Left Of Greg 081 Whats in a name

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Okay, alright. Greg, we'll go ahead and get started. We are recording this on Monday, July 13th, in the morning. So, we did actually have someone else planned to be on that we had to reschedule last minute, but we had this time planned for the podcast anyway. So, we said, "Hey, let's go ahead and do one," and I kind of wanted to go over something that we've talked about discussing before, but just hasn't really come up yet.

What spurred my memory, I guess, or what made me think of this was this morning, the Washington Redskins announced that they're retiring their name. That's what they called it: retiring their name "Redskins." It's to be determined yet; I didn't get a chance to read too much, but they haven't come up with a new name. The Washington Redskins football team, obviously, people find that very offensive that they're called "Redskins." Rightly so, that's an offensive term these days, and then they're going to change it.

Alright, so that got me thinking of stuff we've had conversations about before. So, the overarching theme of today would be, "What's in a Name?" What is that? What is the meaning behind names and some of the things we give words to? Because oftentimes, it's important, sometimes more important than we realize. Sometimes, I think a lot of places put a lot of time and effort into naming something, and maybe us on the user end don't even realize the meaning behind it and everything. So, it's actually extremely significant.

I kind of want to—well, there are a few things I want to talk about. Because one, obviously, naming conventions, then things like taxonomy, that's a classification using naming, typically scientific classification of things. We always think of genus, species, all those things; that's a taxonomy of how we articulate all living things. And then semantics, of course, the study of language and the meaning behind words. So, there's a lot in there, and I think that's often forgotten, meaning where these names come from, what goes into them.

So, what spurred me, obviously, like I said, the Washington Redskins changed their name, but one of the immediate things that it also reminded me was of how much thought goes in behind it. So, we are part of a project right now. We hope to be able to talk about it a little more at a later date, hopefully soon. But with this partnership that we're in, same thing, they went through a very—it took a long time to get to the final name of what they wanted to call it, to the point of where we were getting like, "Alright, we're done. We're done with this." A lot of people were getting frustrated with it. But it highlights how important it is. It's not just important to who you're speaking to, the potential clients and customers, but to the folks, the people who started it, and what they want to call it and what they want to be taken as. Because when you first hear a name of something, you're automatically going to think something based on your own life, based on your own biases, based on your own everything. And I don't use that term "bias" negatively; just meaning there are cognitive biases, what you think of, there are heuristics, all this stuff. So, you are going to hear something, and it's going to make you think of something. And so, a lot of times, especially marketing and big companies, they want to get that name right so that it elicits an appropriate response. They want you to get either some feeling, or belief, or idea.

So, being that it's 2020 and it's the Washington Redskins, that's an offensive term to Native Americans, and so they're changing that. This is a big deal, I think, a bigger deal than a lot of people realize. So, that's kind of where I'm coming from on this. I just want to give you a little background, Greg, because I know I shot you an email like eight minutes ago saying, "Hey, our guest is rescheduled, but we're still going forward, and by the way, here's what I want to talk about." You're like, "Thanks!"

So, here's a couple of things in a scattershot, my dear friend, on a Monday morning. Number one, it's my brother Jeff's birthday. That's right. They—Jeff, I believe he's in his 70s now. I called him this morning at "oh-dark-thirty." We got up just after four. I called him and clearly woke him up out of a dead sleep and sang to him. And it was a very offensive song. So, that's a good topic for today: being offended by something.

The other thing is that just because this is in the old time slot doesn't mean it's going to be near the quality that you may expect. But at least you can say we're punctual because we're not going to leave you hanging. And you said something funny, Brian, and I know we've got a bunch of factors, and we don't want to go down a rabbit hole or just with one spiral. But the funny thing is, when you were talking about the bias, I always think of when somebody says "perspective bias," I think of Uncle Buck, and he's walking through that dead party with all the kids and he goes, "Sometimes it's the hat!" "The hat!" People go, "Don't go in there wearing that hat!" Remember?

Yeah.

But you actually—you actually completely unconsciously used—you said, and if I can find the exact word that you used, you said "lately." Yeah, and find it. You said, "The Redskins are retiring their name," and they call it "retiring." Well, basically, somebody that was hypersensitive could say that that's a form of implicit bias because "Redskins" has been an offensive term since forever, right? It's always been the first person who then goes, "Hey, what's up?"

So the idea, though, the idea I think that we have to keep sacred here, to make sure that we lay down in the road just before we use it as a floor mat, is, "Hey, if you intended to be offensive when you initially called out that word or that phrase, then you know, you should be damned for using it, and it should be changed." Right?

So let's go back just one to the human—it's perfect, that's where I want to start. Human beings, as human beings, we create our own unique realities from our own subjective perspectives. And so we perceive and understand things through the systems that we've created. So, it's not fair you come back and go, "Hey, you bastard!" Wait a minute, I didn't even know! Like, for example, Hitler ruined this mustache forever. Okay? So, you're never going to be able to pull off that mustache. Right? So Hitler didn't go—he wouldn't—look, I'm speculating here, Brian, we don't have a close familial bond there, but I don't think he's going, "I gotta go to the beer hall. Thinking about manscaping. What about this? I didn't come up with that." Right?

No.

"Hey, I'm going to turn it offensive. I'm going to make it deeply hateful." I'm not trying to make fun of an issue, I'm just trying to say that sensitivity has gone to the level that now the Eskimo Pie is renaming. Okay, syrup. So, I just don't want to get down there.

Oh, no, no, no. And I think that you've made it very clear, and let's continue to remind everyone of that, and I wrote it down as you didn't say it this way, but intent is everything. Meaning, until you intended to use that term in a negative way or an inside joke—well, then yes, it's horribly offensive, it's out of line, it's completely out of line. And yeah, now if that's not what it meant, that changes things. And I know it doesn't make it less hurtful. No, no, no, no. You see what I'm trying to say? But it does, it does change the field on which we're playing, and that's, to a degree, sticking with the football analogy there, I guess.

No, but I don't—that's a good point.

