December 28, 2018

Dear Reader,

It is no coincidence that when I perform one of my songs, I first play the melody and only then do I sing the song. The melody is an existing piece of music. I chose it because it sounds good, I resonate with it, and, it is easy enough for me to play on my recorder. When I hear some nice tune, I immediately know if I can play it or not. If I can play it, I like it so much that I am feeling inspired to write my own text to it.

In almost all my songs I sing about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Occasionally, I also write something funny or obnoxious, but, even then, the melody was always selected first. Those are songs which illustrate the workings of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

I perform my songs mostly alone and there is a reason. Only just today I am able to understand how my songs come about. I have my own way of working and I think it is because of that that people seldom invite me to play with them. Sometimes someone asks me, but not very often. I will try to play more often with others in the next year. The fact is, however, only a few people can play with me. Most people are too much into themselves. The music which I play is not about me, but about everyone.

Although I am not a great musician, I know when I get it right and when it sounds good. Often there is too much noise for me to perform well. I do better when people are quiet and attentive. At the Open Mike in Paradise, yesterday evening, there was no sound system as John Michael was out sick. Due to this a different situation had been created. The atmosphere was more intimate and more natural.

The text of my songs are only understood if people take time to experience my sound. Most people can’t play with me because they can’t have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB); I can’t play with people with whom I can’t have SVB. If people were more attuned to me, I think we could play my songs together very well.

In the same way my performance works, so too works SVB; it is the melody which always comes first, the text comes later. To me, it seems as if the music creates the text. Those people who appreciate my music, they learn about SVB from the text, but those who don’t like the music, they find my songs pretty boring, as they are always about the same thing.

Each song is unique; it supports SVB in a way which no other song could. My melodies came from many different composers, who lived in different cultures. Their sound struck a chord in me and inspired me to write a text. Sometimes, when we are dealing with and ancient traditional melody, the composer of the song is unknown, but usually it is someone we have all heard of, like Mozart, Vivaldi or Bach. Each time I have sung my song, like I did yesterday night, I go and search again for a new melody. I spend hours listening to new tunes. It is amazing how much music there is, how many different audiences at different locations have appreciated these great works of art.

The melody tells us more about the function of our verbal behavior than the words we use. It is not the words which are some kind of vehicle that convey a message, but it is the sound which informs us about the emotional experiences which could only occur in certain circumstances. When people talk about the passion, they speak about someone’s ability to create a situation in which what he or she says makes sense due to how he or she says it. Few people know that our belief that our words can be filled with meaning or that our words express our thoughts, is based on the ignorance about the science of human behavior.

Usually, we don’t distinguish between spoken and written words as we consider our words as things, but behaviorism distinguishes between our spoken and our written words precisely because spoken and written words are a function different environments. Moreover, words which are sung, they are, of course, also a function of yet another environment than the words which are spoken or written. Also, it makes a big difference whether you listen to a song which is performed life or on your I-pod at the gym.

When I sing my song after I have played the melody, I have introduced my audience to the environment in which I would like them to hear what I want to say. I sing about what I want to say, so actually, there are three environments: 1) the environment in which I play the music without words, 2) the environment in which that same melody expresses words, and 3) the environment in which we talk and listen to the sound of the words we express, in which we engage in SVB.

All of this is needed to experience that in talking we are not, as speakers, using our words. Words are not, as is so often erroneously believed, tools or things we use. Words are verbal behavior, which is stimulated and reinforced under certain circumstances. Only if we pay attention to the sound of what we say do we experience that speaking and listening are behaviors, which in NVB occur at incongruent rates. Only in SVB, in which we listen to ourselves while we speak, can speaking and listening occur at the same rate.

Another important aspect of bringing attention to the sound of what we say is that usually we think we talk about the physical world (our car, our children, our house, our guns, etc.) or we think that we talk about something that has happened to us (some experience, some event or some development). When we do this, our words presumably represent our ideas, feelings, thoughts and experiences. By talking, we are trying to deal with whatever we think we are going through or whatever has happened to us. What nobody seems to notice is that in NVB, we behave verbally in such a way as if our words go from us to our environment.

We presumably describe things, we name things, we express what has happened or what is happening. We are so convinced that we speak about the reality and we think that we refer to our past experiences and we emphasize the importance of certain aspects of life, which supposedly are more important than others.

Our words seldom if ever express the way in which our environment actually causes them. Due to how we were conditioned, we don’t realize that our verbal behavior doesn’t and can’t cause our reality and that only natural events, environmental stimuli, can cause our verbal behavior. The direction of our verbal behavior, therefore, is not from us (as speakers), to our environment (to the listeners), but from the environment (from the listener) to us (to the speaker)!!! Skinner defines Verbal Behavior (1957) as an indirect action; the listener is needed to mediate the consequences; that is to say, the listener is needed to reinforce the speaker. The reason that we appreciate songs which elicit emotional experiences is that music allows us to trace the environments from which our verbal behavior has emerged. By listening to beautiful music, it is as if we, as speakers, feel that we are finally being listened to….

