eing a parent myself, if there’s one thing that I’m absolutely sure of, it’s that you want the very best that life has to offer for your children. And the fact that they’re now enrolled in private school fully supports what I just said. After all, such schools are not cheap. And your apparent willingness to sacrifice for your children’s good says it all.

Such being the case, I’d like to talk to you about a book I wrote that in my judgment will guarantee that your children will have the best that life can offer. However, I must also tell you that without it, in my judgment, the best is not likely.

Now I know that what I just said will sound self-serving to you, as well it should. All I ask is that you read what I have to say and decide for yourself whether or not I really want to help your children or just “sell” books.

Fair enough? OK, but a bit of background first.

Words, words, words

You see, your children can’t get away from words. It doesn’t matter what their ages are. Or their gender. They’re always dealing with words. Words they hear and words they read.

Generically, in print, on TV and radio, and on the Internet.

Specifically, in pre-college school now. Then later on in university classrooms and lecture halls where they’ll have to deal with ostensibly learned faculty members and so-called scholarly works. Then, after that, after they’ve gone out on their own, they’ll be dealing with words at company meetings, in newspapers and magazines, in advisory service reports, in company reports and memoranda, in manuals of all kinds, in newsletters, in research studies and reports, and in the political arena.

All expressed in words, words, words. And all strung together under the general heading of information.

Choices, choices, choices

Now please consider this. They’ll always be making choices based on that information. From the time they wake up in the morning until the time they fall asleep at night.

Critical choices. Especially after they leave the nest — whether or not to change jobs, to make a specific investment, to undergo suggested surgery, to go into business for themselves, or even whether or not to go back to school.

And the choices they make will determine the course of their lives. Indeed, as the Buddha observed some 2500 years ago, what their life is like today is the result of the countless choices they’ve made in the past. And what their lives will be like in the future will be the result of choices that they'll be making today and will be making tomorrow, for all time to come.

They make those choices by (1) focusing on the options that they believe to be available to them based upon the information that they possess at the time; (2) judging, weighing, comparing, and balancing those options; and (3) reaching a conclusion as to what will be in their best interest.

The Emperor’s clothes

Which would be great if the information upon which they base their decisions were also great. But most information out there is made up mostly of unsound, unreliable, and, in many cases, unrelated and meaningless, clumps of words. Nothing more.

For example:

		It’s defeatist information circulated by those who have given up on life and who want to pull everyone else down to their level.
		It’s information that’s a deliberate lie, intended to get your children to do something that they wouldn't ordinarily do.
		It’s information to which a spin has been applied, so that your children will see something the way the spinner wants them to see it, rather than the way they’d most likely see it on their own.
		It’s noninformation that looks like information, walks like information, talks like information, sounds like information, and acts like information, while all the time being completely devoid of meaning.
		It’s a statistic that claims to measure something when, in reality, such measurement is impossible.
		It’s information from a so-called expert whose only expertise lies in looking and sounding like one.
		It’s an assertion made up of nothing more than someone else’s biases, hang ups, disappointments, failures, misinterpretations, ways of seeing the world, conditioning, etc.
		It’s informational nonsense that became conventional wisdom because (1) as Sir Joshua Reynolds put it: “Man will resort to any expedient to avoid the real labor of thinking” and (2) of senseless parroting.
		It’s someone’s inference, judgment, or opinion that has about as much reality as does the Tooth Fairy.

Bad information means bad decisions

So if things don’t go well for your children in the future, if they’re not living the very best that life has to offer, it'll be because they’ll be making bad decisions. Not because they're stupid — the truth of the matter is that they're a heck of a lot smarter than even they think they are. But rather because they'll be basing most, if not all, their decisions on bad, unreliable, slanted, or self-serving information.

Paraphrasing Josh Billings: It ain’t what people don’t know that make them fools, but what they think they know that just ain’t so.

So if they’ll be basing their decisions on bad information, what they'll be doing is letting other people run their lives for them. And you know what that can lead to!

Good advice!

Allen Ginsberg summed it up brilliantly in 1968 in The New Yorker: “Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race.” Dr. Jack Addington, lawyer, minister, lecturer, and author, put it a bit differently, but it's the same truth: “To let someone else take charge of . . . [your] . . . thinking is the most dangerous thing . . . [you] . . . can do. It leads only to destruction.” In other words, if your children make decisions based upon bad, unreliable, slanted, or self-serving information received from someone else and proceed to think and act accordingly, then that someone else will essentially own them. And they’ll do everything that that someone else wants them to do, all the while believing that they're free souls.

Push has come to shove

OK, it’s choice time. Do you want your children to be free after they’ve gone out on their own? To live the very best that life has to offer? Do you want them to be their own men or women? Do you want them to dance to their own tune? March to their own roll of the drums? Or do you want them to live at the end of someone else’s leash?

Now don’t kid yourself. The world is full of people who want nothing more than to control everyone else. And given that they can no longer do it in the U.S. through physical violence, the only way left to them is through language.

An answer

Enter You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake, the owner’s manual for the mind/brain that doesn’t come with the equipment (as a reader once put it). It’s a book I wrote that’ll teach your children how to astutely and correctly analyze incoming information, weeding out the garbage, differentiating between the good and the bogus, thereby enabling them to safely and reliably use what's left as a legitimate basis for decision-making.

Wise ones, sensible ones, stress-free ones. Decisions that’ll make their lives a joy, rather than a jail sentence. Decisions that will ultimately eliminate most — maybe even all, but that's not something I can promise — of the obstacles to the good life that everyone chases after but very few ever accomplish.

