You live in the real world, the world you experience, the world you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. 

And you also live in your own personal, unique world of words, a world of  thoughts and feelings induced by words. Words you hear. And words you read. 

It’s an imagined world, a world that exists in your head only. You can’t be deceived in that first world. But you’re continually being deceived in the second — while reading newspapers or magazines, while listening to talk shows, while reading or listening to political speeches, while reading or hearing political ads, while hearing the evening news, while attending lectures. 

And you’re being deceived by so-called experts and authorities; by lawyers and judges; by statisticians, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and historians; by reporters, newscasters, and politicians; by columnists and college professors; and by friends and relatives. They’re bombarding you with hundreds or even thousands of messages every day, most of them untrue, misleading, invalid, or just plain nonsense.

You see, scuba divers can be taught; surfers can only be entertained. And I am a teacher, not someone whose mission in life is to amuse others, although I'm told I can be very funny at times. 

But please know that this site will do more for you in the long run than will most “cool” (in quotation marks because I haven't the foggiest notion what that word means except in the context of temperature) sites. 

In this regard, my philosophy is much like President Reagan's when he made the observation that if you feed someone by giving him or her a fish to eat, you'll have to give that someone a fish every day. But if you teach that someone how to fish, then he or she will be able to feed him or herself from then on without help from anyone. 

I can teach you how to (1) correctly analyze and digest information, (2) think clearly and innovatively using that information, and (3) effectively communicate the results of that thinking to others. If you learn these skills — and you can, believe me, if you want to — not only will you be able to feed yourself every day, but you'll be able to put on a banquet at the same time and feed others as well until they, too, learn how to “fish.” 

You have my word. 

Now to continue.

You live in the real world, the world you experience, the world you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. 

And you also live in your own personal, unique world of words, a world of  thoughts and feelings induced by words. Words you hear. And words you read. 

It’s an imagined world, a world that exists in your head only. You can’t be deceived in that first world. But you’re continually being deceived in the second — while reading newspapers or magazines, while listening to talk shows, while reading or listening to political speeches, while reading or hearing political ads, while hearing the evening news, while attending lectures. 

And you’re being deceived by so-called experts and authorities; by lawyers and judges; by statisticians, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and historians; by reporters, newscasters, and politicians; by columnists and college professors; and by friends and relatives. 

They’re bombarding you with hundreds or even thousands of messages every day, most of them untrue, misleading, invalid, or just plain nonsense. 

And you’re being deceived because implicit in what they’re telling you is that they’re talking about things going on “out there,” out in the real world. The truth of the matter, however, is that most of what you’re being told is going on in their heads only. Nowhere else. 

Luck has nothing to do with it. Wherever you are in life at this moment is the result of all the choices you’ve made in the past. And wherever you’ll be in the future will be the result of all the choices you’re making now. 

Confucius noted some twenty-five hundred years ago that it was a great art to know how to sell wind. But knowing how to recognize wind when you hear it is an even greater art.

And a greater necessity, too. Because your freedom from what Stuart Chase called the tyranny of words depends upon it. 
 

I can’t deceive you if I select the first option; either you see the fleas or you don’t. But I can with the second, because you have no way of checking out what I said unless you examine the dog, which means shifting your awareness from your world of words to the real world. 

Consequently, you can’t be deceived in the real world. Only in your world of words. Which means only through language. In this case, verbal language. 

And so if you want to avoid being deceived through verbal language, you’re going to have to learn how it works — that is, what words are all about and how they function. 

Analogously, words are also symbols. Each is intended to stand for something other than itself. And the whole idea underlying the process of stringing words together is also to convey a message. 

But in this case, the territory is not something outside yourself. But rather the contents of your mind. You may imply otherwise. But that doesn’t change it. 

Words are the symbols you use to reveal those contents. And when they’re used in that way — as symbols — they fill a useful purpose; they inform the listener of what’s on your mind. But when they’re not used as symbols, when they’re used as things instead, things that you string together in sequences chosen more for the way they sound than for what they mean, they fill a different purpose — to deceive the listener in one way or another — to misinform, persuade, confuse, camouflage, obscure, emotionally massage, mislead, intimidate, or impress. But not to inform. 

Regrettably, there’s a widespread tendency for people to use words as though they were things instead of symbols. And so deception is the rule rather than communication. 

