Introduction
“You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake”

* Whenever I wanted to supplement things that I had said in the main body of text to make observations, to provide additional information that was relevant but not critical to the point being made, to offer applicable anecdotes or suitable parables, and so on — the kind of information that is usually put in footnotes — I put that material immediately after the subheading or paragraph to which it relates indented and set off with a bullet.  Following is the first such item. 

According to my dictionary, the intended meaning of a con is “A confidence game; a swindle, the world of the confidence game.” And the intended meaning of to con is “1. To swindle; to persuade, convince or victimize another to accept or believe a deception; to cheat. 2. To trick; to fool; to persuade another to do something not in his best interest.” Therefore, by “being conned” I mean being deceived by another into doing or saying something that you would not otherwise do or say, something that is contrary to your best interest.

In the book we will focus primarily upon verbal conning — i.e., conning through words. But even nonverbal conning involves a language of some kind. For example, a broken-field runner cons the defense by using head, shoulder, and hip feints, all elements of body language. And a magician does it with a kind of hand language.

The single most comprehensive sense of a con is that it is the result of a process by which an attempt is made by someone, successfully or not, to communicate to you something that's false as though it were true, whether or not he knows it to be false. 

A con can be false with regard to fact (January has 31 days and February 30.), false with respect to a stated or implied intention (“I'm only doing this for your own good,” the judge says to the debtor, who is unemployed and has twelve children, as he signs the foreclosure papers in the dead of winter.), false with regard to logic (“It's raining, so I had better wear my sun glasses when I go out.”), false in that appearances belie the truthfulness of what is being stated (“Russia is a paradise compared to the United States,” said Sam, a university professor, who has consistently turned down lucrative offers, including lifetime tenure, to teach in the USSR.), or false in terms of contextual relevancy (“But it's really only a minor setback,” added the president of the company after announcing the firm's bankruptcy.).

And many purposes
A con can be used offensively or defensively. Among its offensive uses are: to misinform you; to persuade you of something at your expense; to confuse you; to camouflage something, to muddy or obscure an issue or a point to keep you from understanding what's going on; to cheat you; to emotionally massage you for the purpose of subsequently manipulating you; to mislead, deceive, or intimidate you; and to encourage you to feel rather than think. The con man uses it defensively to conceal something about himself (usually ignorance, muddleheaded thinking, or motive); to impress you; to deflect an embarrassing verbal attack away from himself; and to avoid an issue by directing attention away from it.

But a con is always relative, never absolute. Therefore, one man's  con is another man's Eternal Truth. To some, dying for one's country is a guaranteed pass to heaven, while to others the notion that laying down one's life in the service of his country will immediately convey the martyr to New Jerusalem is pure hokum.

And it's been around a long time
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was short, and the Word was simple. And there were no cons. But then, enter the serpent, “more subtil than any beast of the field.”

SERPENT: Didn't God say you could eat the fruit of every tree in the garden?

EVE: Yes, except for the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle. He said if we eat it, or even touch it, we will die.

SERPENT: That can't be true, because if you eat it, you will know good and evil, and therefore you will be gods yourselves. 

So there it is — the first direct dialogue in the Bible, and already we have the first con. Indeed, cons, like the rich, have always been with us. 

Most people think it's the poor who have always been with us, but I prefer to think it's the rich — it gives God a better name. 

Words, Words, Words
Also, in those days, the quantity of words in play at any one time was probably very small. After all, what was there to talk about? The weather? There was no NFL, nor were there recipes, diets, politics, religion, show biz gossip, or the like. The outpouring of words in today's world is infinitely greater by comparison. Now, in addition to the NFL, recipes, diets, etc., there are news reports, advertisements, advisory service reports, company reports and memoranda, magazine articles, newsletters, research studies and reports, book reports, reviews, criticism, political rhetoric, position papers, opinion polls, and so on, all expressed in words, words, words.

Fertile ground for the con
Which would all be fine, because they sure make life more interesting. Except for one thing: there has never been a better way to con people than through language. Indeed, as you've already seen, it's the only way. 

If you don't believe me, just ask any serpent.

