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"Objective Reality" or “Inflation, Politics, and the Power of Words” · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:00
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans.
• 0:05
  Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
• 0:10
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
• 0:12
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to find a relationship?
• 0:15
  Larry Wilson: Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far?
• 0:21
  Larry Wilson: I can show you so easily how to change that.
• 0:25
  Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:28
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies exponential, this is not the show for you.
• 0:33
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 0:47
  Larry Wilson: And their secrets are unbelievable.
• 0:51
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 1:04
  Larry Wilson: Hi, thank you for joining me again.
• 1:07
  Larry Wilson: I hope you're enjoying this podcast half as much as I am doing it.
• 1:12
  Larry Wilson: And I hope it has a salutary effect on your life.
• 1:18
  Larry Wilson: I hope that all in all you think of this is something you look forward to.
• 1:22
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 1:39
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 1:48
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 2:03
  Larry Wilson: I have more experience how malleable our idea of reality can be.
• 2:11
  Larry Wilson: I'm all too aware how easily we can think something is absolutely immutable.
• 2:22
  Larry Wilson: And then you find out more information find out, oh, completely wrong.
• 2:26
  Larry Wilson: Completely wrong.
• 2:27
  Larry Wilson: It was the opposite of what I thought, or it's somewhere in between.
• 2:32
  Larry Wilson: And I emphasize the idea that we believe what we perceive.
• 2:39
  Larry Wilson: And our perception begins with language.
• 2:46
  Larry Wilson: It begins with the written word, it begins with the spoken word.
• 2:51
  Larry Wilson: That's what really shapes our language.
• 2:54
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 3:13
  Larry Wilson: I think of politics really very much as a distraction.
• 3:18
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 3:33
  Larry Wilson: Does it help you be more productive?
• 3:36
  Larry Wilson: Does it help you be happier?
• 3:37
  Larry Wilson: Does it help you feel more content?
• 3:40
  Larry Wilson: Does it help you in your relationships with friends and family?
• 3:44
  Larry Wilson: These are things that seem important to me.
• 3:47
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 4:01
  Larry Wilson: I just read a comment just recently on social media.
• 4:06
  Larry Wilson: Someone was saying something nice about me, someone who I've known for many, many years.
• 4:12
  Larry Wilson: It was in reference to something.
• 4:14
  Larry Wilson: I don't know.
• 4:15
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 4:22
  Larry Wilson: And Larry is the most chill person I've ever met.
• 4:28
  Larry Wilson: And I wrote back and I said, Oh, uh, thank you.
• 4:31
  Larry Wilson: That was nice to see that.
• 4:32
  Larry Wilson: I appreciate you seeing this.
• 4:33
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 4:47
  Larry Wilson: My son will say, Yeah, he said, you can ask my dad, but he's not going to get excited about that.
• 4:53
  Larry Wilson: He's the most chilled person.
• 4:54
  Larry Wilson: And I keep thinking, how funny.
• 4:57
  Larry Wilson: Uh I I guess it's very flattering, but I just feel like the same old guy I've always been.
• 5:05
  Larry Wilson: Maybe I'm wrong.
• 5:07
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 5:26
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 5:55
  Larry Wilson: And that always leads me towards the internet.
• 5:57
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 6:23
  Larry Wilson: To me, it seems so obvious.
• 6:26
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 6:34
  Larry Wilson: It might be a surprise to them.
• 6:36
  Larry Wilson: I don't know.
• 6:37
  Larry Wilson: But to me, it seems, of course, you have to interact with live humans.
• 6:43
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 7:02
  Larry Wilson: Well, of course not.
• 7:04
  Larry Wilson: Of course not.
• 7:06
  Larry Wilson: You're not there live and in person.
• 7:08
  Larry Wilson: You don't get any sense of human energy from them.
• 7:11
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 7:21
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 7:36
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 7:47
  Larry Wilson: You can always email me at Larry at WilsonMethod.com.
• 7:53
  Larry Wilson: And I read every email that comes in.
• 7:56
  Larry Wilson: It's not like I have some kind of team, it's not like I have some sort of assistant who does that.
• 8:03
  Larry Wilson: There's no AI program that I've assigned to read these and summarize them, send them to me.
• 8:09
  Larry Wilson: I actually read them and respond to them.
• 8:13
  Larry Wilson: So don't be shy.
• 8:15
  Larry Wilson: But uh, you may have a better idea than I have here.
• 8:18
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 8:41
  Larry Wilson: As I'm saying this, I would bet you're picturing something in your mind right now.
• 8:50
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 8:56
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 9:09
  Larry Wilson: I know a little French, but I can't really speak those languages.
• 9:16
  Larry Wilson: Uh I mean, I could say a phrase or two, but I can't communicate.
• 9:21
  Larry Wilson: I feel like I'm still working on English, and I've been speaking it all my life.
• 9:27
  Larry Wilson: Seems like a much more complicated language.
• 9:30
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 9:59
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 10:08
  Larry Wilson: That they're really stymied by an attempt to come up with a new word or a new idea.
• 10:15
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 10:34
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 10:48
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 11:07
  Larry Wilson: Um, they will refer to love letters because they don't really have a concept for that in their language.
• 11:16
  Larry Wilson: It's so interesting to me, because of course I grew up not knowing there was anything different besides English.
• 11:23
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 11:40
  Larry Wilson: You know, um the most obvious word I think of is smog.
