August 16, 2014

August 16, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist 

Dear Reader, 

The coming four days I am going to do an experiment. I know I don’t cause my own behavior and that is why I don’t care what I write. I will write whatever words occur to me. There is probably a more exact explanation for this, but I can only say what I can say about it. The idea that one has a mind and that this mind decides to behave, in this case, to write, is ludicrous. People can’t stand the fact that they don’t cause and don’t control their own behavior, but I don’t have any problem with it. 

I write this with a feeling of calmness and acceptance. I am not the least upset about not causing my own behavior. I don’t feel rejected, but I know something which most people don’t know, which, based on their behavioral history, they are unable to know. A person’s history of reinforcement decides what this person is going to do in the future. If other behaviors make acknowledgment of behaviorology - which is really a form of verbal behavior – impossible, then a person's behaviorology repertoire is likely to be rejected. This is why so many behaviorologists are rejected. There is still too much behavior which counteracts their behaviorology repertoire. Regardless how much research has been done, behaviorologist continue to see and hear things in their own way, because they were conditioned in that particular way. Also those who reject behaviorology, do so only because they were conditioned to do that.

Occasionally, based on my pre-behaviorology behavior patterns, I still run into one of these people, but for the most part I recognize them so well that I can avoid them and not be sucked into their ignorance and have some kind of argument which goes nowhere.  Each time this happens, I am learning something new. Adjustments are made naturally, not because I make them, but because they are made possible by what I know. The knowledge of behaviorology is so liberating, because it is not a matter of being for or against it. Most people would say they are against it, because it turns things upside down for them. That is, why they try to put things back to where it was with their arguments, which are based on a superstitious belief in an inner behavior-causing agent. It doesn't occur to them that believing in oneself is impossible. Surely, those who say this to others are treated as if they are taking something away from them. This is true. However, if they really know what they are talking about they replace what was not working with something that works.