"Objective Reality" or “Inflation, Politics, and the Power of Words”

In this episode, host Larry Wilson examines the power of language by breaking down how words are used—and often misused—in everyday life. He discusses how constant engagement with politics can become a distraction from meaningful living, and how language plays a role in shaping that distraction. Using examples from actor Gary Oldman and the loaded word “inflation,” Larry illustrates how words are not always what they seem, and how understanding their intent and context can change the way we interpret the world around us.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:00

Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies exponential, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned for 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Hi, thank you for joining me again. I hope you're enjoying this podcast half as much as I am doing it. And I hope it has a salutary effect on your life. I hope that all in all you think of this is something you look forward to. In a previous uh episode, I had made reference to speaking to a group, training a group of people, high-powered executives, and beginning with the notion that there is no objective reality. And they were actually very excited by this, and they were on board as soon as I said it, where some people are resistant to that idea. But they were very much on board, and I said, you know, as a professional magician, I have more experience, I would think, than 99.9% of the population. I have more experience how malleable our idea of reality can be. I'm all too aware how easily we can think something is absolutely immutable. And then you find out more information find out, oh, completely wrong. Completely wrong. It was the opposite of what I thought, or it's somewhere in between. And I emphasize the idea that we believe what we perceive. And our perception begins with language. It begins with the written word, it begins with the spoken word. That's what really shapes our language. And I had kind of challenged myself to uh present uh some concrete examples of that in language for you, and it was more difficult than I realized because I'm scrupulously apolitical here. I think of politics really very much as a distraction. I don't find it is very helpful for most people, certainly not for me, and I would imagine for most people listening to this podcast, it's not particularly helpful in your life. Does it help you be more productive? Does it help you be happier? Does it help you feel more content? Does it help you in your relationships with friends and family? These are things that seem important to me. And I understand, it seems, especially nowadays, we're in a time when people are very excited about the idea of getting whipped up over politics. I just read a comment just recently on social media. Someone was saying something nice about me, someone who I've known for many, many years. It was in reference to something. I don't know. I appeared on something or said something, and this friend of mine was saying, oh, you know, I've known Larry for blah, blah, blah. And Larry is the most chill person I've ever met. And I wrote back and I said, Oh, uh, thank you. That was nice to see that. I appreciate you seeing this. I said, I've seen this a couple other places, not the least of which my son occasionally will say something where someone will ask a question and they'll say, Ask Larry, he'll know too. My son will say, Yeah, he said, you can ask my dad, but he's not going to get excited about that. He's the most chilled person. And I keep thinking, how funny. Uh I I guess it's very flattering, but I just feel like the same old guy I've always been. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe someone from my past will come forward and say, no, you used to be a firebrand, you used to be a demagogue, you used to get people inflamed, and I suppose it's possible, but it I don't have any memory of that. And so, as always, whatever concerns this podcast, I always think that anytime we do something that seems peculiar or contra-indicated, it may be because it's a reaction to the negative effects of modern-day deterioration of communication skills. And that always leads me towards the internet. I mentioned another episode of this podcast about groups that are forming now, about people who are consciously, specifically joining together to turn off their social media and interact with other humans live and in person, and how beneficial it is to their mental health, the incredible benefits that they derive from that. To me, it seems so obvious. I can understand how maybe to someone else who's not as focused on communication as I am, that it might not seem as obvious. It might be a surprise to them. I don't know. But to me, it seems, of course, you have to interact with live humans. I can't tell you the number of people I know who, after attempting to find mates of some kind using dating apps, have expressed with surprise that you don't really get a feeling of who they are. Well, of course not. Of course not. You're not there live and in person. You don't get any sense of human energy from them. You don't, you know, sometimes it's all stuff that's been pre-recorded and curated, I think is the extremely popular word nowadays. You may hear me, I'm telling you the truth here, this is the reason it was challenging for