January 2, 2015

January 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Readers, 

Currently the news is about an Indonesian airplane, which, on its way to Singapore, crashed in the ocean, killing all its passengers. We hear stories of people who were scheduled to be on this plane, but who, for some reason didn’t make it at the very last moment. They speak of ‘an act of God’ that they were saved from this tragedy. Others, whose family members died on the crash, still pray for a miracle, even though pieces of wreckage were found floating around in the ocean and the first corpses have been brought back home.  Some are waiting in vain at the airport, while praying at a make shift shrine. Others were throwing their hands in the air in disbelief and were asking the interviewer, why God was doing this? One man, whose aging grandmother was on the plane, regretted he didn’t visit her more often and cried that he would never see her again. The spot in the ocean where the plane had crashed, because of the bad weather, is hard to get to and the identified pieces of wreckage are spread out over many miles. Even under more positive circumstances it would be difficult to find the deceased and the black box, which may contain important information about the reasons why the plane had crashed. The way in which this calamity is broadcasted demonstrates how many of our superstitions are perpetuated. Many people live in two different worlds. On the one hand they all know that planes depart and arrive on certain time schedules. They rely on these remarkable pieces of modern technology, which are created by people who know science. Nothing about this plane or the loss of its passengers is explained by anyone's belief in God. In the face of this disaster it is quite apparent that the religious beliefs don’t explain anything. Sadly, if they can be salvaged, only the broken pieces can help us to piece together what happened. 

Out of sympathy for the diseased, news reporters play along and pray along with the survivors, but they don’t report anything about the real disaster that is going on. The real catastrophe is that modern people, although they make use of computers, cell phones, airplanes, satellites, medicine etc., continue to have beliefs which are pre-and anti-scientific. As long as we keep down-playing this tragic fact as long as we keep pretending that things are real, which are not real, but just make-belief, we cannot address any of the urgent global problems which mankind is facing. 

The only way out of this mess is changing the way we communicate. Our usual way of communicating perpetuates the tremendous damage we have been doing. Unless our usual way of communicating, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), is decreased, and,  extinguished, that is, completely stopped, NVB is going to counteract the good that has been done and that is done by Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). These two universal response classes, SVB and NVB, explain what is happening in human interaction. 

In behaviorism the lawfulness of how human beings interact is analyzed. Antecedent variables relate to the context in which the interaction occurs. This writer wants to focus the reader’s attention on one antecedent stimulus: the sound of the speaker's voice. Everyone has their own voice. In spoken communication all these different voices are different contextual stimuli, or independent variables, which all have a different effect on the behavioral response, the dependent variable, our interaction. And, one voice affects another, one stimulus affects the function of the next stimulus. 

Our behavior of concern, our interaction, is determined by whether our voices are  attuned. This has nothing to do with how we may individually try to sound. It is how we sound under the circumstances that we are in. If we can make a rocket go to the moon and come back safely, if we can replace someone’s heart, if we can have libraries within libraries at the tip of our fingers on our hand-held I-Phone, why do we still communicate in such a way that we create chaos and destruction? The results of our communication are unacceptable compared to an engineer who builds a bridge. The bridge that collapses is a failure of design. A heart surgeon whose patients die as a result of his operation is no good.  Who needs a mechanic who can’t fix our car? Why do we have leaders, who condone armies, bombings and killings? We have a different standard for how we communicate, because we are unscientific about it. 

In SVB as well as in NVB, each stimulus, each voice, alters the function of the next stimulus, another voice. Either we talk with each other as one voice, or we talk with one another as many voices. Either we talk about the reality as one reality or we talk about the reality we seek to enforce on each other. The difference between SVB and NVB is simple: we either sound good or we sound terrible. If we pay attention to how we influence each other, to how we are influenced by each other, to how our way of communicating is a function of environmental variables, we would notice that it all comes down to how we sound. In SVB we sound happy, at ease, pleasant, satisfied, safe, calm, positive, alive, melodious, sensitive, open, friendly and patient, but in NVB we sound harsh, negative, rigid, stressed, anxious, angered, irritated, restless, drained, flat, cold, unfriendly, agitated, worried, defensive, guarded and uneasy.   

What is known in behaviorism as stimulus control, deals with the tone of our voice, which antecedently controls our interaction.   During our life time, our bodies, our genetically produced neural structures, are conditioned by this inevitable process of stimulus-produced behavior mediation. When we begin to pay attention to how we sound while we speak, we find out, much to our surprise, that reality never really sounds that bad, but that our fabrications always sound horrible. 

After we have repeatedly verified the difference between Voice I and Voice II, the voice which produces NVB and the voice which produces SVB, we begin to take notice that if person A has NVB, then person B eventually begins to have NVB too, even if he or she was initially having SVB. However, if person A has SVB, it doesn’t mean that person B is going to have SVB. To the contrary, if person A has SVB, person B most likely will continue with NVB. Moreover, the SVB of person A will change into the NVB of person B. Only on rare occasions will the SVB of person A cause the SVB of person B, who was having NVB. The reason for this is that when for instance a person is afraid and someone tells him or her not to be afraid, this person is still likely to be afraid, unless this other person takes the fear away by making this person feel comfortable and safe. There is a big difference between making a person feel safe and telling a person he or she is safe. The person who was afraid likes to feel safe and would like to believe that others can make him or her feel safe, but whether or not this person is really going to feel safe, depends on whether what is offered by those who tell him or her not to be afraid really provide safety. Much of what is offered in how we communicate is based on the pretention and exploitation of safety. 

The assumption of safety has led to catastrophic consequences. It has closed our ears and eyes to what is happening and to how we cause the ugly noisy world we live in.   Stimulus generalization is the process in which individuals who were taught that they were safe, while in fact they weren’t, are more likely to listen to the voices of authority, of those, who like their parents, failed to protect them, but who nonetheless pretend to. These persons have the same tone and the same behaviors people are used to, which perpetuate the illusion of safety. This is known as response generalization. 

Most of us grew up with more NVB than with SVB. If we are not paying attention to the sound of our voice while we speak, we have no way of tracing back the runaway train of functional relations that led to NVB. The term generalization is useful as it  cuts through a lot of bullshit. All elements which pertain to the NVB response always appear together.  Discussion of these elements separately leads to hair-splitting, but analysis of the contingency that gives rise to NVB can reveal the evocative stimulus relations. NVB is a response class which always has similar consequences.  Results are achieved by means of coercion and there are many NVB ways in which to accomplish this. It is because of our NVB-maintained belief in behavior-causing agents, that we are distracted from the variables in our environment which maintain NVB. More specifically, our NVB is maintained by the sound which is produced by our body’s natural response to an unsafe environment. Only if our environment was safe could and would our body naturally produce a SVB sound. 

 

The antecedent stimuli, the voices of individuals, who produce the SVB response, are unique. While hierarchical consequences of the NVB response can only be accomplished in the same old forceful way, relationship-enhancing consequences of SVB are accomplished by many different voices, which are speaking as one.  When voices are attuned to each other, as they are in SVB, they gain strength and beauty, which they couldn’t attain alone. The illusion of this unifying process is achieved in NVB, by voices which either sound bombastic, monotonous or depressing. 

In SVB our different voices are validated, enhanced and celebrated, while in NVB any deviation from the norm is punished and rejected. Stimulus generalization, applies to both SVB and NVB. In SVB, it refers to how we all contribute to the same result, to creating better and more relationships, but in NVB, it refers to a different kind of result, to destroying, exploiting, undermining, sacrificing and disrespecting our relationships. In behavioral terms, the more the evocative stimulus, our voice, causes responding, the more similar the new evocative stimulus will be.