December 30, 2018

Dear Reader,

Most likely you will not appreciate my strong opinion that I think that you don’t understand Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). This is probably the main reason why hardly anyone knows about it. I do everything in my ability to let others know about SVB, but the reality is that only a few people are learning about it from me.

You would think that everyone would like to know about SVB, but this is not true. People are offended when I let them know that I know something which they don’t know. I can’t help it that things are this way: I am the only one who teaches SVB and unless people are learning it from me, they will miss out.

The few people, who know more or less as much as I do, are known to me, but not to you. They face the same situation as I do. (By the way, I don’t claim to know all there is to know on SVB, as I learn more about it every day in my conversations with others). My ability to write this text is a result of that. Those who experience and understand SVB will also have to let others know they know something nobody has yet properly explained (not even behaviorists).

This writing is not about explaining to you what SVB is (I do that in other writings)! This writing is to let you know that you don’t know what SVB is!!! Please, don’t be offended or fearful, just contact me and talk with me so that I can explain it to you. I promise you will not regret it; SVB will totally change your life!!! I look forward to engaging in SVB with you in 2018.

December 31, 2018

Dear Reader,

I can’t help it that you trust people, who can’t be trusted, but reject me, who is really reaching out to you. It is your loss, not mine, that you miss out on the opportunity to be engaged in ongoing Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I will reach others instead and I am not waiting for you.

The time that I was waiting for you is over. I wanted you to be open to me and learn from me, but, at this point, I don’t care about you anymore. Of course, I am disappointed, I want you to know how I feel. If you read this, you should know that I am talking about you.

Your Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is outdated, insensitive, unintelligent, superficial, superstitious, boring, phony and pathetic. If you would talk with me, you would agree. The only way you can continue with your malicious way of talking is by refusing to talk with me. I will immediately stop you from doing what you have been doing for lifetimes. My ability to do this has no relation to what you are used to. As you talk with me, you will know that what you were used to is a thing of the past.

Once you know about the SVB/NVB distinction, you will realize that there is no future anymore for NVB. Surely, you will still continue with your NVB, but it will never be the same anymore like it used to. Once you have tasted the possibility of ongoing SVB, you cannot go back to NVB.

After you have experienced how wonderful it is to engage in SVB, you will try to stop your own NVB even though you don’t know how to do it. Even though you will fail again and again, you will have to fail to in order to get it right and you will have to acknowledge each time you fail until you know how NVB works.

You don’t need to know how SVB works, but you absolutely need to know how NVB works. SVB is simple and self-evident, but NVB is a complicated mess. You can refuse to talk with me, but you cannot refuse to talk with yourself. There is a part of you which you are unable to talk or connect with, which you can only talk and connect with if you have SVB with me or with others.

You have thrown away the best part of yourself. I or someone else didn’t take it away from you, but you have squandered it, you have left it, you have abandoned it without even knowing what you have done. I couldn’t help but find it, as you are not the only one who did what you did. There are millions like you, who don’t know how to be at peace with themselves . You are nothing special; your loss is a sad, but common tragedy.

I am able to find SVB everywhere as nobody seems to want it. Don’t ask me to appreciate your NVB, to accept you, to validate you, to respect you or to support you. I don’t, I can’t and I will not appreciate your NVB. Your life is not my life. In NVB you cannot be alive, happy and conscious. I am not responsible for what you do to yourself and to others with your NVB.

You ought to be alarmed by what I write. If you are not alarmed, you are hopeless. If you take offense to me or to anyone else who knows it better than you, that is good, that means you are not totally gone yet. SVB will revive you from your lukewarm way of life. SVB reveals something you didn’t and couldn’t know. As we will talk, you will feel refreshing and positive energy.

I am here to support you in being happy, to stimulate you to listen to yourself while you speak and to live the life you want to live. I am here to have SVB with you in which we both know we engage in genuine conversation. I am here to let you know that the difference between SVB and NVB is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious way of life. I don’t care about your fame, power, laws, wealth, degrees, books,, weapons, morals or your so-called achievements. I am here to stop your NVB and to put a permanent end to the misery it has created.

January 1, 2018

Dear Reader,

In the same way that there is always something to say, there is also always something to write. There would be so much more to say and to write if only someone would encourage us to say what we want to say and to listen to ourselves while we speak, so that we can actually experience and enjoy what we are saying and if that same person would also encourage us to write about that experience, so that we will read what we are writing, read while we are writing and experience the joy of writing what we want to write, what are able to write and what are able to say.

The relationship between speaking and listening and reading and writing has gotten lost as we, as speakers, don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, but want others to listen to us, and, as we, as writers, want other readers to read what we presumably are saying, but we don’t read our own work, except with a lot of judgements and self-criticism. As we participate in social media, we write more nowadays than before, but we still have a sense of shame around enjoying our own verbal behavior. Our only short-lived relief is when other people approve of it, by liking it or loving it.

This written kind of validation, however, this kind of attention, which is also expressed by all sorts of official papers, diplomas, certificates and contracts, is the wrong kind of attention. It may bring us status and fame, we may sell a lot of books and we may end up being influential speakers, leaders, opinion-makers and trendsetters, but none of this ever results in the kind of speech in which we can all be totally content.

