relationship that any regular person would have, which is ”I don't know why things happen!” Sometimes things seem to happen for a reason, a lot of times they don't. It seems like confirmation bias. John is trying to do a good job, he doesn’t believe in an all-against-all universe.

AA says nothing at all about bad juju or the foundational texts. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous remain anonymous in film and print, which is a prohibition on claiming to be a spokesperson or representative of Alcoholics Anonymous. You don't go out and say ”I'm from AA and here's what AA says!” and you don't go out and say ”If you want to know about AA, I'm your expert!” John should have all of these traditions memorized 1000 times. Alcoholics Anonymous has played a big role throughout John's life. His dad was a practitioner of it.

It comes from a time when there was a lot of cultural suspicion and hatred of alcoholics and addicts. It wasn't a thing like it is now where it is very commonly understood what addiction is. Alcoholics are all very out today, even though lots of people are still pretending they are not drunks, but they are. Nobody is surprised to learn that Robert Downey Junior has a problem with drugs and alcohol.

Their listener was referring to the 11th tradition, which is not to be confused with one of the steps: There are 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. The 11th tradition is ”Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We always need to maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” For a long time people maintained anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films to the extent that AA felt like a secret society in an era where if Gary Cooper had come out and said ”I'm an alcoholic and I have joined AA” it would have been very different.

When Tom Sizemore says ”I'm going through a 12 step program!” it does not ruin his career or sends shockwaves through the culture, but the fact that this is connected to public relations based on attraction rather than promotion is a key difference in the way 12 step programs are approach now. When the 11th tradition was written it meant: ”We only want people who are ready to stop drinking and who are desperate enough to have found this program. We don't want to go out and promote ourselves as a solution to people's problems”, because it isn't. You can't just get sober by going to AA meetings. You don't get fixed just by following these 12 handy steps, but you have to really want to be sober and you have to work hard.

As time has gone on the court system adopted 12 step programs as a form of sentencing and would sentence you to 20 days in jail but would waive that if you went to a 12 step program. It was well-meaning, but it was the opposite of how 12 step programs work. All of a sudden you had all these people at AA meetings that were there because the court sentenced them and once that opened up, being forced or coerced into going to a 12 step program became a very common thing. It was a thing from your work or you would go to a 12 step program to fulfill some requirement.

Suddenly meetings were full of people who didn't want to be there, but had to be there. They had slips of paper from their parole officer or from the court. They pass a basket around where everybody puts in a dollar as a way to keep the coffee brewing and the lights on in meetings and all of a sudden those baskets were full of slips of paper that people put in there so that at the end of the meeting whoever was running the meeting had to sign all these slips of paper to prove that these people had been at the meeting. That is definitely not a dollar to contribute and added an element of people sitting in the back of the room with a sneer on their face.

It also introduced this mentality into the culture that 12 step programs were a thing that you could sentence somebody to and they would go in and it would help them, which it never was. That is not how it works! There are a lot of people in recovery who are like ”Well, what harm does it do? Maybe one in 10 of those people will find recovery!” and John feels like it does a lot of harm because it fundamentally misunderstands what is happening there. By the time you are ready to get sober in most cases you are beat and that is why you go through the trouble.

John’s sense of what their listener meant in that question was that John is fairly public about being in recovery and he is not shy about mentioning AA. He does not say ”I am a member of AA!”, but he says that 12 step programs, Bill W., AA, are the way he stopped drinking. John does not recommend it unless you are really serious about getting sober. Don't fucking come to AA because you think it is some kind of program like being gluten-free. It is rough, it is hard, 80% of the people don't make it and some people never get over the fact that one of the components is to admit that there is somebody more powerful than you in the universe.

People come out of there sneering like it was some kind of cult. It is not trying to tell you what God is, but the only thing it is saying is that you are not God, and that is hard for people to accept. A fundamental component of alcoholism is that you think you are God. The number one thing that unites all drug addicts is that they think they are God in one way or another and they are unwilling to let something else be God. It is the main reason that people bounce out of there and prefer to die a drug addict.

They don't believe that there is something more powerful than them in the universe. They cannot see that the problems and ideas they are suffering from, a lot of the stuff John talks on this podcast about suffering, whether or not the traffic lights work or whatever, these are things that you can just put over onto into God's lap and say ”This is you, not me! I can't change the world today so let me just give you this package and I'm going to focus on what I can do!” It is pretty simple stuff, but John is still struggling with it every day. Not going to enough meetings is one more thing he is bad at.

My own lightning strike God moment was when I was about 40 when at last I admitted that I lacked any belief or non-belief in any reasonable concept of God. From there I arrived at developing a reasonable concept of God, the concept I chose to develop was the first extreme that I proposed to John: A loving caring God.

From Shawn on the big island.

A loving caring God is a much better God to decide to believe in than a hateful vindictive God. If John went at it again, which he probably should do, he would also choose to believe in a loving caring God. It would require some work on his part, but all things being equal, as Bob Dylan says, you gotta serve somebody. Why not a loving caring God?