Analogously, there are two entities upon which language is based. There is the symbol. And there is the referent, which is the thing that that symbol is intended to represent or stand for. However, the symbol is not its related referent. Put another way, the word is not the thing. They are separate and distinct entities. Just like a shadow and the object casting the shadow are separate and distinct entities. This is critically important to any understanding of how any language works. 

You see, by agreement the word “square” represents a four-sided polygon whose sides are all equal in length. But it could also stand for what we call a triangle or a circle or a tree or a mountain. All we have to do is agree that it does. But no matter what word-sound we agree represents something, say what we call a condor, it will have no effect on that something. We can continually change the word for what we call a condor, or substitute another word for it, and it will still remain what we call a condor. A condor will change over time, to be sure, but not because we change the symbol for it. To believe otherwise is to believe in word magic — that is, to believe that it’s possible to change a referent by merely changing its related symbol. And a belief in word magic is no less a superstition than is the belief held by some aborigines that revealing someone’s name will result in the loss of that person's soul. 

By the way, many people confuse a symbol with its referent — i.e., they believe that they are one and the same. Right after Robert Mugabe was elected Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, a statue of Cecil Rhodes was pulled down by workmen, after which about 200 people attacked the statue vigorously, flogging it with metal chains while heaping verbal abuse on it. In a similar incident, a group of angry American Indians poured urine on a statue of Custer. 

But not everyone does. A member of Emperor Constantine’s court once told him that an unruly mob in the city’s marketplace had broken the head of his statue with stones. The Emperor lifted his hands to his head saying, “It is very surprising, but I don’t feel hurt in the least.” 

We’re now ready for twelve ways to keep people from deceiving you through words. If you learn and apply them, they’ll change your life for the better. Guaranteed.

Here are just a few: “lifestyle,” “the  politics of meaning,” “reinventing government,” “the  rehumanization of television,” and “role model.” 

Words and phrases such as these are verbal ghosts, tantamount to shadows with no objects to cast them. When they’re strung together, the result is like a jigsaw puzzle that’s blank on both sides — the words fit together perfectly, but they say nothing. Like the following, which was taken from a book review: 

"In his brilliantly provocative rethinking of the meaning of nationalism, Michael Lind assaults the pieties of both right and left in his attempt to construct a new foundation myth or meta-narrative for American history."

So don’t assume that everything said to you or that everything you read has meaning. Or even carries a message. Very little of it does. 

A symbol, on the other hand, is something that’s intended to represent something other than itself, something you’re not supposed to react to  in a knee-jerk way. On the contrary, a symbol is something to which you react with delay, with enough prior thought or evaluation to give it meaning. 

Epictetus said it well: 

"Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, 'Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.'”

Knowledge is true, reliable. It’s something that you know happened. Word information, on the other hand, is something that may or may not be true as far as you’re concerned. It may or may not have happened. Therefore, word information is unreliable. 

Conclusions based upon knowledge will more than likely be sound, whereas conclusions based upon word information may not be sound. 

"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions." 

Tangible characteristics belong to persons, plants, animals, and things. They are independent of any observer. So a cube is a cube is a cube no matter who is experiencing it. 

However, intangible characteristics do not belong to persons, plants, animals, and things, but are projected into them by the observer. So one person’s bright guy is another’s dunce. And one person’s greedy businessman is another’s talented entrepreneur. 

If in any particular instance you’re not sure, apply the "100 People in a Room” test. Here’s how it goes. 

Imagine a room with a hundred people in it chosen at random, numbered one through a hundred. Imagine now that you give a friend a tape measure and ask her to identify by number all those in the room who are 6' tall, or taller, to the nearest 1/4". She does. And then she gives you a list with the relevant numbers on it. You now ask two other  friends to do the same, one at a time. Each one does. We compare the three lists. They are identical. 

I now ask you to identify, by number again, all the racists in the room, giving you carte blanche to ask each of the 100 people all the questions you want. You do. And again you give me a list. 

I then ask your friends to do the same thing. They do. And again each gives me a list. 

We now compare the three lists. They are completely different. 

Why? Because racism is an intangible characteristic, just as beauty is. Which means that it lies only in the eyes of the beholder. 

Oh, by the way, so do greed, courage, intelligence, meanness, generosity, success, morality, ethics, and a host of others. 

