I'm Dr. Irving David Shapiro, 
founder and president of the Mens Sana Foundation.

Welcome to the only web site that I believe can free you from the tyranny of words. Which means keeping words from using you, while you continue to use them. Which further means that you control words; words don't control you. And which in the ultimate means that you can regain control of your life — mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

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.

Which means that if you don’t understand how words work, you let people manipulate you. And so you wind up doing what they want you to do, not what you want to do. And what they want you to do is not likely to be in your best interest. 

But there’s more. 

But there's still more.

And now the bottom line.

Substantially reduce any tendency you might have to be fearful of life. 

Change an habitual negative outlook to one that is positive. 

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

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

Prevent verbal sickness and improve your health in general by changing your outlook. 

Reorder your priorities for the better. 

Rearrange your hierarchy of values for the better. 

Give you the ability to focus on the important things in life while ignoring the unimportant ones. 

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

Improve the belief system through which you screen all entering ideas. 

Keep you from wasting time entertaining false ideas. 

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

Reduce or even eliminate any tendency you might have to feel guilt. 

Make it extremely difficult for others to kill your dreams. 

Make it extremely difficult for others to intimidate you through words alone. 

Make you more self-reliant. 

Increase your self-confidence. 

Give you a better understanding of people. 

Purge your mind of the accumulated garbage dumped on you by others. 

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

OK. Where do we go from here?

It was from a woman, and the conversation went something like this: 

Listener: David, I've listened to you ever since you started on KORL [about 3 years before]. I don't think that I've agreed with you more than one time in a hundred. As a matter of fact, my husband from time-to-time had to physically restrain me from getting in the car, driving to the station, and wringing your neck. But there's one thing you did for us that no other talk show host on KORL had ever done before. 

Me: Really, (not being sure that I even wanted to hear any more), and what was that? 

Listener: You made us think.

And that's all I'm trying to do on this web site. Get you to think. Especially about what language is and how it works. You see, if I can do that, then I can help you free yourself from what Stuart Chase called the "tyranny of words." Once that happens, then it's you who will run your life. But until it happens, it's anyone and everyone except you.

To help people see the truth of this, I’ve devised several parables. 

The parable of The Castaways and of The Caveman and Dr. Smith make clear how words come into being and their limitations. 

The parable of The Incarcerated Serf relates primarily to the notion that in many ways we are our own jailer. 

This page encompasses only a brief treatment of the subject. My two books on thinking and communication — You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake and the Seminal Guidebook for the Mens Sana Foundation Socratic Discourse on Thinking and Communication — both treat the subject in greater detail.

As the great writer well knew, people control other people through words — in conversation, on paper, in the media, and everywhere else. So-called experts and authorities do it; lawyers and judges do it; statisticians, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and historians do it; reporters, newscasters, and politicians do it; columnists and college professors do it. 

We are bombarded with thousands of messages every day, and much of it is just plain crap. They are like jigsaw puzzles that are blank on both sides — the words fit together perfectly, but they say nothing. The key to clear thinking is the ability to filter out the crap and avoid the intellectual equivalent of garbage-in, garbage-out. 

Starting in 1985, I spent eight years of research and intense thought designing the mental crap detector that Ernest Hemingway described, and published its blueprint in a book entitled You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake.

Here's what some readers of the book have had to say about it: 

Fair warning! Dr. Shapiro, a truly original thinker, will challenge you, instruct you, and entertain you in this one-of-a-kind book. At times he'll make you uncomfortable. But above all, he'll make you think. A good and profitable read.

Dr. Shapiro, obviously a first-rate teacher, has written an exciting and much-needed book. If I could, I'd make it compulsory reading for all adults. I now find myself continually arguing with my TV set and listening to everything with new ears. Next to the Bible, it is the most valuable text for living 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. With an ever-increasing verbal torrent from the  media, it is a work whose time has come. 

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. Each day I rush home from work to get back to it . . . Some of the best thinking on the relationship between mind-brain-language that I've seen. Impressive!  More importantly, useful! . . . All in all: I am loving it. Few things have been as thought-provoking . . .Thanks for the book. It really means a lot . . . 

I consider . . . [your book] . . . my bible on clear thinking . . . reading your work stimulated me in entirely new directions . . . what a masterful mind you have! 

Dr. Shapiro has his finger on the pulse of what people are most in need of in this hour of proliferating verbal garbage. His material is a must to restore the balance that has been lost between  edifying presentations and what has become little more than intellectual-sounding wind . . . Better than a course on "How To Listen"; it's instruction that removes the most common obstacles to hearing, reading, and seeing whatever input comes our way, in a non-biased, sensible, and useful manner . . . The wisdom of King Solomon is famous even today; and if he were our current reigning monarch, it's certain that Dr. Shapiro would be one of his advisors. 

