TrueLife - Language, Erosion, & Culture

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/What is the relationship between language and culture? Is language a force of nature? If so, can we look at the way in which nature shapes our environment and apply those lessons to the way language shapes culture?Check out all my content on all your favorite platforms here: https://linktr.ee/TrueLifepodcast One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome back to the True Life podcast I hope your day is going beautiful Hope the birds are singing Hope the wind is at your back I had a few thoughts for a brief podcast today that I wanted to talk about. And these particular thoughts are the idea of language and erosion and how those, how that relationship fits together. Do you ever stop and think for a little bit about the idea about language and erosion?

It seems to me like they're both forces. Do you think that language acts upon culture the same way in which erosion acts upon our environment? That's what I've been thinking about lately. Let me paint you a picture. Imagine a coastline where the waves are sort of beating down onto the coastline, whether it's a cliff and the waves come in and they crash. They crash. They keep smashing up against the cliffs until they erode away the bottom of the cliff.

And sometimes you'll go to the beach and see like a cliff face fall. I'm wondering if language has that same effect on culture. It makes sense, right? In which we interact with each other, our language are like waves on the coastline. And think about it. It's similar in so many ways. Language has a vibration. Like if you have a positive, if you're saying something positive,

it has a positive vibration. If you say something negative, it has a negative vibration. And those vibrations are measured in waves. The same way the waves on the coastline batter the coast, so too does our language batter culture. Another interesting similarity, at least in my opinion, is it's already in the lexicon. Think about when people say things like,

oh, they use their language to beat down the other person. Sometimes you get a verbal beat down. Sometimes language is used as a battering ram. We have in the lexicon that talk about language eroding other people, eroding situations. The same way we see the wind can erode mountain faces. Have you ever been to the desert and see the way in which sand dudes are swept up? And there's almost like this sort of beautiful symmetry on a sand dune. That's caused by the wind.

The way the wind ripples the sand dunes, so too can the words we use cause ripples and the relationships that we have. I don't know, but it just seems to me, like I just had this idea about the way language is, it's a force of nature. The same way waves are, the same way that wind is, the same way that water cuts deep canyons in a long flowing stream over generations, so too can the kind words of a friend cause deep grooves in a relationship

or the negative words of a long abusive parent can have long-term repercussions on a child. I think language is a form of erosion. What do you guys think? Is that too far out there? And if you think about language as erosion, how does that change the way you see landscapes and how does that change the way you see yourself in your relationships?

Does it make you think that maybe you can be the wind beneath someone's wings? I know it's kind of cheesy, but like you can be the wind. Your language that you choose to use can have an effect like that. At least I think it does. Now let's jump into another sort of idea about modern day communication, the words, the way we communicate today. If we can accept that language is a, form of an erosion. We can accept that communication is also that. What effect does today's

communication have on the subject-object relationship? Fun to think about, right? Well, prior to the internet, prior to social media, if you and I were talking and I was talking about you, you would be the subject of our conversation. But in today's world of social media. I think it muddies the waters a little bit. When you are in a group discussion, excuse me, on the internet, does that change the subject-object relationship? Does that change the way you see other people? Does that make someone more of an object than a subject? I think it may. I think it may. I think it also has, I think social media today also has a, has a different experience feel to it, right?

Doesn't that kind of seem like there may be a different type of experience in that type of communication than in human to human communication? I know that human to human communications happen on the internet, but it just seems that when you're on a Zoom meeting, even when you're on a podcast or even when you're talking to someone via social media, via text or chat. or even maybe this new chat GPT. I think it's a different experience. And the structure of that experience creates different outcomes and conversations.

I think that's something that people aren't talking about when it comes to the world of chat GPT or when it comes to the world of online communication, the experience is different. And if the experience is different, the outcome or the long-term ramifications of that communication are going to be different. You know, I think it's Merseille-Aid who spoke about the felt presence of the other. And I think it matters. I think it matters whether your communication is one-on-one in a personal relationship with someone face-to-face versus being online and talking to a. another group of people or another person. But I think it especially matters when you're chatting with a chat bot. I think people can feel that that communication is empty.

And I think it lends credence to the idea that this whole hubbub about AI changing things on a personal level is kind of bullshit. You know you're talking to something that is an inanimate object. You know you're talking to something that doesn't think, that doesn't have sentient. And so I want to put that out there. If you, when it comes to the future, 2023 and it comes to the idea of using chatbots, it doesn't matter how good the chatbot is. You can feel the difference by talking to it.

It's not something that is, it's not something that is conscious. And you can feel it. You don't need to know, you can feel it. Let me give you an example. Every one of us have got a call from a telemarketer. And, you know, you pick up the phone and then there's nothing there. But then as soon as you say something, the computer launches into its little spiel. Like, you know it's a computer and you just hang right up.