• 11:44
  Larry Wilson: It's smoke and fog combined make smog.
• 11:51
  Larry Wilson: Or when Ben Affleck is with Jennifer Lopez, people refer to her as Benefer, that's a portmanteau.
• 12:01
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 12:18
  Larry Wilson: But I think that's one of the reasons I'm interested in this language so much.
• 12:24
  Larry Wilson: And the example I thought of that seemed like a very clear example was the word inflation, as concerns uh money.
• 12:37
  Larry Wilson: And you may think, well, I don't think that word has changed, but it's very subtle.
• 12:45
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 13:00
  Larry Wilson: That's what inflation was.
• 13:02
  Larry Wilson: It was artificially making money that wasn't there before.
• 13:10
  Larry Wilson: But somewhere, I couldn't tell you where, I'm not a student of politics, so I don't know.
• 13:19
  Larry Wilson: Perhaps one of you listening knows and will enlighten me.
• 13:23
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 13:46
  Larry Wilson: It seemed to be more of a phenomenon that just took place by itself.
• 13:52
  Larry Wilson: I I was reflecting when I was thinking about this episode that I'm hardly the best person to give advice about financial matters.
• 14:06
  Larry Wilson: Because being in entertainment most of my adult life, I have a very bad uh appreciation of the value of money.
• 14:18
  Larry Wilson: I don't know why this is.
• 14:20
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 14:35
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 14:57
  Larry Wilson: It just may not be the same kind of work you're used to.
• 15:00
  Larry Wilson: It may not be as apparent how much effort is involved.
• 15:05
  Larry Wilson: But believe me, I can see it when I watch people's performance.
• 15:10
  Larry Wilson: Sometimes when I'm watching a film, I can guess at the order in which the film was actually produced.
• 15:20
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 15:37
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 15:47
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 16:02
  Larry Wilson: I have a funny feeling that he must work this stuff out well in advance.
• 16:08
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 16:16
  Larry Wilson: I'm just guessing, I'm speculating.
• 16:18
  Larry Wilson: I don't really know for sure.
• 16:21
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 16:41
  Larry Wilson: That may be the basis of another episode of this podcast.
• 16:44
  Larry Wilson: I didn't want to go into that too much.
• 16:46
  Larry Wilson: But because I was using the example of inflation, I have maybe more the perspective of an idiot savant.
• 16:56
  Larry Wilson: I don't know.
• 16:57
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 17:18
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 17:39
  Larry Wilson: It is no longer an action.
• 17:41
  Larry Wilson: It is now just a phenomenon where something happens.
• 17:47
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 18:06
  Larry Wilson: And it means our money is worth less.
• 18:11
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 18:20
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 18:36
  Larry Wilson: I suspect, if it really turns out to be that brilliant, it can't be my original idea.
• 18:43
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure there are people who are thinking about this all the time.
• 18:46
  Larry Wilson: But it seems like whether it was consciously done or unconsciously done, I don't know.
• 18:54
  Larry Wilson: But it does seem like it was intentionally done to change the meaning of that word to avoid culpability.
• 19:06
  Larry Wilson: Like I say, I'm scrupulously apolitical.
• 19:10
  Larry Wilson: I'm not taking any sides here, I don't know whose fault it would be.
• 19:15
  Larry Wilson: And wouldn't it be not surprising if it was everyone involved in politics, it wasn't one side or the other.
• 19:24
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 19:50
  Larry Wilson: And I could sort of follow it, but I couldn't really understand it.
• 19:54
  Larry Wilson: I couldn't understand why we couldn't just stop it.
• 19:57
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 20:15
  Larry Wilson: So, but I think it's a really good example.
• 20:19
  Larry Wilson: And maybe perhaps it's too subtle an example, I don't know.
• 20:24
  Larry Wilson: But I thought it was perhaps the least offensive example, least likely to stir up a gigantic debate or argument or acrimony.
• 20:38
  Larry Wilson: I'm just I'm guessing, I hope that I'm right about that.
• 20:42
  Larry Wilson: But the idea that at one time it was very clear what it meant.
• 20:46
  Larry Wilson: You're doing this specific action.
• 20:48
  Larry Wilson: The results, the byproduct, something else entirely.
• 20:54
  Larry Wilson: But then that got changed to mean, no, no, we're not doing anything.
• 20:58
  Larry Wilson: It just exists as a phenomenon.
• 21:01
  Larry Wilson: And I guess by implication, well, there's nothing we can do about it.
• 21:05
  Larry Wilson: There's nothing anyone can do.
• 21:07
  Larry Wilson: You know, inflation, it just happens.
• 21:10
  Larry Wilson: Well, obviously.
• 21:12
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 21:44
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 21:54
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 22:10
  Larry Wilson: That, of course, is why your skills as a communicator are paramount above all else.
• 22:19
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 22:34
  Larry Wilson: 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.
• 22:44
  Larry Wilson: That's the three-shell game, versus seeing somebody going, oh, well, this is very real.
• 22:51
  Larry Wilson: This is the way things are.
• 22:53
  Larry Wilson: And I hope that you'll remember this is the only episode of How to Talk to Humans that concern finance.
• 23:02
  Larry Wilson: Come back next week and we'll talk some more about things non-financial.
• 23:08
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
• 23:10
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
• 23:17
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
• 23:22
  Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
• 23:24
  Larry Wilson: In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 23:30
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one.
• 23:39
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
• 23:45
  Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.