And just so you don't think that that kind of conning goes on only in totalitarian countries, the other two examples took place in what are known as democracies. The first of the two relates to a bill passed by the Louisiana House of Representatives in May of 1990 containing the following language: “Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, no ‘affirmative action' plan or program shall discriminate in favor of or against any individual on the basis of race, religious ideas, beliefs or affiliations.” The bill was held to be racist by those opposing it. And the second involves the cabinet of France's Socialist Premier Michel Rocard, which approved in mid-'88 two bills taxing the rich to help guarantee a minimum revenue for the poor. The government called the new levy a “solidarity wealth tax.”  Said administration spokesman Claude Evin at the time, “This tax is explained by the need for the most-favored people . . . to . . . participate more than others in this effort of solidarity.” (All emphasis mine.) As Irving Kristol once put it: There is no more pernicious influence on public policy than permitting rhetoric to obscure reality.

Sophists were rank amateurs by comparison
Today's con men would make the Sophists of ancient Greece look like truth-serum addicts by comparison; the contemporary con is much more complex and skillfully packaged today than it was in those days.

The Chinese had a word for it
Confucius said, “It's a great art to know how to sell wind.” But it's even a greater art to know how to recognize wind when you experience it. You see, great numbers of people are always selling wind for one specific reason or another, though the underlying reason is always the same — to get you to do or say something that's in their best interest and not usually in yours. And if you're not aware of this, or if you're not able to recognize their wind as wind, then you're easy to con.

Ernest the prescient
Apparently, Ernest Hemingway was aware of this. In Robert Manning's 1954 interview of Hemingway, published in the August 1965 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, Papa said, “Every man should have a built-in, automatic crap [a more earthy way of saying “con”] detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down.” Indicative of how strongly Hemingway felt about this, in a later interview conducted by George Plimpton and published in the Paris Review, he repeated it, this time referring to the machine as a built-in, shockproof crap detector. (I've combined both expressions for the book, after substituting “con” for “crap,” into a built-in, automatic, shockproof con detector.)

What's at stake
The cost of being conned can be considerable. 

You don't have the job or the raise or the promotion or the grades you could have had.

Your sense of self-worth falls, as does your level of confidence.

As a simple (yet profound) illustration of what words can do to you, consider (as S.I. Hayakawa once wrote)    “. . . the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, ’I have failed three times,’ and what happens when he says, ’I am a failure.’”


You set your sights in life far lower than you need to.

You never seem to be able to get what you want.

You are continually fearful of events, which have virtually nothing to do with you directly. 

You're not as effective at what you do as you could be. 

You're rarely at peace, but rather in a continual state of anxiety. 

You frequently suffer from verbal sickness.

The phrase “verbal sickness” is more descriptive, accurate, and informative than the more common “psychosomatic illness.” One who is said to be psychosomatically ill is one who evidences bodily symptoms as a result of mental conflict. But the mental conflict itself is almost always the result of meaning given to words. For example, it was reported in the electronic and print media after the televised Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 that many women viewing the confrontation became nauseous and subject to fits of vomiting during the encounter. A reasonable inference would be that their illness was a self-induced case of verbal sickness, because it was a function of the meaning each gave to the words “sexual harassment,” followed by the fear that Judge Thomas would “get away with it.” Yet “sexual harassment” has no more objective meaning than does “beauty,” which, as has been agreed to for centuries, lies in the eyes of the beholder. 

Your premises in any specific instance can be based only upon two kinds of information—information gained from experience and information gained through language.

There are several other kinds of information upon which one can base premises, and they are dealt with in Chapter 3. To include them here would be to risk an unnecessary diversion. 

If your decision is based upon reliable information, whether gained from experience or through language,  your conclusion is going to be reliable, assuming that your ability to reason is adequate for the task. And whatever action you take following that decision is going to be in your best interest, for the simple reason that everyone acts out of self-interest. But if it's based upon unreliable information — i.e., based upon a con — then your conclusion is going to be unreliable. And whatever action you take following that decision is not going to be in your best interest even though you have been conned into believing that it will, but rather in the best interest of the one who conned you. And so you don't have the job or the raise or the promotion that you could have had. Or your sense of self-worth falls. Or you're not as effective at what you do as you could be. These are the kinds of things that can happen when you make decisions about the real world that are based on premises taken from an imagined one, premises that have no counterpart in the real world.

The other side of the coin 
That's what can happen when you're easy to con. Now let me tell you what can happen when you're difficult to con.

It can substantially reduce any tendency you might have to be fearful of life. 

It can change a habitual negative outlook to one that is positive. 

It can get you into the habit of turning inward for solutions to problems, where they always are, rather than outward, where they never are. 

It can bring to you the realization that you, and you alone, are responsible for what happens in your life. 

It can prevent verbal sickness and improve your health in general by changing your outlook. 

It can reorder your priorities for the better. 

It can rearrange your hierarchy of values for the better. 

It can give you the ability to focus on the important things in life while ignoring the unimportant ones. 