What you say to open chapter 13 is VERY true!! We CAN'T be deceived by another unless we are first deceiving ourselves in some way. The less we deceive ourselves, the more the deceivers stand out by contrast. . .The issue is so critically important that I can't stress it strongly enough or well enough.

Also, Alan Caruba had this to say about it in BOOKVIEWS:

“You ever wonder if you'll ever figure out what people are really saying? Well, then pick up 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.”

Which struck home with me, because it's been wisely (and widely) observed that if the reader of a book gets just one good idea out of it, just one insight, just one piece of wisdom that will enhance the quality of his or her life, then that volume was worth every penny he or she paid for it. You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake has dozens upon dozens of such ideas, insights, and wisdom. 

'Nuff said. If you're interested in what you just read, why don't you sample the book by taking a look at its Table of Contents, Introduction, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8. They're all on this page. 

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.

Some 2500 years before that, Confucius had made a similar observation when he 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 hear it or read it, 

And so as a public service, we undertook to provide you with just such a “device.” We call it InfoTest. 

But a caveat, if you please. It may take more time than you're used to to access this page. The reason is not because it has large graphics files or sound or animation or any other multimedia features. It's because the page is full of and rich with content. 

So please wait. It'll be worth it, I promise you. As Harry Golden might have said, “Enjoy! Enjoy!”

Basically, it's a weekend, 2-full-day-session discourse custom-designed to benefit any group of people for whom thoughtful cooperation and communication are necessary to ensure the ultimate success of a specific venture. This would include businesses, nonprofit entities, levels of governments, military units, religious organizations, and so forth.

When one thinks operationally, he or she focuses on the process underlying a word or a word-string, rather than on the words themselves. 

As Dr. Bridgman put it, “The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it.” In other words, don’t tell me what a word means; explain to me how it works. 

Take the words “political correctness” and “censorship,” for example. 

According to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, “political correctness” means conformance to a belief that languages and practices which could offend political sensibilities, as in matters of sex or race, should be eliminated. While “censorship” means the institution, system, or practice of examining in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. 

Clearly, then, the processes underlying the terms “political correctness” and “censorship” are the same — telling people what they may not say. Ergo, the terms “political correctness” and “censorship,” stripped of all emotional content and convoluted reasoning, both have the same meaning.

Here's a collection of such things. Most come from my knowledge of ratioverbalistics. The rest from decades of experiencing life. 

In case you're interested in their source, they were abstracted from the textbook that I wrote and use when I give the Mens Sana Foundation Socratic Discourse on Thinking and Communication.

I selected it for inclusion in our web site for two reasons: (1) it’s an excellent example of what I wrote about in the book itself, especially the tendency of many people to string words together producing something analogous to a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are blank on both sides — the words (pieces) fit together perfectly but there's no message — and (2) it’s also an outstanding example of  just, plain, ol' muddleheaded thinking.

The pieces were well received, and many listeners called the station to ask for copies of various scripts. After a while, I started adding graphics to the pieces so that they would be a feast for the eyes as well as for the ears. 

These pages contain the table of contents of each of four volumes, as well as a link to every piece in the related volume. 

As you read them, you'll find something beginning to stir within you. It could be the beginning of your freedom from the tyranny of words. 

So, as Harry Golden said, “Enjoy! Enjoy!”

Sometimes it's a poignant piece. 

Sometimes it's something uplifting, inspirational. 

But funny or poignant or uplifting or inspirational, they have one thing in common — they all look like hell. 

So I started reformatting them. Picking typefaces. Adding graphics. Laying them out in a visually interesting way. When I was done, I would send them to friends in their new form. And then people started asking me for copies. 

Weeeell, it got to be expensive after a while. Getting stuff printed usually is. So I hit upon the idea of putting the stuff on the Internet. Now, if someone wants a copy, I give him/her the related URL instead. He/she can then take a look at it, and print it out if he/she wishes. 

Now, what you will see on-screen is more or less the same as the original in some cases. Not in others. I won't get into why. It's not important. Only the content is. 

Sooooo, here are a few of them. Enjoy! Enjoy!

But because of that bizarre appearance, you’re probably going to resist them initially. So perhaps a re-phrasing and enlargement of a well-known Biblical promise will make what we just said a bit more clear: 

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. But first it’ll irritate you. Make you uncomfortable and fearful. Even angry at times.