So, that's a—that's a great way to usher in the whole subject here I want to get into today is, you know, what's in a name? So, naming conventions are important. People put a lot of time into them. And what you just hit up right front is that their intent is everything. Okay? So, it goes into—and because that reminds me, because as we were talking about this, when I was a little kid, and when the first times like I was old enough to remember two people like about to get into a fistfight and start yelling and screaming—I was a real little kid, who knows how old I even was—but the guy kept yelling, he was pissed because he said, "You can't call me out my name!" Like, they would kept calling the guy the wrong name on purpose to mess with them, and the guy was getting furious because that wasn't his name. It would be like, instead of me going, "Okay, Greg," instead of calling you "Gary."

Alright. Easy, Gary. Even though—

I know.

I know.

But it goes back to the intent, even though we've never done it before.

Think of it. When Bush chose to go on the air—Bush One—and he was goading Saddam Hussein, he kept referring to him as "Sad'em." And what it was, is he changed his name just a little bit there to be a derogatory—now listen, okay, you're saying, "Well, these people are at war. That's allowed." Listen, you can't draw the line there. You can't say, "Well, here, it's okay, but we're doing that." If you're going to be across the board on it, what you should say is, "Yeah, you're right, we need to go back." But I don't think, Brian, I don't think people sat around, they said, "Okay, where are we on the cigar store Indian?" And then everybody around the room goes, "Well, in 417 years, they're going to look back and call us [expletive]." I don't think that occurred. And I think now that we're smarter and we know more, we understand more about socialization, we understand more about psychology and victimization, maybe we should, maybe that's exactly what we need to do.

Well, knowing that, that is what's happening. But it's happening, but does it need to happen in every inch? Well, okay, and that's exactly what I'm getting at here. It's, I think that I'm sure there are plenty of Native Americans here in the U.S. that are like, "Wow, finally!" Like, you're literally using the term [expletive]. I have a friend who's Native American, born and raised on a reservation, everything, and he's just like, "Do you understand? That's like that." Like, he laughs because he's like, "I just know that people don't realize, like, hey, that's horribly offensive." Like, "You can't—if this was to any other group, we'd be like, you're calling them a racial slur. You can't call a name that." And the fact that it took so long. So, but the problem is then what happens? We go, "Oh, man. Wow, you're right, that's horrible!" Even though the name was like a lot of high schools and colleges in this country with Native American ties were paying homage and pride. I mean, we actually put—whether it's the Braves or this—it was actually because, "Hey, we want to be looked at as a cohesive unit, a respected fighting force on the battlefield, the sports field, the modern-day battlefield." And so, "we're going to take the name of some warriors." I mean, that was the intent behind it. There were how many teams that chose "sad sack loser [expletive]"? You know what I'm saying? Because their letters looked like the SSA. Remember that? And when their cheer is, "We've never won a game!" Remember those guys?

But that's the point.

Now, it then changes when we then take—people take what I would call a creative license with that type of idea, or that type of direction.

Direction. Thank you.

And then—no, no, I get where you're going. You don't want to misname what it is, and then take it and apply it to other areas. So, what is it, and why do we—why do those names change over time and become either very important or less important? Like, I'll give you the example we're talking about with your iPhones and Apple does everything like this, and there's a whole naming convention behind that. And "Siri" is "iris" backwards, which iris, you know, the part of your eye that takes in photons of light. So, there's all this meaning that builds on top of each other and layers on. So, that's obviously put a lot of thought into that. Now, maybe there's a population of the Siri tribe somewhere that in 20 years, we go, they go, "Hey, this is horribly offensive," just to keep it direct. But that's not what it was meant at the time.

But why do us as humans, why do we put so much into that? Why, even looking back with the example I gave up with that guy getting so angry because the guy was calling—whether he knew he was calling the wrong name or not—he kept mispronouncing someone's name, like you said, Saddam Hussein or "Sad'em," like George H.W. Bush called him during that time. Why is that so offensive to us, and why do we put so much importance on that, I guess? We're not trying to poke fun at anybody. We're not trying to conflate an issue. We're not trying to lessen an issue of racism or racial slurs. We're not trying to do that. But I'd say that we need to take a step back and understand the why and take a look at the implications.

For example, Wall Street. Wall Street was a barrier. It was a barrier during a major fight. So, we're going to go back and say, "Well, we don't want to talk about Wall Street." Do you get what I'm trying to say? "Let's rename that." And then "stock," well, stocks, you know, stocks and bonds. But you can think about it, putting a person out in the stocks near Wall Street. What happens is, we can't get so hypersensitive and go back and determine what the likely intent was when it wasn't—when somebody just came up with a name like the Buffalo or they decided to call themselves the Wolverines.

I agree. That when—I'll give you an example in this way. Okay? So, I'm a huge old movie fan. Not all my old movies are good. They don't—they don't—okay? So, one of my favorite movies in the world is Philadelphia Story. That starts off with some good old-fashioned domestic violence and within the first couple of minutes uses a racial slur that was part of the script that was written back then. And it's a light slur, if there is such a thing. And it was again, naming a thing that was very common amongst people that were entertainers during the time. But it doesn't make it any less offensive. So I come to you and I go, "That's one of my favorite films ever. I really enjoy it." I'm not saying that I enjoy it at the beginning where it's pushed down, or where the woman in passing said something while they're taking a photo. I'm saying that the construct of the film and the pacing, it's a really great film.

And then all of a sudden, I'm watching it. I like Cary Grant films. So, last night, late, can't sleep, sleep eludes me, I'm watching Bringing Up Baby, which is about them and a cougar, a puma, a gosh-darn—the one from Africa, whatever it is with spots, a cheetah, a leopard. And so, during the film, they're using some terms in the old days. And guess what was on just before that? A Star Is Born with Judy Garland in '57, and she's standing there dancing on a loading dock, and she's got two Black people that are dancing with her—that's the white person—and they're all tap dancing, and they're dressed in period costume, which is demeaning. Okay? So, I'm sitting there doing this, "Yeah, well, [expletive], can I still watch this?" Yeah, but because I'm feeling really bad about it as an art form, I didn't think of it. And I didn't think that they were trying to portray the intent, they were just portraying what was in that time, in that period.