It can make you more selective in choosing which ideas to admit into your mind and which to deny passage to. 

It can transform the belief system through which you continually screen all entering ideas. 

It can keep you from wasting time entertaining false ideas. 

It can reduce the likelihood that others will be able to further their own best interests at your expense. 

It can reduce or even eliminate any tendency you might have to feel guilt. 

It can make it extremely difficult for others to kill your dreams. 

It can make it extremely difficult for others to intimidate you through words alone. 

It can make you more self-reliant. 

It can increase your self-confidence. 

It can give you a better understanding of people. 

It can purge your mind of the accumulated garbage dumped on you by others. 

It can free you from bondage to bits and pieces of what is nothing more than pure mythology. 

It's true that courses in logic, semantics, and rhetoric are offered in many schools, but I'm not aware of any single, integrated course in recognizing wind that is part of the educational fare anywhere in the country. 

In addition to the usual reason, of course — to make money. If I told you otherwise, then I'd be conning you. As Samuel Johnson once wrote, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” But in this case, it's to make money for the Mens Sana Foundation, not for me. But if the Foundation makes money from this book then I will benefit as well. So I guess we're back to Samuel Johnson and his observation. 

A few rules of the game 
Although footnote or endnote citations identifying sources are customary, ostensibly to lend credibility to what the author has written, you will rarely find such citations in this book. If what you read makes sense to you, accept its validity; the fact that I did not support it by making reference to “authority” doesn't necessarily invalidate it. On the other hand, if what you read makes no sense to you, reject its validity; a string of citations a mile long shouldn't make any difference. Whenever I did quote someone, I did so only because he or she said what was said so well, much better than I could have; I didn't do it as an appeal to authority. 

When dealing with singular, indefinite pronouns — e.g., anyone, someone, that person, everyone, etc. — I used the male, singular, possessive his most of the time, out of force of habit, and the female, singular, possessive her some of the time because I'm just not used to it. If you think that makes me a so-called sexist, so be it; everyone is entitled to her opinion. 

I refuse to use the plural possessive their in combination with a singular, indefinite pronoun such as someone or anyone, despite protestations by many in the world of academe that such usage is now standard English. If that's true, then each of us will have to insert a ya know or an I mean after every fourth or fifth word; dispense with theft, burglary, embezzlement, robbery, and holdup and use only ripoff; use weird for strange, odd, bizarre, or unusual; throw a very in front of every unique; use neat for pleasant, satisfying, agreeable, or impressive; liberally sprinkle his conversation with like; address everyone as man regardless of gender; and toss in a grunt from time to time if he wishes to speak standard English. 

There's no example like an old example 
Many of the news events used in the book to illustrate points are years old, which is precisely why they were chosen. Being long-removed from public consciousness, they have lost the emotional content they had at the time they were current. Therefore, they can be looked at more dispassionately than can more recent happenings. 

The rules you will not find 
Because a con is always relative, never absolute, you will not find any rules in the book as to what constitutes a con; there just aren't any. Nor could there ever be. What you will find is the basis for developing a judgment as to whether or not someone is trying to con you.

The lay of the land 
The book has two parts. Part I covers the fundamentals of how language works and Part II deals with several of the major aspects of the day-to-day world of language. The relationship between the two is similar to the relationship between theoretical and applied physics. 

A couple of caveats 
First, all the time I was writing this book, I was trying out some of its ideas on people I know and on people I would meet at parties and at business meetings. I was astonished at the number of times that the reaction to many of those ideas was something like, “Well, I think you're fundamentally right in principle, but you're carrying it too far.”  If a principle is valid, there's no possibility of “carrying it too far,” as long as it is properly applied. Otherwise, you have, “Yeah, water does tend to seek its own level, but not in Moslem countries,” or “There's no question that the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the pressure, but only during Republican administrations.” So if you think that I took a principle too far, I suggest you reexamine the principle. Should you upon reflection decide that the principle is sound, then I suggest you reexamine the way I applied it. If my line of reasoning passes muster again, then you're stuck with the conclusion I reached, no matter how uncomfortable you may be with it. You could still reject it, of course, if it would make you feel good to do so. Which wouldn't be all that bad, if you accept that that's exactly what you're doing. At least, then, you will have learned something about yourself. 

And second, language is an ineffective medium for communicating what's in your mind to another. However, at the moment it's the only such medium we have. And so I had to use language to convey to you what was in my mind. In doing so, I suspect a lot was lost in transmission. I'm hoping that what did come through will be useful.