me to try and come up with a word that would not somehow bring one side or another to fisticuffs over this. But I think if you think about it, and and I hope that some of you, I I know I get emails from some of you, and I I want to emphasize again, I'm always eager to hear from you. You can always email me at Larry at WilsonMethod.com. And I read every email that comes in. It's not like I have some kind of team, it's not like I have some sort of assistant who does that. There's no AI program that I've assigned to read these and summarize them, send them to me. I actually read them and respond to them. So don't be shy. But uh, you may have a better idea than I have here. But I wanted to give you a concrete example because I hope that it would make this whole idea of the power of language and the way people change it, change language, to change our perception of things. As I'm saying this, I would bet you're picturing something in your mind right now. I really hope some of you will send me those things you're picturing, because they may be better examples than the one I think of. But one of the ones I thought of, and and of course it goes back to my interest in language and in specifically in English, I know a little Spanish. I know a little French, but I can't really speak those languages. Uh I mean, I could say a phrase or two, but I can't communicate. I feel like I'm still working on English, and I've been speaking it all my life. Seems like a much more complicated language. But it's so interesting to me how words evolve, how we use them in different ways, how some other languages, uh, the reason I guess I'm such a fan of English is because it's an organic language, and you're allowed to do anything you want with it, to mix it up and stretch it out and redecorate it and stripe it and cut it into pieces, you can do all these things. Some of you who may be uh English is your first language, it may not occur to you that you can't do this in many other languages. That they're really stymied by an attempt to come up with a new word or a new idea. And because English is the language of the United States, and there's so much advancement and technology and things going on like that, that it reflects a lot of what's taking place in terms of development and new things. I'm told, I don't know if this is true, uh, but I'm told, for example, in French, there's no way to distinguish between the word for chairman or president. That I'm told in Japanese there is no real word that means love, as we use it here in English, and that frequently Japanese speakers will adopt English words that have to do with love. Um, they will refer to love letters because they don't really have a concept for that in their language. It's so interesting to me, because of course I grew up not knowing there was anything different besides English. And the very concept of a portmanteau, you know, where two words are jammed together or parts of them to create a new word, that's so American, that's so English speaking. You know, um the most obvious word I think of is smog. It's smoke and fog combined make smog. Or when Ben Affleck is with Jennifer Lopez, people refer to her as Benefer, that's a portmanteau. But now I'm ashamed because I think the word portmanteau, well, obviously it's French, but it meant something completely different than what we've come to understand it is when these two things are brought together. But I think that's one of the reasons I'm interested in this language so much. And the example I thought of that seemed like a very clear example was the word inflation, as concerns uh money. And you may think, well, I don't think that word has changed, but it's very subtle. If you were to look up inflation in the dictionary now, I imagine it would say something like originally what it meant was increasing the amount of money. That's what inflation was. It was artificially making money that wasn't there before. But somewhere, I couldn't tell you where, I'm not a student of politics, so I don't know. Perhaps one of you listening knows and will enlighten me. Somewhere along the line, it got changed from being an action of increasing the amount of money to being somehow something else, a noun or a model of something, that seemed to be definitely not an action. It seemed to be more of a phenomenon that just took place by itself. I I was reflecting when I was thinking about this episode that I'm hardly the best person to give advice about financial matters. Because being in entertainment most of my adult life, I have a very bad uh appreciation of the value of money. I don't know why this is. I could guess that it may be because in entertainment you frequently are paid considerable sums of money for what appears to be very little work. Now, maybe you're a singer, maybe you're a poet or a spoken word author or an actor or something like this, where you aren't doing some physical labor, but I assure you that any performer who gets paid well is doing a lot of work. It just may not be the same kind of work you're used to. It may not be as apparent how much effort is involved. But believe me, I can see it when I watch people's performance. Sometimes when I'm watching a film, I can guess at the order in which the film was actually produced. Because sometimes I'll see certain scenes where the actors have gelled their characters, the actors seem to really know, and their acting