No, and I think I always look at those as, you know, "Wow, look at how far we've come as a society where we don't"—I mean, it's almost like a—that's a temperature, it's a measurement, right? It's like taking—you can look back and go, "Geez, I can't believe people used to."

Social problems were invasive, weren't they?

But it was in everything. But I look at it as like, "Hey, that's a natural course that has to happen," right? So meaning, those things are going to come up, and people aren't going to realize—every, everyone, I don't care what skin color you are, gender, sexual identity you are—everyone has offended someone in some way, not necessarily intentionally, but unintentionally. And you didn't have, but if you didn't have someone to teach you that that was wrong or bring something up. So now you had that balance of, "Well, what's actually wrong? Is this a..." where you know, you get some people that are always like, "Oh, your feelings are getting hurt." And sometimes you're like, "Ah, man, you're not taking this issue seriously." But then you have people who take it way too far and say, "Well, everything has to go!" Then you're going, "Well, no, this is the human condition. And if you look at where we're at today to compare to where we were a hundred, two hundred, four hundred years ago, it's a night and day difference."

And so when you look back at those, now I—the reason why I had this reaction this morning was like, "Man, it seems with everything, I'm surprised it took this long for the Washington Redskins to change."

Exactly, exactly. But again, remember pride. That's what I'm a historian. "Wait a minute, are you serious? Wait, I would hold, we didn't mean anything by it. This is our history." It's like changing your family name. "Hey, Greg Williams, that Williams name, sorry, buddy, it's got to go."

Like, I want to give you an example of exactly what you're talking about. So, we're working out at West Coast, Combat Center, hundreds of days, and there was a former Chief of Staff for General Mattis and a current Chief of Staff for General Mattis—two diametrically opposed humans that had different views of everything. So diametrically opposed. So, I'm standing there, and a young Marine goes by. For some reason, I said, "A Devil Dog, step over here for a moment." And I took a knee, and we were talking about the Kaepernick knee, and we took a moment, we were talking about some things. And then a Marine scrambled off to do his best and go to combat.

And so the one Colonel comes over to me and takes me off to the side and goes, "Hey, don't call him 'Devil Dogs.' That's such a demeaning term." Okay? So, my dad was prior Commandant of the Marine Corps League. My dad, a former Marine. And my dad was hugely proud of being called "the Devil Dog." And I sent you the picture on a soft cap where he's got the big Devil Dog Motor City detachment. And it was a big, important thing to him.

Now, let's roll the tape a little further back. So, Teufel Hunden, "the Devil Dogs," and the naming convention on there—

Oh, I could do a show. Brian is all over this.

If that's—those are—that's a great example of where that came from, which is a proud historical name that the Germans gave the Marines because they were like, "Hey, these guys are like, you know, Devil Dog, little 'Teufel Hunden.' They don't ever stop." The years that it was like, it was such an honor for that and Marine Corps tradition. But I won't get into—

Exactly.

But then here's how it works: while you're in the Marine Corps or using that, you can often use that like, "Hey, there, Devil Dog!" Like, "Now I'm messing with you because you're just a young enlisted guy," or something like that. Right? So, that stuff changes over time. It's no different than, and because then when I see you do it, and a lot of people do it, when you see someone who's like active duty or military, you always go up because you serve, you're like, "Hey, just thank you for your service." Okay? But, and most people who use that, they're using that because they're really legitimately trying to say, "Thank you for something." But me and my buddies use it differently when you see someone who's being obnoxious talking about how bad they are like, "Oh, I served and I was in this and I was in that," and they're making sure everyone in the area knows that they served in the military, just being a total douche. And that's the first thing out of my mouth: "Oh, wow, you were in the—you were in the war? Did you fight? Thank you for your service." And I get real sarcastic with it.

To tell them to not get the [expletive] off because you look like a jackass, and you're making the rest of us look like a jackass.

But that's the thing. So, it's my intent—my intent, both with the inspectors, is to say, "Hey, quit being a jackass." And your intent is genuine, and now you're legitimately thanking people. Like, try to do that. And some people will take it the wrong way, and you don't realize it's happening. They're like, "Oh, this guy's messing with me." And you're like, "Wow, that guy was kind of a dick." And I'm like, "No, no, he just thought you were being sarcastic. You were actually being very genuine."

And nobody gives you any rules. I didn't have a laminated cheat sheet that you can go, "And this is what I meant by it." So, you have to take it into the context of what it's meant in. So, in that specific situation of you walking up and saying that, you have to take it in that context. So, the naming conventions we have of everything, you have to take it in the context from which the time period where they named it. What did they mean when they named it? And then you have to have a realistic set of rules, Brian. Yeah, I am absolutely for Black Lives Matter. I was a police officer for 27 years. I was completely colorblind. And then I'm blindsided in Denver when I walk up on a sign that says, "No life matters until Black life matters." What this is, let's approach this scientifically. Let's fix the wrong, but let's not go so emotionally that we can't see the forest for the trees.

Well, even that, it comes down to it because even people in that movement or using that term, or in support of/against, are using that term differently because meaning—that's it. You can't use it in this genre and in this, and then say, "But that's not how I meant it." No, no, I—that's what I'm—you don't totally get—you don't get that.

And the problem, right, it's such a song—we're wearing the same shirt again. We are. That's creepy.

Well, it's not the same one this time because it's the same shirt, you're insane. It's a reverse camera partition. I could hit you on the back of the head right now. It's a screen, it's a green screen. No, no, but that's the third time I've destroyed—but even that, that's such a—it's such a self-evident statement that why would you make someone say that where like when someone would say, "Hey, do you feel that Black Lives Matter?" It's like forced. Like, "Every bit as much." It's like, "Yeah, but that's what I'm saying." It's, so sometimes that intent behind is like, "You must mean something else by this." And if you're an ulterior motive, please share it with us because there's clearly—because that's such a self-evident statement to the overwhelming majority of the population. Then it's like, it's so—it's weird how we use this.