Sadly, almost all our speaking and writing behavior is a function of something which isn’t right, something which is wrong, something which is lacking or lost. Although, of course, also this writing is about the joy that has gotten lost in most of our speaking and our writing, this writing is caused by my joy of speaking. Most people probably will readily dismiss this in the same way that they dismiss my joy of speaking, in the same way that they dismiss their own joy of speaking.

My joy of speaking and writing has made me speak and write more as I know about the way of speaking and writing which I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and, which my friend Richard Weismann recently described as Sound Writing Behavior (SWB). Most people unfortunately don’t engage in SVB and SWB, but they mainly engage in NVB and NWB. Nobody is to be blamed for this, as we are all conditioned by our current environments to be and to remain like this.

Most people don’t know we can only learn about NVB by engaging in SVB. We can only recognize and not be bothered by NWB if we have engaged in SVB so that we recognize the SWB which is, of course, always about SVB. People get depressed reading so much NWB these days as they have acquired the self-defeating belief that SWB can lead to a decrease in NWB and that trying to have SVB, trying to have nice, good, intelligent, meaningful, respectful, open, sensitive, peaceful, effective, stimulating, joyful conversation, will decrease NVB and increase SVB. This is absolutely wrong; we have never increased our SVB by trying to have it and we have never increased our SWB by trying to have more SWB with those who only keep writing about more and more NWB.

Once we find out about the SVB/NVB distinction, we realize that even our greatest writers have written what they wrote as they too didn’t and couldn’t engage in SVB. In other words, they have only tried to produce SWB and NVB has only continued to produce more and more NWB. Surely, many of these supposedly wise men (yes, they are mostly men!) have been the founders of various religious traditions and philosophies, which have perpetuated nothing but superstition and human catastrophes. None of our scriptures or sacred texts could create a world in which people would happily engage in ongoing SVB.

Our written books didn’t and couldn’t produce any SVB. They were all NWB, which derived from the author's involvement in NVB. References which were made about SVB were always wrong descriptions of what SVB is. During SVB we are not trying to have SVB; when we produce SWB, we are not trying to produce SWB. To the contrary, when we engage in SVB, we thoroughly enjoy it because it is possible and as we write SWB, we delight in writing and reading SWB, since we are absolutely sure that it is our written version of SVB.

January 2, 2018

Dear Reader,

Your unwillingness to explore this, your inability to acknowledge this, your tendency to think that any speaker is having Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by him or herself, is, of course, perpetuated by our NVB. In SVB we would explore this, acknowledge this and agree on this, but SVB keeps being made impossible due to our history with NVB. Rather than saying that there is something wrong with our history of NVB, it is more effective to fully acknowledge that this history is really there and is making us believe in many things which aren’t true. 

Let me tell you about the great paradox of SVB. Once you discover that SVB is possible, you will be amazed about the fact that nobody is having it. You will be infuriated, overwhelmed, saddened, frustrated and disappointed that everybody keeps backing out of it. Each time this happens, you again engage in NVB, but as your understanding about SVB increases, your NVB private speech decreases and you will find you are less and less upset that nobody cares about SVB.

As you no longer dread and try to change the reality, you become slowly, but surely, aware of the colossal truth that you are alone! Your aloneness has always been distorted by your involvement in NVB. For a while, your were still thinking that SVB would solve all your problems and negative feelings having to do with aloneness. By having genuine interaction with others you believed your aloneness would dissolve.

Everyone has an ideal they believe in and often these ideals are expressed as spiritual aspirations. We may not know about SVB, but we have a sense of what is possible if we would get along in peace and harmony. Once we understand how SVB works, we realize that nobody wants it as it can only be had by those who are willing to accept that they are and remain alone with themselves. The connection we make with each other during SVB doesn’t change anything about our aloneness, except that it makes us more aware about it in a way that we no longer will try to change it.

Our SVB with others (public speech) has inevitably resulted in SVB with ourselves (private speech) and this is the only way in which we can come to terms with our aloneness. There is, however, an important difference between expressing private speech publicly in SVB with others, who can then respond to it and expressing private speech publicly in SVB, but only to ourselves, so that we ourselves can then respond to it.

SVB reveals to us there will always be an end to or a limitation of expressing our private speech to others publicly, but there is no end to expressing our private speech publicly to ourselves. Unless we die, we will continue to have a conversation with ourselves. Our exploration and knowledge of our conversation with ourselves is, of course, only as real and useful as our exploration of our conversation with others has been.

January 3, 2018

Dear Reader,

Today 2018 is still new, but soon it will be old again. The jolly hype of the ‘Happy Holidays’ dies down and everything will be back to normal. People only seem to have an occasion to be nice to each once a year. We are not allowed to have ‘too much of a good thing’ and although we have had a little bit of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), it wouldn’t last, no matter what our new year’s resolutions might have been.

People generally don’t realize that their behavior is determined, not by an autonomous self, but by the environment which stimulates and maintains it. Time magazine had as the ‘Person of the Year’ the many women who spoke out against sexual harassment. These women are temporarily elevated to hero-status as they have endured and overcome great adversities. However, anyone who knows about the science of human behavior can see the problem involved with the #metoo-campaign: we only celebrate negatively reinforced, but not positively reinforced behavior.

