January 1, 2015

January 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

By proposing to listen to ourselves while we speak, this writer aims to change the contingency of human interaction. He is not interested in changing the content of our conversation. The content can remain the same, but what he cares about is that the context in which we speak is altered. However, the feedback loop from hearing our own sound will surely change the content of our conversation. It will show that our content cannot stay the same if we pay attention to how we sound. 

We always hear our own sound, but if we listen deliberately, we realize that we can only listen to others to the extent that we are listening to ourselves. In other words, if we ignore self-listening, as we do during Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we are only able to pretend that we are listening to others. In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we listen to ourselves, we truly listen to others, because we listen to others in the exact same way as we listen to ourselves. Stated differently, in NVB, we listen to others in a different way than we listen to ourselves.  

One way of listening occurs in SVB as a consequence of the verbalizer’s ability to focus on him or herself. Thus, in SVB verbalizer and mediator is one and the same person. However, in SVB verbalizers and mediators are also different people. In SVB mediators understand verbalizers well, because verbalizers do not put pressure on mediators to listen to them. 

Verbalizers who listen to themselves while they speak will change the circumstances in which they speak. Change is brought about by the suggestion of this writer, who, due to his behavioral history knows that this will happen. He has tested this phenomenon over and over. When someone, a verbalizer, switches from not listening to him or herself to listening to him or herself, this verbalizer is going to talk in an entirely different manner. Moreover, both the verbalizer and the mediator(s) will also acknowledge this. In other words, there will be agreement, understanding, validation and reciprocal reinforcement between verbalizer and mediator in SVB about what is said and how it is said. 

The contingency change that occurs in SVB is a result of a behavioral change: listening to ourselves while we speak. Changing our behavior is changing our circumstances.  Yet, behavioral change is not done by some agent, who makes us listen to ourselves. The change that changes the contingency comes about as that part of the environment to which we only individually have access expresses itself. Nobody can express this part for us. The mediator mediates the verbalizer only to the extent that he or she is one with the verbalizer. 

Only to the extent that the mediator is or can be his or her own verbalizer, will the mediator be capable of mediating the verbalizer as another person. This poses two problems: 1) the mediator has never spoken to him or herself as a verbalizer or 2) the verbalizer has never consciously mediated him or herself as a mediator. The first problem is much bigger than the second. There are many more people who have never spoken, who have always just basically only listened, than that there are people who don’t listen, but who speak all the time. Simply stated, most of the talking is supposedly done for us by others. If we take care of the first problem, the second one turns out to be a cover up of the first problem. We have heard so often that listening is the problem, that people just don’t listen, but who is saying this? This is obviously not being said by those who are being listened to, but by those who want to and who demand to be listened to. Those who tell others that they don’t listen seem to have achieved some higher moral ground, but the fact is that they determine the contingency for NVB. 

In SVB we don’t tell each other that we must listen. In SVB listening is not at all the issue. In SVB speaking is the issue or rather, we cannot and do not have SVB because of our lack of speaking. We have for the most part been taught to speak in a NVB manner and to the extent we have been taught to have SVB, we experience constant problems as we find ourselves in environments in which it is impossible to speak the way in which we would like to speak. Consequently, we give up on speaking, we supposedly ‘pick our battles’, but the bottom line is that we stop speaking, as we must protect ourselves from bad consequences.  

Most people speak hesitantly, once they experience the contingency which brings their attention to the distinction between SVB and NVB. It is only after they experience this contingency for half an hour, an hour, two hours or three hours that they begin to lose their hesitation and are sure enough it is okay to speak that way. Repeated trials are necessary before people realize that they actually want SVB and not NVB. Initially, the distinction between SVB and NVB shows in what an upside-down world we actually live: we are conditioned by and familiar with NVB. 

In his book “Running Out of Time” (Ledoux, 2014, p.262) Ledoux states “such bodies are also behaving organisms and, like all organisms, are limited to operantly and respondently conditioned responses that in one way or another change the environmental contingencies on another organism, human or other animal, and these contingency changes bring about change in the other organism’s behavior.”   This author views himself, like Ledoux, not as ”behavior modifier” but as a “contingency engineer.” His challenge in pointing out the SVB/NVB distinction is that he can only point out so much. In order to change the operant and respondent conditioning processes, which maintain NVB, people have to become verbalizers, who recognize and acknowledge themselves as their own mediators. That this is accomplished without any effort demonstrates that it is the absence of some inner agent which makes SVB possible. This absence is experienced as freedom.