You just hang right up, right? So thank you, Chrisa Kadell chiming in, language of the heart. Like, she gets it. I think that this whole idea of these chat bots, chat GPT, and the example I was giving was a telemarketer via chat. Like, you know it's not real. And I know this is the idea of the touring test. I know this is the idea that you can't, you know,

you're never going to believe anything that's a computer. And I do not think the technology, get that much better. I think you can still tell. Now, you can ask the chat bot. You can ask the particular telemarketer a set, a very narrow set of questions, and you can get a response.

But when you start tweaking the questions along the lines of, if you ask the chatbot something along the lines of, why is it that my refrigerator tracks aliens? That chatbot will give you an answer, even though your refrigerator and aliens are completely irrational. The chatbot will still say something, and you know it's complete bullshit. It's worse than talking to someone who is completely out of their mind. I would rather talk to someone who's completely out of their mind than talk to the chatbot.

And I think that this is kind of where tech and technology is going astray. like they they have gotten technology to a sufficient level of normality does that kind of make sense like they it can follow like 90% of the rules and they say to themselves wow look at our technology we can follow 90% of the rules we can follow the we can make you think this is a 90% conscious being and they're all pat themselves on the back but But who cares? Like 90% is not really that good when you think about it. A chimpanzee and a human are 99.9% the same. You know, so it's that 0.09% that is the miracle. So who gives a fuck if you got it to 90%. It still sucks, man. You can sit here and tell us, oh, we're going to revolutionize the world. Oh, look what we did. I say you didn't do shit. I say it sucks. And I say people can feel it. Not only can people feel it, but they kind of hate it. Like, People don't like cold calls. People don't like telemarketers.

And they sure as heck do not like a computer calling them. Let's talk about why it sucks. Let's talk about why the language of AI sucks. And here's why it sucks in my opinion. It's not set up to make society better. The whole premise behind the AI chatbots, the whole premise between the, the AI sentient takeover is to create profit for large corporations.

There's probably some really good computer scientists that could make chatbots really good for lonely people. They could probably make them really good for people that need to talk to other ones. They could probably make it really good for therapy, but they don't. They want to make it good for telemarketers. They want to make it good so that they can get rid of their HR department. So the interest is not in making, the interest is not in making society better. It's in making corporations more money.

And that's why, at least in my opinion, you're going to continue to see the failure of the big tech technologies, whether it's Palantir, whether it's Facebook, meta, even Twitter. Like, you know, if they focused on the community, if they focused on making society. better than the technology would be better for everybody. But it's unfortunate that the only drive to make technology better is to make more profits. And when you focus on that, the people can feel it. And the focus on profits is a way of, at least in my opinion, taking away from the majority of the people. focusing on profit is a way of making more money come up here. And the only way it comes up here is by taking it from down here.

I once heard a quote that said, for every dollar you make that you don't earn, someone has to earn and not make a dollar. And so if you look at it from that angle, the last 20 or 30 years of technology has been stealing from the people on the bottom and just taking it to the top. Now, I think that there could be,

a sort of renaissance, a sort of taking back or a clawback, if you will. I can see the bottom half kind of clawing back some of the technology. And what I mean by that is, let me give you an example.

For the last 20 years, we've been told that technology is going to replace the worker. It's going to replace the people on the assembly line. It's going to be truck drivers. But that's not what's happening. And I can tell you as a truck driver, the self-driving truck, I don't think it's coming.

They've been saying the self-driving truck is coming for the last 10 years. And that's the thing. It's always 10 years away. All the batteries too heavy. All the minerals it takes to build that battery are, we're getting them from child labor. There's all these problems. And it seems to me that there was an epic sort of meeting in a board room where the board of directors, the CEOs, all these people with interesting titles were told about how much money is

they're going to be made. Hey, you guys are going to make billions of dollars. You guys are going to be looked at as revolutionaries by revolutionizing, by revolutionizing the trucking industry. And just imagine some tech whiz kid, some 19 year old kid walking into a boardroom and telling a group of 50 to 60 to 70 year olds about this new technology that they're going to be on the forefront of and it's going to make a rich and famous and all these egomaniacs just eating it up like yeah this kid's on it yep and we're going to be the beneficiaries in fact we're going to help revolutionize society like that went down in so many boardrooms in so many fortune 500 companies and it was all bullshit it's funny to me not because it's going to have huge ramifications for

everybody but because of the ego it takes to first off be one of these boards of directors to be one of these CEOs, to be one of these people that had pretty much almost everything probably given to them their whole life. They went to a fancy Ivy League school. Dad got him a job as a, as a, you know, some low level executive at a high octane company. And they finally find themselves in a position to make decisions. And what are they going to do? They're going to go with the easy decision because they've never had to work their way through difficult problems. They've never had to face real situations that mommy or daddy couldn't fix for him. So how do I fit that all into the world of language and erosion? Well, it's a great question and thank you for asking. The way I

fit that in there is that look at the language we are beginning to see emerge from the world of the elite, the world of Ivy League schools. We're seeing this sort of governor, this sort of cover be placed on words that you can't use. Hey, let's take these pronouns out of the lexicon. Hey, let's take this word American out of the lexicon. What they're doing is they are taking away the words that can be critical of them. And in doing so, they're taking away people's ability to think or perhaps, solve the problems that are coming down the pipe.