Obviously, speaking out and speaking up is a form of counter-control elicited by aversive behavior control. Thus, the whole issue of ‘pushing back’, ‘raising your voice’ and ‘speaking truth to power’ always involves NVB. People like to believe that change is happening, but in reality NVB continues at a higher response rate than before. The good thing is that these powerful people got called on their abusive behavior as people nowadays talk more together on social media and felt supported to acknowledge what is really happening.

Social media can play a big role in bringing about real change if people begin to understand the difference between SVB and NVB and their written counterparts Sound Writing Behavior (SWB) and Noxious Writing Behavior (NWB). The difference between these two ways of talking and writing matters as SVB and SWB are controlled by positive reinforcement and NVB and NWB are controlled by negative reinforcement. Many other behaviors will change once we create and maintain the environments which allow us to shift our NVB and NWB to SVB and SWB. This change in the way in which we communicate heralds he end of mankind’s unaddressed, misunderstood, destructive cycle of aversive control versus counter-control.

January 4, 2018

Dear Reader,

The person who discriminates Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), of course, is also capable of recognizing the written version of SVB, Sound Writing Behavior (SWB) and the written version of NVB, Noxious Writing Behavior (NWB).

To those who discriminate SVB and NVB it is obvious that someone with a history of reinforcement who is more capable of engaging in SVB, has an entirely different behavioral repertoire than someone, who, due to his or her history of reinforcement engages more in NVB. 

As we become more familiar with the great difference between SVB and NVB, we will find it pragmatic to also speak of Sound Singing Behavior (SSB), Sound Gardening Behavior (SGB), Sound Cooking Behavior (SCB) and Sound Studying Behavior (SStB) as well as its opposites.

Noxious Singing Behavior (NSB) would involve singing in which the singer is trying to impress the audience, but is not him or herself enjoying to sing; noxious Gardening Behavior (NGB) is the kind of gardening which is viewed by the gardener as work rather than as an opportunity to enjoy being in nature; Noxious Cooking Behavior (NCB) is the slamming together of a meal without love or care so that we can stuff ourselves with food; and, Noxious Studying Behavior (NSB) is when the student studies out of fear of failing, but not because he or she is interested in the topic which he or she is studying.

January 5, 2018

Dear Reader,

I want to elaborate on the process of learning about two patterns of vocal verbal behavior: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Each time someone is introduced to these two categories he or she immediately seems to be having a preference for SVB and an aversion against NVB. Once people understand, and, more importantly, experience the great difference between SVB and NVB, they are in favor of SVB, but repulsed by NVB.

When people are first beginning to take note of the SVB/NVB distinction, they are surprised to find out they all have the exact same preference for SVB and resistance to NVB. This is no coincidence as we are talking about innate or phylogenetic behavior. It is important we recognize that, unknowingly, we have biologically determined patterns of vocal verbal behavior, which may supersede any contingencies of reinforcement that are imposed by a trainer. Stated differently, the SVB/NVB distinction deals with the biological constrains on instrumental learning.

One of the biggest challenges posed by the SVB/NVB distinction is that people want to learn about SVB, but they don’t want to learn about NVB. However, it makes no sense to learn about SVB in the absence of learning about NVB. The only way in which we are going to be able to learn about SVB is if we can overcome our resistance to investigating NVB.

In “Hedonics and the Selective Associations, Biological Constraint on Learning” (2015), Weiss & Panlilio explain Breeland’s (1961) racoon, who wasn’t “acting in accordance with their programmed reinforcement contingency” as “consistent with generally applicable, if more complex, general learning principles”, but they also write: the "...influence ... of...the conditioned motivational state in which the instrumental conditioning was conducted and the motivational state that was conditioned by presentations of the reinforcer must be considered" (Domjan, 1983, p. 264).

If we go back to the problems involved in learning about NVB, we do well to consider NVB as a special case of “problem behavior”. The racoon (Breeland, 1961), who could only with great difficulty be taught to drop tokens into a slot for positive reinforcement, didn’t, of course, all of a sudden make Thorndike’s empirical Law of Effect (1911) obsolete. As Domjan (1983) argues “From this perspective, misbehavior and other apparent biological constraints on learning have strengthened general-process theory by encouraging it to deal functionally with the complete learning situation. Generalizations thus developed are concerned with more detailed features of a learning situation, rather than the simplistic interchangeability of cues, responses and reinforcers.”

Reading this paper makes clear why behaviorists have until now overlooked, and, we should say, due to bias for visual stimuli, over-listened, the two universally occurring response classes: interaction among members of different status in the dominance hierarchy (NVB) and interaction among members of equal status (SVB). Behaviorists haven’t been able to learn anything about NVB and SVB, as it requires attention for “the complete learning situation”, that is, the simultaneous consideration of respondent as well as operant conditioning processes. As Skinner emphasizes mostly operant conditioning, behaviorists are often not very inclined to study the selective association literature. As it turns out, this literature can further explain the SVB/NVB distinction.