And this gets into everything I kind of brought up, right? You have a taxonomy, naming conventions or classifications, I should say. Taxonomy is a classification usually for scientific purposes, but how we organize stuff. Naming conventions are again, that's how we organize information. I would say even like on your computer where you put files and what you call things, you have to come up with naming conventions so that you can keep it organized and how it works for you, or you'll never find that file again.

Ever. Exactly, exactly.

And then you have semantics, which is the study of languages, all that. So, those three areas kind of all coalesce a lot of times into how we come up with names and what we call things and the importance of it. But we, I think everyone forgets is what you brought up and made it so clear at the beginning: intent is everything. It's what you meant to do with those words that gives power or gives it meaning.

Even the watch says that right now. "Yeah, these are fighting words."

Yes, yeah. So, that's a—I think a good, clear distinction. This is hilarious, sorry. We've got on Facebook Live, so people are chiming in. And actually, you know who's chiming in, is Brian Mayer. He lives in England. We had linked up. Gathered the same game from—he's like a tower, he's a super smart guy. But he said, "Hey, what's in a name? Well, from one Brian Mayer, it's another Brian, and thinking our name is unique enough." So, it's kind of hilarious. There's only so many people. And he's talking about exactly where the Marrens and Southern—it's from Sligo, Ireland. So, clearly related at some point. But it's hilarious that people are chiming in with it. I already called your Williams last name out.

But so, I'll give you one that's interesting. So, Brian Marren and I are working on this other project, and, like he alluded to a little while ago, in a few days ago, sooner or later, you're going to know what that project is, and we want you all to get on board. But during this, we were working on marketing, which Brian and I normally don't do, meaning that we have a very POA (Plan of Action) and M (Milestones) way of looking at the world, and what we do is we set it up, "Okay, this is the information you need to know. This is how it's going to be broken down in the KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities). Here's the TLOs (Terminal Learning Objectives)," all that other stuff. But the idea was that we did that with this project as well, and then we came into a room, and there were a dozen people in the room sitting around their phones.

And the same thing happened last night with us. Brian, do you know what charcuterie is, or charcutorie? They have "me or cooter"? It's okay. Right? Well, so Shelley and I got in an argument last night over how it's pronounced. So, she brings out her phone, and it's "char-coo-tree" or "char-cu-terie" with a French accent. I was pissed immediately at this guy 'cause, "Of course, you wrote it, you can pronounce it, but you know, make it easy for the rest!"

Well, where that goes is we were going through so many name changes on this company in the first seven or nine days that I was about to throw in the towel and just call the game. So, I called two people that do marketing for a living, and they're amazing. And they were in the automotive industry marketing for many, many years. And so, I call and I go, "Evan, this dilemma, because these clients and friends, they just keep poo-pooing that. You know, no, no good decision." You know what I'm saying? "It's just, 'Oh, no, I don't like that,' or 'this or that,' or 'doesn't sound right.'" And they said, one, the very first, Jim Gilmore told me this, great dear friend Jim Gilmore says, "Listen, do you remember the Pontiac Aztek, the car? Six executives from General Motors stood around and go, 'Hmm, that is brilliant!'" They paid for it. Yeah. And then Brian—my brother Brian Williams, a great advertiser—says that he and Gilmore put together the Tahoe, the Chevy Tahoe, the truck, all these mergers, everything for the branding and everything, and went to the big release at General Motors and said, "This is what we made up." And they're standing there holding each other. Pat and dad. And the guy goes, "That's a non-starter." And they go, "Why?" And he goes, "Well, I was playing it while I was working out, and my cat hates it. My cat hates this ten million dollar advance production number." So, Brian, humans can be arbitrary and capricious. So, I won't venture down those paths and try to follow your logic if you're insane, or if you're goofy and insane—I mean, clinically. I mean, that if you're going to be on with your—

Well, I think it's like if you're not going to go—if you're basing the marketing project for a new vehicle at General Motors, which I would say there's a little bit of money that goes into that, building that vehicle and investing in that and getting people on board, and there's probably a lot of it. And you're going to put it on whether or not your cat likes it? Yeah, you might want to go talk to someone.

So, exactly. And the chair reclines. And we're not talking about getting a pet, but no, I just want to make sure that when we go through those discussions, what we're trying to do is we're trying to come up with the term like—intent is hugely important. We just—we project, we owe, and we've never got through to the point that intent should be the overarching factor in everything because certain people's impressions on a program can be different than yours, and they could bleed into it, or they can come away with a different definition, or they can use a textbook definition, Brian, that sometimes falls well short of the mark.

Yeah, that is—and that's important to remember when we look at any of these names or any of these situations is, one, there's often more meaning behind it than we realize. Like you just said, you brought up a great one, but even the naming of the Pontiac Aztek, how many ideas got kicked around before it was called an Aztek? And that was after it was already probably designed and somewhere near being built.

Actually, the only thing that it's known for, it was the character Walt, who called himself Heisenberg, in Breaking Bad. That's what he drove. That's—that's the Pontiac. I know that. Could—

You know, I didn't watch that show.

No, I know. But when I would tell people, "You have to understand Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle." Yeah. Oh, do you watch that show? Nothing. No, no. It's—it's, yeah, he didn't have it.

So funny. But he was part of the team. Something like that, Brian.

No, sometimes it is the hat, Uncle Buck.

No, but that's the point I'm getting to is that everything, some thought has been put into it. And so going back to "intent is everything," like someone came up with calling it a Snickers bar versus a chocolate gooey nutty bar. There was a distinct thing that came into it, and then maybe down the road everyone says, "Well, that's a really inappropriate term," but that's someone else's fault, or that's the reason—someone else's fault. But meaning, society has changed to come up with that, and now you're going, "Well, wait, I—I came up with this 50 years ago or 30 years ago, and there was no intent behind it."

But what do we want to do? We want to—we want to crucify, we want to vilify, we have the "cancel culture," we want to say, "No, everything you do that's a great thing." So worried about the "cancel culture" and bringing up that, "If I'm not on your side, then clearly everything I stand for is wrong," rather than looking at it and having a debate.