has more power. There's a greater connection with us than there are in other scenes, and I'll think, oh, those must have been shot later in the production. Because, you know, if you're a genius actor like uh Gary Oldman, I've never met him, but every time I see him in a film, I'm sort of astounded how different he is and always brilliant. I have a funny feeling that he must work this stuff out well in advance. So that by the time he steps on the set, and the time he's in front of the cameras, he knows exactly who he is, where he's going, what's going on. I'm just guessing, I'm speculating. I don't really know for sure. But it's funny because I, like I say, being in this business all these years, I saw money thrown around in the most capricious style and sometimes squandered, just wasted on the most ridiculous things. That may be the basis of another episode of this podcast. I didn't want to go into that too much. But because I was using the example of inflation, I have maybe more the perspective of an idiot savant. I don't know. I just know that if you go back and read texts, for example, if you read, I think certain texts about finances and things like that from the 1950s or 1960s, maybe even earlier, maybe 1940s, when they talk about inflation, they're talking about this artificial increase. But then if you go back just 20 years, somewhere in there, and like I say, I'm not uh educated enough to be able to pinpoint the exact time at which it changes, but there's very clear sense of, oh, it's no longer anyone doing anything. It is no longer an action. It is now just a phenomenon where something happens. Well, like I say, I'm not by any means a finance expert, but even I can see that if inflation is running at a high rate, it means things are more expensive. And it means our money is worth less. That is, it takes more of our money to buy the same thing that a few years ago you could buy for half that amount, or whatever the case may be. And so my guess is, and if it turns out that this is a brilliant observation on my point, I hope that someone will organize a big parade for me and some kind of medal in uniform or something where a special day is named after me. I suspect, if it really turns out to be that brilliant, it can't be my original idea. I'm sure there are people who are thinking about this all the time. But it seems like whether it was consciously done or unconsciously done, I don't know. But it does seem like it was intentionally done to change the meaning of that word to avoid culpability. Like I say, I'm scrupulously apolitical. I'm not taking any sides here, I don't know whose fault it would be. And wouldn't it be not surprising if it was everyone involved in politics, it wasn't one side or the other. It was people who were all politicians going, yeah, this is really good for us, because if we convince people that their money is worth more, or we convince them that they can buy more, or whatever it may be, um, how a number of uh learned finance people, a couple times, have tried to explain to me the process by which inflation takes place. And I could sort of follow it, but I couldn't really understand it. I couldn't understand why we couldn't just stop it. And I I suggested to them of trying to stop the current financial situation and do a reset on it, they kind of looked at me like I was a first grader and like I would never understand what they were talking about. So, but I think it's a really good example. And maybe perhaps it's too subtle an example, I don't know. But I thought it was perhaps the least offensive example, least likely to stir up a gigantic debate or argument or acrimony. I'm just I'm guessing, I hope that I'm right about that. But the idea that at one time it was very clear what it meant. You're doing this specific action. The results, the byproduct, something else entirely. But then that got changed to mean, no, no, we're not doing anything. It just exists as a phenomenon. And I guess by implication, well, there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing anyone can do. You know, inflation, it just happens. Well, obviously. Can you see that's a absolutely intentional move to diminish the responsibility for what's taking place, to uh spread culpability around and water down so that no one is pinpointed as the instigator of this specific thing that clearly is not good for our financial system. Now, I uh you know, as I'm saying this to you, I don't I don't understand, like I said, I don't understand it well enough to be able to support this argument. All I can tell is it's very clear to me when someone is manipulating the language to be able to alter our perception of what is real and what is not real. That, of course, is why your skills as a communicator are paramount above all else. I hope that you'll continue to work on them so that you have a clearer idea of when someone is trying to deceive you, confuse you, misdirect you. You don't have to do anything about it, but you might feel better being able to look at it and say, Oh, I see what that is. That's the three-shell game, versus seeing somebody going, oh, well, this is very real. This is the way things are. And I hope that you'll remember this is the only episode of How to Talk to Humans that concern finance. Come back next week and we'll talk some more about things non-financial. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.