January 6, 2018

Dear Reader,

No matter what your thoughts or feelings about this topic may be, you will eventually have to learn about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These different ways of talking are not going away. You may be able to continue to pretend they are not important, but you are wrong. SVB is more important than you think and NVB is giving you more trouble than you know.

This writing is not causing the trouble you already have. I am upfront and get to the issue right away. The situation is confusing and clarity is only possible for those who know about the distinction between SVB and NVB. As long as you haven’t learned about this distinction, your knowledge about relationship and interaction is wrong. You are probably upset with my words, as I possess the certainty and directness which you lack.

I write to let you know that I can teach you to have the skill I have. Once you will know the difference between SVB and NVB, you have acquired that skill. Right now, you think you are engaging in SVB, while in fact you are engaging in NVB. Also, you think you engage in NVB, while you engage in SVB. Although SVB and NVB are everyday occurrences, you have no clue what is what. You must ask yourself: why is my version of what I believe to be SVB, NVB? And, why is my version of what I believe to be NVB, SVB?

Who you claim to be as a speaker isn’t true, since you don’t know who you are. However, if you know who you are, you can and will, like me, claim that what you say is true: You are NOT the NVB speaker, you are only the SVB speaker!!! Although you engaged in NVB many times, you were never the NVB speaker. Although you have believed to be the NVB speaker, you are relieved not to be the NVB speaker. Once you know about the SVB/NVB distinction, you realize that people only pretend to be NVB speakers as they don’t know they can be and are only SVB speakers.

Once you learn about the SVB/NVB distinction, you will feel validated in the belief which you have always had that the NVB speaker is not a speaker!!! Although the NVB speaker claims to be a speaker and makes him or herself heard everywhere, only SVB speakers know this belief is based on ignorance. The SVB speaker, who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, listens to others in the exact same way as he or she listens to him or herself, but the NVB speaker, who doesn’t listen to him or herself, forces others to listen to him or her. The NVB speaker isn’t a speaker as he or she neither listens to him or herself nor does he or she ever really listen to anybody else.

The SVB/NVB distinction teaches us what it is like to be an authentic speaker. SVB speakers speak_with the listener, who is then invited to also be a SVB speaker, but NVB speakers speak_at the listener, who is then only capable of engaging in NVB with such a speaker. NVB speech must not to be considered as speech as NVB speakers dominate, intimidate, humiliate, drain, exploit, oppress, force, disrespect, alienate, separate, distract, overwhelm and dis-regulate the listener. As only SVB speakers take turns with the listener and share control of the conversation with the other SVB speakers, they always mutually reinforce each other.

 Dear Reader,

The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction is system of thought which came about as the speaker began to listen to him or herself while he or she spoke. At the time that the speaker began to listen to him or herself while he or she spoke, he or she was alone. Thus, there was no distraction from other speakers when the speaker began to listen to the sound of his or her thoughts and feelings. The words spoken by this speaker gave him or her the opportunity to hear his or her sound.

Other speakers are asked to do the same thing. They are stimulated to be alone, talk out loud and listen to the sound of their own voice while they speak. It will not take long before the speaker is able to recognize that he or she vocally only has two responses: he or she produces a sound which he or she likes or he or she produces a sound which he or she dislikes. These two responses are single instances of a response class.

As the speaker explores the great difference in sound of his or her thoughts and feelings, he or she realizes his or her sounds are in fact responses to different, but common sources of influence in the environment. When speakers produce SVB, they respond happily as listeners to the sound of their own voice, which they experience as a reinforcing stimulus. However, each time when speakers produce NVB, they experience the sound of their own voice as an aversive stimulus.

In the study of behavior, the unit of analysis is the response class. These individually observed response classes are constituent parts of a whole phenomenon that serves as a basis for experimental study. Unless we acknowledge how we as speakers are affected by our own voice, something essential will be lacking in our analysis of how we as speakers affect the listener.

If we as speakers are aversively affected by the sound of our own voice, other listeners must be negatively affected as well. Other listeners will only be positively affected by the sound of the speaker’s voice if that speaker experiences the sound of his or her own voice as an appetitive stimulus. This reasoning is from the listener’s perspective, that is, it was made possible by the speaker who was listening to him or herself.

The speaker who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks spends time alone talking out loud so that he or she experiences how he or she is affected by his or her own sound. Such a speaker will only to take note of what the listener experiences if such a speaker takes turns with the listener, that is, if such a speaker can listen to the listener as a speaker. In NVB public speech there is no turn-taking between the speaker and listener. The same is true for NVB private speech.

In public speech there are distinct speakers and listeners, but in our private speech there is only our speaking and listening behavior. Since in NVB public speech the roles of speakers and listeners are fixed and are hierarchically separated, we experience this separation of the speaker and listener in our private speech as well. Naturally, there is no speaker inside of us and there is no listener. This means that in NVB public and private speech our speaking and listening behavior occur at different rates, but that only in SVB these two repertoires can be synchronized and joined.