Well, which is funny, because when we—when we like someone's ideas, people, we get really into that person and tend to kind of, "Well, I know their thoughts over here aren't really the best, but look at what they're saying about this." So, we'll excuse our own people that we're fans of.

Both.

Both. We'll criticize some information by anything. Yeah, make that information that we deem as being valid. And I think it's incredibly important. Now, if we just stuck with naming conventions and names and the words we're using, because they're getting so conflated, and they're getting confusing. So, and this goes into anything that's science-related. Like, science and language are used to do what, Greg? Articulate something. Especially with sciences, it's, "Here's how we explain some nebulous concept, some phenomena that we can't see and understand with our eye." So, I dropped this water bottle right there. Physics will explain to me the rate at which that falls and why it falls that way, and what gravity is. But it's used to explain something that I go, "I don't know why, I just know when I pick something up, it falls down."

And that gets even harder and more difficult. But some of these things now people are coming out with it and passing it off as science, is that it's "no, and you have to realize that everything is a bias, everything is racist, it's all this, and you're going to believe, you don't even know it is, but boom!" Whether that—but if you go down that path, the problem is it then—then nothing has meaning, and everything is made up.

Right. Right.

And that's—that's completely insane. That's the opposite of what science and language is supposed to do.

It's the most popular, Brian. It's popular. And right now we are—listen, everything is pendulous. Everything is going to swing back and forth. And in a few years, things are going to go back, and it's going to be more normal. It's called social norming for a reason. And things that are less important will become less important again. The things that are more important—listen, where you are on the side of something, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody, hurt yourself, make somebody look like a bad guy or an idiot, as long as you don't have that horrible intent behind it, then you'll probably be okay. It's always okay to educate yourself about new ideas. The idea is socialization. As a matter of fact, your—the social media, which I still don't understand—that's what's made the world so much smaller, and that's made ideas spread more quickly. It's also made it easier to cloud non-science in with science.

So, for example, when we were eating a food, and the term for the food sounded bad to somebody that was six thousand miles away in a different way. There's no way that person knew I was eating it, and the guy that was making the food that was local had no idea. And so they used a euphemism, they used the term. So, there wasn't anything there. So, okay, so the world's smaller. We'll fix that, we'll clean that up. And we should all—every one of us should say, "Let's err on the side of the abundance of caution to make sure that we don't." And you said it's nebulous, it's like holding a water balloon or a handful of eggs and trying not to drop those son of a [expletive] while you're on a trampoline. So, the idea is that give it time, we're on the right track, we're going the right direction. And let's not stray to that right and left lateral limit, Brian, which mean extremism. And extremism isn't good for anybody.

And it's not going to—it's not—it doesn't—it's not even extremism sometimes. I don't agree with any extremist ideology because when you're saying you're polarizing my view. No, but what I'm saying is that if you're of the belief that this is the way things are and this is how it should be, I don't care anyway. Well then, you're not part of this. You're not being a contributing member to society. You're saying this is the only way things are going to go.

If you just have this—

But that's—that's what it gets down to is it's more just intransigence. I am unwilling to change my beliefs despite the fact that you're giving the evidence to the contrary. And that's an issue. And I know we're in sort of that world, I guess, because of what we do, meaning where everything has to be questioned, and we have to be held to a very high standard. So, we had a recent conversation with someone who was doing something somewhat related, and then we said, "Yeah, but you can't go on the stand and testify to that." And they were like, immediately got quiet. "Well, no, that's like, well then, what are you? If it doesn't have legal and based—"

Yes, opinion-based testimony, don't come to me with it. Because even a subject matter expert has a counter-narrative subject matter expert that the defense or the prosecution is going to call. So, if you can't line it up and show me that there's a mathematical principle or a scientific principle, or that these things tend to show the existence of that, so artifacts in essence to support it, then we get to back off of it.

So go back, go back to the naming thing. Why, even when someone accidentally, or maybe their computer autocorrects it when they're sending me an email, and they say "Brain" instead of "Brian," why do I immediately notice that and have it like—I know it doesn't bother me, but it does momentarily. It's not my name. Why do I have that immediate reaction? Because I know it was done a complete accident, probably autocorrect. And I've even had it from other people whose name was Brian that spelled my same way as mine. And you're like, "I noticed that so clear." Why? Why is that?

The world is a fragile ecosystem, and ours is a fragile ego system. So, what happens is that when we perceive the rest of the world—you ever hear the people talking about rose-colored glasses and stuff? And I talked about the lenses fall in front of the faces with the domains. What happens is some people can't get past their own [expletive], and that's dangerous because then we can't take a look at evidence. And you know, it's easy to get pissed off. And what we do is once we get pissed off, we start bringing up the shield, so we start bringing up the barriers, and then we're no good to anybody because now we just have these two balls bouncing together. Nothing's being changed. We don't have the cup—it's good to use a cup analogy because I'm carrying my cup with—my cup is full. I can't take stuff from your cup. If my cup isn't full, then I can accept stuff from your cup. And guess what? My stuff isn't so meaningful anymore. Now I start to see different perspectives. And when I take a look at the perspective, I go, "Wow, I have to take and put your shoes on and walk around your house and see where you put the stuff." You want to mess everybody up? Put all the pictures in your house where the light plugs are. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And when they walk around, they'll take a look at—"Then good, it's just my perspective." It's okay to have a unique perspective, but not to the exclusion of everybody else's perspective. That's not fair.

And I'll take you back to certain terms that Greg is the only guy in the world that uses. And so, I don't know how to explain the "Gregg-isms." So, I don't know how to—and I've seen them, I've seen them in other people's ads on Facebook, which is hilarious. Pick that stuff up for me. I remember that's the—that's a 2008—

Exactly.

So, I'm in the back and we're doing the TCOM (Training and Doctrine Command) or TRADOC, whichever one is at Q-town, at Quantico (Marine Corps Base). And we're all sitting around training and education command, training doctrine. Yeah, this is actually for people listening, like when you have to have a Program of Record for the military, they have a room full of people, voice made, smartest people, who just nitpick, go through every line: "Hey, that comma should be here. That period here. Hey, what do you mean by this? I want more." I mean, it's just brute, I mean, it's great for quality control and consistency. I mean, holy [expletive], but you want to get your program gone through a meat grinder? Do one of those. But look at, there are very few programs that meet that standard, and ours do.