If you can't blame, if you can't ascribe meaning to the problem, then it becomes very difficult for you to solve that problem. This takes us back to Chris's idea of language of the heart. When you know there's a problem, when you know that something is bothering in you, then anybody who's ever been in any sort of therapy knows that you must address that problem using, the proper language. And that proper language is definitely not blaming other people. That proper language

is definitely not shrinking your vocabulary. That language is addressing what you feel. That language is addressing what you see. That language is going to be the pathway that gets you to the solution. So if I can tie it to another author, I would use Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell has come up with this idea that it's not really so much of an idea as it is a sort of recipe for solving problems. And that recipe is the hero's journey. The hero's journey is something you see in the majority of great movies, great myths. and it goes something like this. You as the character, you as the worker, you as the mother, you as the father, you as the student,

whatever your title is, picture yourself. Now picture yourself thinking and dreaming about something that you want to be. Maybe you want to be an astronaut. Maybe you want to be the next great Joe Rogan. Maybe you want to be a cage fighter. Maybe you want to be a librarian. I don't know, picture whatever it is. And you think about it and you dream about it.

And then all of a sudden, realization sets in and you start talking, the language comes in, the erosion language, the language of erosion sets in and you start battering yourself with things like, you know what, I can never do that. Or the negative self-talk comes in, that negative feedback loop, which I call the erosion of soul or the language of erosion. The same way that waves batter the coastline, so too does the negative language batter our psyche, especially when we're talking. to ourselves. So all of a sudden you have this dream, the negative self-talk sort of comes in and it beats upon you the same way waves beat on a coastline and that erosion starts to happen. And you go, you know what, I can't do it. But then all of a sudden, someone or something or a message comes into your life. Maybe it's a mentor. Maybe it's a movie. Maybe it's a book you read. but there's an inspiration that falls upon you like a bright, warm light that gives you strength.

That's sort of the call to action. Like, hey, you can do it. And you have the realization that that self, that negative self talk was kind of bullshit. So you see the light a little bit now. And now you start finding your way. You start making it happen. You start believing in yourself. And then what happens?

All of a sudden, you bump up against an obstacle. That's like a threshold guardian. And this is the same thing that happens in the world of myth. All of a sudden you see Frodo bump up against the orgs, right? Oh, no, he wants to get the ring and he wants to drop it into the volcano, the eye of mortar, but he bumps up against the orgs. And now, is he going to turn back? Is he going to turn back to the negative self-talk, the erosion that's going to beat him again?

Or is he going to find a way to ride the wave and make the dream come true? Well, he's going to do what you and I are going to do. He's going to find a way to ride the wave. Now we're moving through the first threshold guardian and we're moving on our life. We are figuring out that the language of erosion can be a benefit to us if we understand how to harness the forces of erosion. So I want to encourage people today to think about language. Think about the words you use as a force of nature. The same way the wind blows on the desert sand to build sand dunes, so too can your words build mountains, which will take you to your goals if you climb them.

The same way that the waves beat down on the cliffs on the shore, so too can you use your words to beat down any sort of obstacle in your way. And if you just think about language as a force of nature, if you think about language as erosion, I think that you can incorporate that into your life to build a better life for yourself. And it broadens the way you see yourself and the world. Like you are a force of nature and your language is a force of nature. And that means that you can inspire, you can hurt, you can punish, you can lift up everyone around you. And you're doing it already, so you might as well be conscious of it. So I challenge you, every one of you listening to this, every one of you watching this, I challenge you today to command your language, to be conscious

of your language, and to use it as the force of nature that it is. And when you begin doing that, you'll begin to see the world around you change. You'll begin to see yourself as a force of nature. You'll begin to make sense out of the world of technology. You begin to understand the difference between speaking to you and your mom or you and your kid or you and your sister or you and your friend together with each other when you're next to each other versus being online. And once you can begin to see the differences there, it opens up a whole new world of communication. And I think that, you know, I often say that readers are leaders, but I think that another way to say something like that is that a great communicator

is probably the most effective leader. And the way you become a great communicator is by reading, practicing, and understanding the nuances in different forms of communication. So that's what I got for today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I love learning. I love talking to people. And I myself am.

Everything that I'm telling you are things that I'm trying to incorporate in my life. And by me coming on here and kind of stream of consciousness, getting it out to the people, I feel that it helps me learn that. So I enjoy teaching. I enjoy learning and I enjoy talking to every one of you. I hope you guys have a tremendous day. I hope you really begin to think about language, erosion, and culture as something that fit together. And I think it'll change your life.

It's something that I just came up with a while back. I've been practicing it. and I really enjoy it. So can erosion, can language act as erosion? Can language be a force of nature? And I think the answer is yes. That's what we got for me. Ladies and gentlemen,

for your time, Aloha.