And no two Catholics have anything in common to the exclusion of nonCatholics other than their Catholicism, no two blacks, Californians, young people, old people, politicians, lawyers, policemen, arthritics, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and on and on and on, almost endlessly. 

Which means that when someone offers you a label — for example, “Reaganomics, “redneck,” “shyster lawyer,” or “egghead,” he or she is not telling you anything about the object of the label to the exclusion of all other possible objects in the relevant class. Instead he or she is telling you something about him- or herself. Specifically, that he or she feels good by using that label, for one reason or another. A feeling that has nothing to do with you or with the object of the label. 

So as soon as you hear a label, close your hearing mechanism. Everything that follows is intended to deceive you, not inform you. 

You’ll be astonished at the responses, if any. For example, you’ll find that “political correctness” and “censorship” mean the same thing. That “proportional representation” and “quota system” mean the same thing. And that there’s no difference between “racism” and “affirmative action.” 

The first statement comprises several nouns and one verb. It’s intended to inform you of something. 

The second statement is composed of adjectives and one adverb as well as several nouns and a verb.  It’s intended to persuade you of something. 

So when someone is talking to you, give serious consideration to the nouns and verbs he or she uses. But take his or her adjectives and adverbs with a grain of salt. 

In addition, when someone habitually uses big, obscure, or abstract words, the implication is that he or she is a wooly-headed thinker whose inferences, judgments, and opinions are of no value to begin with. So it’s not surprising that Albert Einstein undertook to write a book explaining his theory of relativity in simple, everyday words at about the time he made his discovery known to the world. And it’s also not surprising that a rabbi advised his disciples almost 2,000 years ago never to live in a city run by scholars. 

As Winston Churchill put it: "Short words are best. And the old words when short are best of all." It’s a pity that he didn’t think to insert the word “concrete” into the observation so that it would read “Short, concrete words are best. And the old concrete words when short are best of all.” 

So someone who has the credentials of an expert — licenses, graduate degrees, prizes or awards, titles, published articles and/or books — and who looks and talks like an expert — coat, shirt, tie, neatly trimmed beard, gray at the temples, smiling countenance, good voice, the right jargon, and so on — could consistently spew forth utter nonsense. 

And an uncredentialed, unlicensed, unpublished, gaunt, spare derelict, with matted hair, filthy beard, blazing, feverish eyes, squeaky voice, dressed in a tattered robe, dirty feet encased in dirty sandals, etc. could consistently send  forth sheer wisdom and genius, all the while drooling spittle. 

A fact expresses  the truth of something, something that can be confirmed either by testing or by replicable experimentation. For example: “If you fall out of an airplane over an open field, you’ll hit the ground.” That’s a fact. 

An agreement purports to express the truth of something simply because people are of one mind on the subject. To illustrate: “A touchdown in football is worth 6 points.” Now that’s not a fact; it’s an agreement. 

An inference purports to express the truth of something on the basis of careful observation followed by careful reasoning. For example: “The universe began with a Big Bang.” That’s not a fact, either; it’s an inference. 

A judgment purports to express the truth of something based upon observation and experience. To illustrate: “Look at those clouds. It’s going to rain soon.” That’s not a fact; it’s a judgment. 

And an opinion purports to express the truth of something based upon nothing more than personal likes or dislikes. As an example: “Jim Brown was the greatest running back ever.” That’s not a fact; it’s an opinion. 

So the next time someone starts an assertion with the words “It’s a fact that . . .” or “The fact of the matter is . . .” listen very carefully to what follows. The chances are that it will be anything but a fact. 

If he makes a factual statement (Water tends to seek its own level) or describes an experience of his to you, (I ran into Charley Smith last week), then he’s probably trying to inform you of something. 

If he makes a statement to you composed completely of word information,  he’s very likely parroting something, for whatever reason. 

If he offers you an opinion, a judgment, or an inference, if he uses primarily concrete words, if he balances all his descriptive phrases, if he seems to be appealing to your sense of reason rather than to your emotions, and if at no time while he is talking to you does he insist that he’s right, then it is likely that he’s trying to offer an idea for your consideration. 

And if he uses primarily verbal ghosts, labels, personified abstractions, and intangible characteristics, and if he strings them together in such a way as to encourage  feeling rather than thinking, and if he keeps insisting that he’s right and that there’s no room for argument, then it’s likely that he’s trying to deceive you.