April 17, 2016

April 17, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand explains that the laboratory research which was done on rats favor the notion that compulsive and addictive behaviors are schedule-induced, rather than automatically reinforced. “Given that religiosity is strongly linked to compulsive behavior, these laboratory findings suggest that schedule-induced behavior, or susceptibility to it, is perhaps the behavioral primitive for various complex behavior patterns that might include religious behavior” (Trimble, 2007). 

A similar conclusion can be drawn about the two universal response classes that make up the way we talk with one another. However, effortful religious behavior and compulsive behavior belong to the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) category, while effortless religious behavior and effective or sensitive, communication, fall in the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) category. Strand disagrees with John Lennon’s song “Imagine there’s no Heaven” and states that “living a life completely free of religious behavior is perhaps impossible for verbal humans.” 

This writer thinks that this statement makes more sense when it is turned around: living a life free of verbal behavior is impossible for religious humans. Rather than trying to transcend it, effortless religious experience can make us sensitive to and conscious about verbal behavior. 

By listening to ourselves while we speak, we become conscious speakers as our listening happens in the here and now and our sound also happens in the here and now. This turns speech into a meditative act. Our inability to accurately describe sensitive experiences exists as previous environments stimulated us to survive by fleeing, fighting and freezing during our interactions with others. Sure enough we have survived due to NVB, but the comforts of our modern, scientific world stimulate us to develop SVB, the spoken communication in which everyone is complete safe and supported. To continue with NVB is as unintelligent and illiterate as to continue to believe that diseases are caused by evil spirits.