So, I'm sitting around there, and all of a sudden the guy next to me goes, "Well, who do we cite as a resource?" I go, "Me." And he goes, "We can't do that." I go, "Well, you got to do that, 'cause I invented it." And then the next guy sits next to him goes, "Yeah, but where'd you get the word?" I go, "I made it up." He goes, "What do you mean you made it up?" I said, "Well, I didn't know any other way to describe a word that was existing, and it made sense to me." And he goes, "Well, you can't do that." So, I heard all the way down the line, "You can't do that. You can't do that."

The new word was "Atmospherics," Brian. And so the atmospherics—so the way, you know, the barometric pressure your body is reading, is really important of environment. And you get a vibe. And when somebody says, "Ah, man, either the hair might heal," you can explain every one of those things with a very scientific term. But all of those feelings together that drives something that's likely to about to occur. Yes, and Greg has observed atmospherics, and they have been since the late seventies. So, the idea was that, "Listen, you can either be a roadblock and stand in my way to get this program out to pre-deployment Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen need it to survive, and do that. What name would you choose?" Or they go, "Hell, we don't know." "Well, then shut up. Mine is okay until something comes along." What you just found out, Brian, is how I unintentionally created a term, a naming convention for something.

Yes, maybe 70 years from somebody now, somebody looks back and they take offense to it. Will that simple? Yeah, yeah. I would say you used every time. I didn't see me even 'cause the same thing with our company name, Arcadia Cognet. Do your homework. Find out, old buddy. But then, whatever goes, "Will wait, Cognet," and everyone's like, "Wow, we get someone who gives us a look and goes, 'Hey, that name's pretty cool, man!'" We get that every way. But you made up the term "Cognet." You made that term up, which is hilarious. So now, if we see it, people are going to go where we know where it came from. But someone will still pass it off, which is hilarious. But what was my intent? My intent was to capture something like an Illuminati and say, "These are terms that society tends to like." Somebody told me one time that that was a "tony" party, and I had to go home and look up "tony" because it means like some really cool thing. You can't do that. You can't just—

I'm kind of guilty. That's like, Mean Girls: "Stop trying to get 'fetch' to work." Because it's done—good work. Anyone who's seen Mean Girls knows how great that movie is. So, anybody that's listening right now or watching on—"there's a pool in a pond." Okay? So, those type of terms that we use cut out volumes of conversation that we don't have time for. So, if I look and somebody's given us a really crappy hotel room, and I'll look at Marren, I'll go, "Well, there's a pool in a pond." It is immediately everything that follows after that. If we come in and right away everybody is putting up barriers, and it doesn't look like we're going to have an easy morning at class, I'll look at Brian and I'll go, "Sometimes it's the hat." Yeah. 'Cause those little terms are hugely medieval to us. But we don't use them in the context that it was used in the film. We write personal context, we've shaped and changed to name our feelings and emotions that we deal with. And that's all names and words a lot of times get used that way.

Right.

And we forget that sometimes what—we continually understand we can't say it anymore. Even words that are okay in certain songs when certain people use them. And that's fine. But that's how words evolve or devolve or change over time.

Right. Exactly.

That's—that's what happened. So, as long as you put it into context and understand the facts intensely behind it.

So, I want to get to a couple of things because we've got folks kind of chiming in a little bit on Facebook Live. But when Brian Mayer says, "Shout out to you, Greg," he said, "Hello, he's a police officer for 20 years in Buffalo, New York, retired in 2007 as a Captain." But early, shout out, shout out to you. A couple—so, Scotty Witt brought up some points, our buddy Scotty from Australia chimed in, and so we appreciate it. I hope things are kind of—I've heard things are opening up a little bit more down there by you guys. Hopefully, you'll have a better, easier time controlling the coronavirus issue than we do in the U.S.

Well, it's an island. Australia is huge, but—

So, he said, "Is that a name thing or is it about attention to detail?" with one of the things we were talking about before. But what he said was, later said, "Name is better, so it becomes sticky." Right? "So, to the Redskins news, now the name is being stripped off like a Band-Aid. It's going to hurt." Right? So, like, he's making it sticky. "And it'll take hundreds of years till the generations die out for those people, the older people that are going to still use the name and they'll insist on it or accidentally or they'll slip into it." He's right on, Scotty.

No, no. And that's a great point about it becoming sticky. Well, it sticks to that organization. So when you pull it off like that Band-Aid, "Hey, that hurts a little bit. That wound will heal." You know, and that—that's—that's a great point to kind of actually add on to everything we're talking about. And you got other comments in here. Danielle said, "Yeah, all the time people pronounce it Daniel, like the male version." She's like, "Hey, my name is Danielle!" I get that. My wife gets it all the time with Kaylee, because of the way it's spelled. People like to mispronounce her name, "Kay-lee," and they're like, "No, it's Mah-kay-lee!" And then five minutes later, they call—

They're horrible. They're going, "Okay, hey, Mikayla." And she's just like—

Mom's giggling all the way to the bank every year.

You know, and these are all clearly, there's a—there's a pool in a pond, Michaela. There's a—these are all exactly what we mean. And it comes down to the intent. Someone mispronouncing your name, if they're doing it on accident, then it's on accident. But listen, you can do it on accident and still hurt somebody's feelings. That's why I'm saying just give the time and distance. So, Brian and I were being interviewed by somebody, it was a very famous interview, a very important person, and that person butchered our name every single time they tried to come up with our [company name] so much so that I—what I'm trying to say. So now, there was no harmful intent, no, no, but we kept having to come in and go, "Yes, that's Arcadia Cognet," to make sure that the people could actually find us anyway. And now somebody was saying, "Oh, your company wanted to change it to something simple." Now, now it's simple. It wouldn't be Scotty Witt, it wouldn't be sticky. And, you know, he's saying it right now, I'm going, "Oh, we're going to look that up after the show."

