October 10, 2016

October 10, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

If we want to know why we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) we must recognize the circumstances in which they occur. These circumstances exist right now, but they have also existed way back in our past. Our high rates of NVB and our low rates of SVB, which cause our relationship problems, can be explained by the kind of people we have talked with in our past and by the kind of people we are currently still talking with and can’t stop talking with.

If we were most often exposed to those who were having high rates of SVB and low rates of NVB, we would also be having high rates of SVB and low rates of NVB, but the fact is that most of us have been and continue to be exposed to high rates of NVB and low rates of SVB. This is how we acquired our high rates of NVB and of low rates of SVB.

Our behavior is lawful; if it is reinforced, it increases, if it is punished, it decreases. We have had a few instances of SVB, but as long as these instances were not reinforced by others, they were less likely to happen in our future. Likewise, if instances of NVB were not punished, but were reinforced, they were more likely to happen in our future.

It is because SVB is punished and NVB is reinforced that we have such high rates of NVB and such low rates of SVB. The exact same thing can be said about mental health issues. If a person suffers from addiction, neuroses, psychoses or depressive thoughts, we must infer that these behaviors have been and continue to be reinforced. Indeed, unless we trace their behavior to the environments, that is, to the people, who reinforce these behaviors, we have no way of altering these behaviors.

This scientific account of human behavior runs counter to our common belief in an inner agent, which presumably causes us to behave the way we do. Although this matter was emphatically addressed by radical behaviorism, it was never stated that this fictitious belief is a product of NVB. Only in SVB do we admit that we affect each other and are affected by each other, that we bi-directionally influence each other, that behavior is explained by the principle of bi-directional causality.

Our tendency to adhere to uni-directional causality, commonly known as my way or the highway, characterizes NVB in which speakers dominate the listener and speak at, but not with him or her. NVB, in which we describe our feelings and thoughts as causing our actions, prevents us from taking note of the fact that subjective events within our own skin always co-occur with objective events that happen outside of our skin.

We can only articulate what causes our SVB or our NVB during SVB, as in NVB we adhere to our separate roles as speakers and as listeners, which stimulate and maintain our hierarchical social structures. Only in SVB are we allowed to speak with each other as equals. As our private speech can become publicly expressed in SVB, we find that something is directly observable which wasn’t observable before. Actually, we should be saying that something which wasn’t directly audible before, which was never before expressed, is now expressed and thus audible.

As we explore and express, by listening to ourselves while we speak, how we have been affected by previous speakers and are affected by current speakers, we hear the difference between SVB and NVB. We are surprised we all agree on this distinction as we had no idea this would be possible. Only in SVB do we stop inventing inner causes of behavior as the external causes are now emphatically clear to us. We speak not because we decide to speak, but because we can speak and we listen not because we have to listen, but because we want to listen.