We can only figure out this conundrum inductively as we as speakers will give ourselves permission to talk out loud with ourselves. What has been described as our inner dialogue of course relates to the different rates of our speaking and listening behavior of our private speech, which derived from our involvement in NVB. By talking out loud alone, we hear that we produce a different sound when our speaking and our listening behavior occur at the same rates (in SVB) or at different rates (in NVB) and we get clear this effect was always related to the sound of safety or of threat.

By talking out loud alone, we can finally discriminate the two response classes SVB and NVB. By bringing out our private speech into our public speech and by listening the sound of our voice, we realize that what appeared to be a speaker (or various speakers) inside of us was in fact of course only always our speaking or listening behavior which occurred at different rates.

It may initially appear as if we can now let the listener speak and as if the speaker can now let go and let the listener do some of the talking. It may seem as if the speaker finally listens and as if the listener at long last feels safe enough to begin to speak, but what we are really doing, when we are talking out loud, is that we synchronize our speaking and our listening behavior. Thus, we discover SVB is possible and that NVB can be stopped and we explore and become familiar with the environment in which this can and will occur.

January 7, 2018

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading, studying, thinking and talking about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It must have occurred to you that the thoughts and feelings you have articulated and listened to are no longer the same as the thoughts and feelings which remained unexpressed. In SVB, you will not only express your private speech, but you also listen to the sound of it.

In NVB our private speech is not even allowed to be expressed in public speech. We inevitably get stuck with NVB private speech as NVB speakers endlessly force and accuse each other that we are causing our own behavior. This fallacy has been around for a long time. However, we are neither causing our SVB nor our NVB and so, we are also neither causing our SVB private speech nor our NVB private speech. It is impossible to be stuck with SVB private speech. To the extent we have been involved in SVB, it will have a regulating affect even if we are with NVB speakers.

Speaking and listening should be considered together in the same as breathing out and breathing in. If we talk, we do so on an outgoing breath and if we listen, we become focused on ingoing breath to the point that we become still and that our breathing is deep and calm. It makes no sense to think of speaking and listening behaviors as separate. It is only due to our repeated involvement in NVB that we keep thinking of them as separate. Although we may think of them as separate, they are not separate and thinking of them as separate maintains many of our problems.

Speaking only makes sense to the extent that we are listening and listening only makes sense to the extent that we are speaking. However, in NVB the speaker prevents the listener from speaking or forces him or her to speak in a manner that is determined by him or by her. Thus, in NVB the speaker and the listener are separated by their specific place in the dominance hierarchy. NVB is speech which occurs between those who view themselves and others as superior or inferior.

Unlike NVB speakers, who try to dominate and outdo each other and struggle to get each other’s attention, SVB speakers take turns with their listeners, who will also then speak as SVB speakers. In other words, NVB speakers continuously elicit NVB speech, while SVB speakers only evoke SVB speech. Stated differently, NVB always speakers trigger respondent or reflexive behavior in the listener, who will then speak as a NVB speaker, but only SVB speakers can emancipate their listeners into becoming SVB speakers like themselves.

The SVB speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, that is, he or she tracks how he or she is affected by his or her own sound and this allows him or her to monitor how he or she affects the listener. The SVB speaker accurately discriminates when he or she or others produce NVB or SVB and is capable of tracing how the occurrence of one or the other is a function of variables in the environment. Rather than making SVB happen, the SVB speaker knows about the environment in which SVB can and will happen, but he or she also recognizes without any drama the environment in which only NVB can and will happen.

I know how to arrange environments in which SVB can and will happen. What I know can also be known by you. To learn it, you must verify what I write. I urge you to spend time by yourself talking out loud and listening to the sound of your thoughts and your feelings. By creating the environment in which you can safely and calmly express your own private speech in public speech (what you say to yourself can potentially be heard by others), you will become familiar with your ability to have SVB. As you read this text and you use these words to listen to your own sound, you will find it very easy, effortless and enjoyable.

January 8, 2018

Dear Reader,

I went through an arduous process before I became capable of writing and speaking about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in its current form. When I first discovered it, I didn’t know anything about radical behaviorism. I believed, like everyone else, that I was causing my own behavior. I thought I was responsible for producing SVB. Although I longed to engage in it, I kept getting involved in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as I had no idea that it was my environment which caused me to engage either in SVB or in NVB.

For a long time, I felt burdened knowing that SVB was possible and beneficial, but my knowledge about it was totally inaccurate. It wasn’t until I learned about operant conditioning, which is explained by the three-term contingency: Stimulus, Response and Consequence, that I became aware of environmental antecendent stimuli, which either set the stage for SVB or NVB, the response, which is then followed by postcedents or consequences, which will then make SVB or NVB more or less likely to occur in the future.

We must acquire basic scientific understanding about how our behavior is determined, not by us, as some behavior-causing agent, but by consequences which follow our behavior. Behaviors which occur at a high response rate are behaviors that are reinforced. If we often engage in NVB, we must be in environments in which this behavior is reinforced, but, if SVB occurs at a low response rate, we must be in environments in which this behavior is not very often reinforced.