So, sometimes you get injured. But listen, Brian, who's really getting injured? It's our pride, it's our ego. It's internal. We're taking it as an assault or an affront when there's no meaning to it. How pissed was I when the guy told me not to use "Devil Dog"? Hey, I grew up with my father, I revere my father. It's meant in the nicest possible way. And so, I think those things are going to continue to happen. And I think if we're not open to a rational exchange of thoughts, then we're constantly there, right there. He just said it just now. And that's no way of going through the race.

I think—I think that's—that's also obviously a huge issue of putting all that in the context, especially historical context, when it comes to names, and trying to take away the meaning of what someone said, especially when someone's tweeting or giving a speech or something that isn't planned or remarks. And you're saying something like, "You mean don't—" like, "We have to come up with something, you meant it in some way." It's very easy to take that and then go, "Oh, what you meant was this!" And the person's like, "No!" "Yeah, but you use these words, and that's what you meant." It's like, "No, you don't get to decide in this one. I've highlighted those three, and I'm going to put them together and come up with what you meant." "Well, I'm right here. Ask me what I meant!" You know, ask.

Well, it's at my heart. And trust me, there are people out there that are complete douchebags that mean what they're saying, that are clearly trying to throw—but those are, you know, [expletive] in a pool. But that's that. And then, but great, like, they're identifying, "No, this is exactly—" "Okay, well, now we know where you stand. Okay, so got it. We now understand your intent every time." And those are usually the people at the extremes. You can't—for everyone else, I'm not supposed—I can't walk around updating a [expletive] glossary of terms I'm supposed to use every day and delete the ones I'm not supposed to use that I learned when I was a kid. You can't expect anyone to—you can't do that and not leave your house. Brian's out in the house. But you can't like—you can't like go out of your box to the neighboring box and sit there and just spend all day long and then dry your box coming up with new terminology, or douching alternate. Like the term "douche juice" or something.

Lord and Lady Douchebag back in the 70s was on Saturday Night Live, and I'll never forget that.

You know what I'm saying? I hate The Rulers of the Universe. Those are meant as humorous asides.

I think—I think it has grown in meaning over time. But, yeah, but spirit like that we see them every day, folks. But that's another thing, and which is also why you then see, especially I see it more so out here in the West Coast, with people coming up with all kinds of different crazy names to name their children. It's the same thing, "Well, I want them to be unique," or "I want them to be this." "Oh my god, do you know what that name means?" You know, I—someone recently, my wife was talking about it, like, "Oh, they named their son Deacon." I was like, "Are they like a real religious family? Like, I didn't know that." And they're like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "I don't know, when you say Deacon, I think of the deacon at the church who was a member of the community. He's not a priest, but he's heavily involved in services, and he's part of the community, his family is there." But like, it's like, "No, that's not what they meant by it." It was like, "Well, that's what a deacon is!"

I thought of Deacon Jones, the famous ballplayer. But by the same token, that's a good—but see how I took it versus no.

Money together.

Yeah, they want to know the sound. We were sitting, Brian Marren and I were sitting next to a guy that was listening to the "shoe phone" and it kept saying the word over and over. And we go, "Hey, what's that word you're listening to?" And they go, "Oh, this is this word in ancient Sanskrit," or whatever, "in Sanskrit," whatever the hell it is. And they—it doesn't matter. The idea is that, "Okay, if you're going to make something so obtuse and so high and mighty that nobody's ever going to understand it, nobody's going to come and buy your product. It's got to be at least in the realm of possibles that at least sound good coming off the tongue." So, don't go out there and intentionally piss anybody off. Do a little bit of research, and you'll probably be okay.

Well, yeah, but that's—that's the other thing is not using the—what was that, from Office Space? The "jump to conclusions mat."

No, it's a mat, and you jump to conclusions, and whatever you land on, that's what you go with.

It's like you have to understand the situation. And so, you know, that's kind of what it brought me back to. It just reminded me of that this morning with that news coming about the Washington Redskins again. But we have to be careful when we do those things because if you go around destroying or disrupting or devolving some things, when does it stop? Like, that's a clear case to me where it's like, "Yeah, this is clearly an offensive term. It's 2020." I don't mean to make light of it or laugh at it, just only 'cause my Native American friends have been laughing like, "Do you understand how ridiculous?" And I'm like, until they said it, I never even thought of it that way. Like, I knew it 'cause actually the—sorry, the second high school I went to—

Been into a lot of school. Do a lot of schools. You haven't graduated from all of them, but a lot of them.

My résumé is so long. You have an impressive résumé. Completed Princeton for 18 months there.

It was right across the street. We were working at the food, I would hang out at this pub. This pub. Oh, you know that place. How long were you there for? On and off for 18 months.

But anyway, no, but it brought me back. The second high school I went to, they were the "Redskins," and then they changed it right after to the "Red Hawks." And like, it was the same—

Python foreskin. There were some people out there that would have said, "Wait a minute, you know what about me? I have a foreskin!" But it changes. And the whole point is, I think until those things come to light and people discuss it openly and honestly and pull it and realize that, "Go, hey, wait a minute, oh, okay, this is an obvious one." But the problem is when it gets to things where people are saying things that with no intent behind them, or no ill intent behind them, and when someone else gets to come in and say, "Oh, well, you meant this!" It's like, "No, you don't get to say that."

First of all, we—we can—you got to be able to say, "I made a mistake." You know, you can't—apparently, you can't make a look at that and say, "Okay, I acknowledge the mistake, and the fact that you mention it." So, Brian, I want to go off tangentially just for a second here. And I want to say, folks, one of our podcasts coming up is going to be about domestic violence situations and why they're so dangerous, specifically of coppers and first responders. Oh my God, everywhere, the weekend's a powder keg. It is. It really is. And it doesn't matter who's holding the match. Though, that's one of those issues I'm going to talk about that in great detail coming up. And there were a couple of great coppers that were killed in Texas over the weekend. Ambushed. Responded to a domestic. And so the daughter of one of the coppers, and I don't know social media, so this is secondhand, and this is hearsay, but I've seen the evidence so I do believe it was right. And, "Hey, Dad, I miss you already." This and that. And somebody came off the top and said, like, "F your father, f all coppers. Deserve to happen. Good for you." And Brian always rages me, and Brian goes, "Yeah, but there are always those people."

