January 23, 2015

January 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is a continuation of yesterday’s observation about how we keep going back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It describes the debate among Dutch politicians who tried to talk about muslim radicalization. It is good there is a third party, a “madam speaker” who stimulates some disentanglement of the knots created by NVB, but it is also clear that this is not sufficient. 

Although people try to focus on what they say, emotions take over and when that happens we have an emotionally-loaded NVB. This writer claims that since most conversation is NVB, we are not really rational even when we are trying to be rational and we are not really honest about emotions even when we try. Only in SVB are we and can we be truly rational and authentically emotional. In NVB, by contrast, our reasoning is convoluted with our emotions and our emotions are distorted by our rationalizations. During NVB, someone is always either overly rational or overly emotional. 

When madam speaker had spoken of “the many balls that are in play” and urged speakers “to remain rational”, she was presumably referring to emotions that may prevent rational issues from being addressed. However, she was not realizing her own emotional NVB-talking was causing negative feelings that were not triggered by the muslim issue. Her fear that the debate might get out of hand, besides being emotional, of course only added fuel to the flames. In NVB there are many attempts by speakers to tell other speakers how to speak. As long as people are trying to correct each other on how to communicate, they are going to have NVB. 

Only in SVB do our emotions maintain our healthy relationship. In SVB people talk with each other, not at each other. Interestingly, during the debate, SVB was more often happening when the speaker was directing him or herself to madam the speaker, to a third party and not to the other speaker. There were moments in which the third party didn’t even seem to exist and in those moments the speaker’s NVB attacks were the most vicious.

When one listens to thirty minutes of this debate, it is astounding how many times one speaker accuses another that his or her way of speaking is not the right way of speaking. The utter futility of these attempts, which are the trademark of NVB, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Everybody seems to be thinking that this is how we should talk. When one person decreases his or her NVB, the other person immediately increases it. While they keep appealing to SVB, they never maintain it.

One speaker wondered how we can “make sure the tension in society is not increased, but decreased” and wanted to know from the anti-muslim speaker if “he ever even thought about how he could contribute to this process?” This was initially an appeal to SVB, but when that speaker ended his momentary peace-making by insinuating that the anti-muslim speaker doesn’t contribute to this process, he was back to NVB again. The speaker didn’t fall for the set-up and continued to explain his view. 

Another speaker spoke about the elevated tone of voice of the anti-muslim speaker, who, for ten years has lived under the constant threat of death. According to this speaker it was difficult to collaborate with him, because he elicited negative responses. He made a correct analysis. However, his SVB only fueled the NVB of the justifiably fearful anti-muslim speaker, whose argument is that nobody is really listening to him. This too was an absolutely correct observation: in NVB nobody is listening to anybody. 

The leader of what has now become Holland’s biggest political party, who came to power because he articulates the population’s resentment about the Islamization of their country, remarked that he would “only sing in a lower key if others would listen to him.” In other words, he would only stop his NVB if others would stop their NVB and he pledged to increase his NVB if others increased their NVB. This is exactly how we have dealt with each other across the globe and this is why NVB is everywhere and why SVB can’t happen. Unless we see that NVB prevents SVB, we will ratchet up the conversation and we will prevent SVB from happening.

Because of the constant death threats against him, the anti-muslim speaker is more familiar with the elicitation of fear than most of his opponents. This allows him to debate in a style which completely eludes others. He is capable of unleashing his emotions much more effectively than anyone else.  Yet, in spite of the life-and-death situation he lives in every day, he is able to have more SVB than others. The force and impact of his words derives from the congruence between his verbal and nonverbal expression.