This contingency-based way of thinking makes it easy for us to learn to have more SVB and less NVB. We engage in SVB or in NVB as we find ourselves in the environments in which one or the other is reinforced. This means there is no need at all to try to have SVB. If we are having SVB together, this simply means that we are somehow reinforcing it, but if we keep having NVB, it means that we are together reinforcing NVB. We will reliably acquire novel or more effective behavior and decrease any ineffective or unwanted behavior, as our behavior is being reinforced or not.

I don’t think we need to learn how to reinforce SVB or how to not reinforce NVB. We need to take note of when we are engaging in SVB or in NVB as this is when we are reinforcing one or the other. We will be effortlessly able to have more SVB, once we reinforce it. Currently we don’t reinforce it. As we realize how different it is to reinforce NVB or SVB, we will change our environment. As we witness the great difference between SVB and NVB, we will reinforce only SVB.
 
Dear Reader,

You can only come to know about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by learning about it from me or from someone who has learned it from me. I know it sounds preposterous to say that I know something which nobody knows, but once you talk with me I guarantee that you will agree it is true. You can only learn about SVB by fully acknowledging, admitting and accepting that you don’t know anything about it.

Learning about SVB always starts with not knowing. You will not be able to understand it immediately, but you can experience it without understanding it. I know that you insist on understanding it and that if you can’t understand it, you will not consider it, but I urge you to experience without understanding it. You will understand it only after you have experienced it. This is how SVB, genuine human interaction, works. I am not saying that understanding is not important, but this understanding comes out of your experience.

If there had really been someone who you could totally trust, who knew exactly how to stimulate you so that you would reliably experience SVB, who was capable of pointing out to you that knowing about SVB is secondary to experiencing it, you would be having SVB already. Fact is, however, such a person was never there. It is very hard for us to acknowledge that this is actually the case: nobody knew about SVB!

We have learned some bits and pieces of SVB and we may occasionally have experienced fleeting moments of it, but we never had it continuously, deliberately and skillfully. Those who have taught us about how to communicate didn’t know anything about SVB. So, we have never for any extended period of time been exposed to someone who could teach us about SVB. Such reinforcing exposure is absolutely necessary.

SVB is not a course in miracles. Those who believe in causation of behavior by a divine entity are equally unfit to learn about SVB as those who adhere to the myth of a behavior-causation inner self. The laws of human behavior don’t depend on your superstitions. SVB is simply a skill which will only be acquired if it is reinforced by someone who knows how to do that. Right now you are mainly reinforced for having NVB. Consequently, your NVB happens at a high response rate. SVB happens at such a low response rate as it is seldom reinforced. Once we know this we can take the drama out of many of our problems and conflicts.

January 9, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am reading a second time from the “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense if we construe antecedents as “discriminative stimuli or signs which alert the organism to the presence or availability of a particular contingency (behavior-consequence relation).” A SVB speaker’s voice sounds totally different from a NVB speaker’s voice. The sound of the speaker’s voice informs the listener if the contingency for SVB or NVB is going to be available.

Antecedent stimuli are also addressed as “establishing conditions”, “an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus”, as “a state of deprivation, which give to subsequent events their reinforcing (incentive) or disinforcing (disincentive) properties as the case may be.” At any given moment people are hungry to hear the voice of a leader, who sounds strong, simple, superior, rigid, dominant and in control or of someone, who sounds sensitive, flexible, complex, open and sophisticated.

Whenever “the organism’s behavioral propensities are shaped or honed by past experience of the immediate consequences of behaving in that way in one’s own case” behaviorists talk about “contingency-shaped behavior.” Thus, SVB is “contingency-shaped”, as in SVB speakers are immediately positively reinforced. NVB, by contrast, is “rule-governed behavior” as it is “controlled by a verbal specification of the relevant antecedent-behavior-consequence relation.” The nonverbal sound, facial expression or gestures of the NVB speaker, but also their verbal behavior, specifies the “antecedent-behavior-consequence relation”. In other words, NVB is elicited or respondent behavior, but SVB is emitted or operant behavior. Only SVB is mediated behavior as NVB is controlled nonverbally.

Dear Reader,

I am reading from “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

Whenever two or more individuals interact, they will either create and maintain an environment in which they reinforce their equal or their unequal status. In the case of the former, they engage in SVB, but in the case of the latter, they engage in NVB. Place describes the relation between the three “terms” as follows: “(A) A set of Antecedent conditions which call for (B) some Behavior to be emitted or omitted by an organism (the ‘owner’ of the contingency) and (C) the actual or anticipated Consequences of so behaving.”

What is to be emitted or omitted is, of course, NOT determined by the speaker, but by the “owner of the contingency,” which is BOTH the speaker as well as the listener. Place, however, who considers the speaker as the “owner of the contingency” refers to NVB, in which the speaker dominates the listener. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker and the listener take turns, which means: the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. In effect, they own the contingency together and share control over the conversation. Stated differently, in SVB speakers and listeners mutually reinforce each other, but in NVB only the speakers are reinforced by the listeners.
In SVB neither the speaker nor the listener is having any concern about what is emitted or omitted, but in NVB the speaker and the listener are continuously preoccupied with what is to be emitted or omitted. In other words, in SVB there is no restriction at all on what is to be emitted, but in NVB what is emitted or omitted is always determined NVB by the speaker.