Do, listen, what good did you—how good do you feel today coming off the top rail with those comments to a daughter that lost her husband? And Brian, I think, just like these naming conventions, if your intent is to be hurtful with your words, then keep your words to yourselves. And somebody's going, "Oh, he just said something about the First Amendment!" Now, you have the absolute right to say something, it doesn't mean you should. That's all I'm saying. So, when we take—

Well, yeah, I—I hate to—I always, I always tell people that, especially on social media, you don't—don't ever pass up an opportunity to not say anything. I mean, meaning you don't have to get—you don't have to pour gasoline on the fire. You don't have to make it worse. You don't have to, despite what people say about, "No, you don't need to project your opinion to everyone." You can—you can actually think critically on your own and figure out what you think is right and wrong, and you can hold those to yourself and share with the hobo on your little bench where you're sitting right now.

I—I do. I—they don't. I know some of them—some of them don't like it. Some of them love it. Some work at you.

Yeah, exactly. Had, "Oh, Debbie Zahn here, too." Hi, Debbie. "Right, thank you, Greg." "If you love your house, what's the matter if you don't have anything good to say?" Exactly. That's what—that's what Bambi learned, just so you know. And Bambi's mom died in a violent gun incident, too. So, it's good advice, and that's great thinking. Thank you, Walt Disney!

Exactly. I'm not going there. No, no deep dive that where it won't be taken out of context, and people won't have a horrible, horrible reaction. But my brother Jeff, when I called this morning and sang him a tune, a birthday tune—oh gosh, that had to be lovely. So, I, you know, I can kind of bring it in for a bit of a landing here, Greg, but I think it's important to understand in general, naming conventions, names, words we use to articulate, and you hit it right up front, is that your intent is everything. If I say your name wrong because I couldn't—I didn't read it correctly, it's not my fault. You can correct me, and I'll apologize. If I'm saying your name wrong to give you a hard time, to mess with you—because we've actually done that, it actually works very well, done that before to people who deserved it and needed—we needed to get them riled up. But that then it's a different story.

So, I think as long as everyone going through this or understanding, or anyone listening or following along, says, "Hey, what was that person's intent?" So when someone says something, or you get upset by a message, an image, a word, a saying of this, you have to go, "Whoa, what was your intent?" And a lot of times, because we don't often do this, a lot of times, my belief is that in general, most people are good and want to do the right thing. Sometimes we get on board with an ideology that we didn't even know it was an ideology. Sometimes we get on board with movements or things that we didn't even know that there were some other meaning behind it, either good or bad. That can occur. So, I think we have to be careful when reading someone else's message or looking at what they're saying is, "What is their intent behind that?" And then you can ask them, "Hey, what did you mean behind this? What was your intent?" And if they didn't have one, or they didn't know, or there was—we call it "one slide deep"—they don't really know what they're talking about, they're just regurgitating something they heard from someone else, then that's going to become evident fairly clear.

Yeah, and you don't need the power. Don't give them the power. So, my last comment on the topic, and it's a great topic, Brian, we could deep dive for a good long time on it because it zeroes to the surface, and it hurts a lot of people. Listen, we worked at Benning, we worked at Bragg, and we worked at Hood. And we didn't wear hoods, and we weren't racist. Yeah, I also attended those in the context of being a soldier, and I didn't go there saying, "Hey, Civil War general, wrong side!" Okay? So, we didn't know. And anybody right now that's up there and they're ranting and raving and they're stamping their foot and saying they knew, I have pictures of them at those same bases doing the same things that they were doing. Why wasn't it important six years ago? It was important four years ago. So, back off the gas a little bit because you're trying to say that we were always at the forefront of this issue, and it's just not true. So, we'll all get there together. This is one of the rare times, Brian, that I'll say that if we work hard at this, if we study a little bit, if we give somebody a hand up rather than—we'll probably all fix this, and we'll be a better nation for it. You know how rare I say that we're in something together? This is one of the things we are, in fact, in together.

I think we need to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

Right. Exactly, right? Is something as simple as, "We don't have to be outraged over everything." We can understand better. Phone and you got a Molotov, then your intent is—megaphones, okay. Molotov, not okay. That's what I'm trying to say. So, anything less or more than that—yeah, let's draw a line in the sand. I want to hear your opinion. You just don't have to yell at me to make me listen to you. I want to hear your opinion. You don't have to start civil insurrection and a violent attack on me to make me listen. Bring us together. We can talk about this.

What do we have at the end of every training session? We have a town hall. We'll sit around, we'll exchange ideas, we'll talk about things. And the things that we can fix, we will fix. And it's amazing how once you get down to some of the core issues, how similar everyone's views are, how to deal with them. Not just how they affect them, but how to deal with them once you get everyone together to actually discuss it. And that's—that's why we get super frustrated with a lot of stuff that we see going on because we know what some of the answers are, and we've seen them work before. And anyone who's sat there and done it with us was like, "Wow, okay, that guy I thought I hated, we were both dealing with the same issue and can resolve it." So, de-escalation, baby.

De-escalation is more than just a word, it's an important concept.

Something that you just—we—more than a word, it's more than a tactic or procedure, Greg. It's a mindset and a strategy.

Right. It's the first person. Exactly, first you know, home.

Alright, so I think we'll wrap it up on that. Thanks everyone for tuning in, especially on Facebook Live. If you're just listening to the podcast, you can always follow me on Facebook, and we pop up live there at least once or sometimes twice a week. And we're starting to do some Friday ones that we're probably not going to release as episodes, just we get on and go over everything that went on in the week. And so you guys can hop on and engage with us there. Thank you to everyone. We have Wednesday—oh, well, Webinar Wednesday, that is the 15th of July. If you're listening this Wednesday, July 15th, a webinar. So, check that out, sign up, hit us up, and register for it. So, thanks everyone for listening in, and don't forget, training changes behavior.