But there’s more.

Plus, plus, plus

You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake will also make your children impressive, enviable thinkers and admired, respected, influential communicators. People to be reckoned with, rather than people who go through life unnoticed, unspoken for, isolated, and alone.

And it can do that better than just about any college curriculum available to your children after they’ve left their present school. And for a heck of a lot less money, I might add.

Which is a bonus, a bargain, and a blessing, given that clear thinking and good communication skills are a tremendous leg up in all fields of endeavor or employment — business, a profession, teaching, journalism, whatever. They’re also crucial for anyone who wants to continue growing after he or she no longer has to work for a living.

And believe it or not, there’s more yet.

The hits keep coming

You see, I’ve always believed that if I find even just one good idea in a book that’ll help me make (1) more money, (2) a better name for myself, (3) a difference in other people’s lives, (4) myself a better person, or (5) a success of every endeavor to which I set my mind, then that book was worth every penny I paid for it. So here’s another promise to you: your children are going to find dozens of good ideas in You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake that’ll help them achieve at least one of the five. And maybe even all five. Who knows? There’s nothing that they won’t be able to accomplish once they put their minds and hearts to it.

The proof of the pudding

But don’t take my word for it. Heck, I wrote the book; what would you expect me to say? So let me tell you what other people have said about You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake.

A reader from New York wrote

“ Your book is the most stimulating and challenging work that I’ve come across in a long time. I’m having a hard time putting it down . . . Some of the best thinking on the relationship between mind-brain-language that I’ve ever seen. Impressive! More importantly, useful!”

A couple of California readers chimed in with

“ Dr. Shapiro has written an exciting and much needed book . . . If I could, I’d make it compulsory reading for everyone. It has caused me to listen to everything with new ears. You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake is, next to the Bible, the most valuable text for living that I know.”

“ We live in a world of words, a realm in which the untutored are preyed upon by the unscrupulous. Without a map to guide us through this mine field of verbal pitfalls and traps, we cannot distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit. We now have such a guide in Dr. Shapiro’s new book . . . It’s a work whose time has come.”

A reader in Colorado Springs had this to say about the book

“ The book is a much needed ‘sharpener’ for minds that have grown dull from media-sensory overload . . . Dr. Shapiro's style is casual and humorous, but conveys a powerful, awakening message . . . The wisdom of King Solomon is famous and if he were reigning today, Dr. Shapiro would be one of his advisors.”

And Shann Nix, prominent KGO (San Francisco) talk show host, had this to say about the book

“ I consider . . . [You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake to be] . . . my bible on clear thinking . . . Reading your work stimulated me in entirely new directions. Bless you.”

Readers also wrote the following

“ Impressive,” “stretched my mind,” “fascinating,” “great,” “should be taught to all children at an early age,” “the greatest self-help book I’ve ever read,” “a masterpiece,” “has the capacity to touch people at any level of need,” “the most intelligent book I’ve ever read,” “thorough and thought-provoking,” and “it introduces the reader to him or herself.”

Alan Caruba said it well in a review that appeared in BOOKVIEWS

“ You ever wonder if you’ll ever figure out what people are really saying? Well, then pick up [a copy of ] You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake, which will teach you how to be alert to folks using language in a slippery way to put one over on you for whatever reason. It’s quite provocative.”

More important than you'll ever know

Before I close, let me emphasize that whether or not you decide to avail yourself of this opportunity to help your children become impressive, enviable thinkers and admired, respected communicators in the process, it’s a choice that will determine what their lives will be like from here on in — joyful or continually filled with stress and disappointment.

You know, there’s an old bit of wisdom that defines Hell as the day you meet the person you could’ve been. Don’t let that happen to your children. Don’t condemn them to endure a lifetime of regret. Don’t risk their being plagued by the saddest of all words: What might have been.

As Shakespeare put it:

And private schools, as superior as they are on the whole to public schools — at least in my judgment — by themselves just won’t cut it as far as your children’s future well-being is concerned. You see, unless they learn how to process information correctly before making critical decisions, they’ll be more likely to act in someone else’s best interest than in their own. Which means that they’ll be wearing other people’s collars rather than their own.

But the time to act is now. While they’re still kids. As a Jesuit priest once put it: “Give me a child for his first seven years and he’s mine forever.” Meaning give me a child during his formative years and I’ll make him what he’ll be for the rest of his life. In my judgment, mastering the principles that can be found in You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake will make your children everything that you, in your love for them, would want them to be.

Guaranteed.

Thanks for listening. Be well.

Sincerely yours,

President
Mens Sana Foundation

Whoops! Almost forgot

You can learn more about You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake and get as many copies as you want for your children (or, perhaps, for your nieces, nephews, for the children of neighbors or of co-workers, and so forth) by logging on to www.menssana.org/books and taking it from there.

In closing, please know:

		That’s the only place where the book is available; it’s not available in bookstores.
		The Mens Sana Foundation, the book’s publisher, doesn’t sell books per se. Instead, it makes copies available as free gifts to people who make specified minimum donations to the Foundation.
		Because the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt, public benefit organization, all donations made to it are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

A final thought.

If your children go all the way through private school without mastering the relationship between words and thinking, without being able to distinguish between good, sound, reliable information and the linguistic garbage that inundates the world today, your money will have been wasted and their future will have been compromised. Indeed, they might just as well have gone to public school. For one of the great TRUTHs of all time holds that:

Trust me on this one.

The End