Dear Reader,

As long as I have known about the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I have been trying to talk about it. A selection process has occurred which made it more and more clear why most professional people don’t want to talk with me or with those who have learned about these universal response classes.

My insistence on talking about SVB is related to the growing certainty that I and those who explore it with me have come to know something, which others are ashamed to admit they don’t know anything about. It is embarrassing to fully comprehend our continuous involvement in NVB. Our biggest chagrin is not what we have done to each other, but what we have done to ourselves. We dread becoming self-conscious.

The fact is, however, that only in NVB our private speech is at odds with our public speech. Rather than feeling mortified about and resistant to the possibility of expressing our private speech in our public speech, in SVB we experience an ongoing sense of relief and wonder and sheer joy as we have finally stopped our struggle. Once we engage in SVB, we know for sure that we were merely pretending to be NVB speakers.

January 10, 2018

Dear Reader,

The problem is NOT that you can’t change from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but that you don’t know about SVB and NVB, and, therefore, you don’t really know about how your behavior actually works. Even the most supposedly intelligent individuals keep selecting NVB, but they can’t engage in SVB as long as they haven’t studied the difference between SVB and NVB.

The conditions which are necessary to discriminate SVB and NVB and the environments in which they occur cannot be created or maintained as long as you keep being trapped by NVB. Stated differently, the necessary interchange between the organism and the environment is gravely impaired due to how you speak. Neither your fanatic belief in some higher power nor your desperate belief in yourself, neither your grandiose confidence, your so-called identity, your over-rated values and morals, your boring politics, your criminal intelligence, your outdated knowledge, your reactionary gut-feelings, your greedy psychic powers or your commercial talent or your utterly disempowering genetic pre-deposition, could stop your NVB, but SVB can and is already doing it. 

The fact that you are not part of this new movement is not your fault. It is part of a long respondent or Pavlovian history for which nobody is to be blamed. Your tendency to engage again and again in NVB is because your speaking and your listening behavior is under control of environmental stimuli which make operant learning of SVB impossible! Your NVB speech is reactionary as it is elicited by aversive stimuli!!!

Dear Reader,

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is eventually going to be selected as its consequences are far better than your Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although you don’t know this, your knowledge about SVB is bound to outcompete your ignorance of NVB. Moreover, your unwillingness to learn from others about NVB is already repeatedly being exposed, challenged and dissolved by their SVB. Your stubborn refusal to talk is a failed attempt to conceal your bias and ignorance.

The shaping and maintenance of SVB is an essential aspect of becoming a more sophisticated, modern human being. Whether you know about SVB or not depends on whether you participate in it or not. It is your loss if you don’t want to learn about SVB, as those who know about it will refuse to talk with you. They will not reinforce your NVB anymore as they experience the great relief of not talking with you. 

Your NVB explanations can’t explain SVB. Those who know about natural selection realize why you can’t help it that you want to hang on to your fabrications. They are not trying to convince you. They will move on without you. They don’t need you. They have an adaptive advantage you miss out on. Their way of life remains unknown to you as you can’t relate to them. It only seems you have the power to refuse to talk with them, but the fact is: they refuse to engage in NVB with you, as you can’t engage in SVB with them.

January 11, 2018

Dear Reader,

Once you know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), you realize how dumb Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is. To have more SVB, it is necessary that you recognize and withdraw from NVB. Initially, it still may seem as if you are missing out on something, but, as your ability to engage in SVB increases, you understand that NVB is a hoax, a hype, a deception. The word hoax comes from hocus pocus, disguising what is actually happening; NVB is meaningless talk.

NVB is an act intended to deceive and trick you into obedience. While you are engaged in it, you are never allowed to talk about how it works. No matter how hard you keep trying, as long as you remain engaged in it you can’t talk about it. Only this realization will take away from NVB. The moment you realize this, you will engage in SVB, naturally and effortlessly. The moment you shift from NVB to SVB, you have broken the spell. There is no way back. You must learn SVB. 

The NVB speaker’s perceived superiority as well the NVB speaker’s perceived inferiority have historically always been (and continuous to be) established by fraudulent means. Throughout history human beings have always struggled with each other as they have endlessly tried to dominate and exploit each other. Those in authority, in one way or another, have always fabricated and trumped up their ascendancy. There has never been any agreement among those who presumably were first, second or third class.

The inferior as well as the superior NVB speakers are all liars, schemers, pretenders and swindlers. NVB speakers will always betray each other while giving the impression of trustworthiness. Inferior NVB speakers aren’t any better as superior NVB speakers. They may seem to be humble, modest and willing to sacrifice, but they literally step over dead bodies, they will use their so-called spirituality, their mindfulness, their simplicity and kindness to be holier than others.

January 12, 2018

Dear Reader,

I keep having remarkably vivid, happy dreams about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I just woke up from such a dream. It seems to me as if I am only dreaming about SVB these days. Every day is filled with SVB and so are my dreams. I want you to know that this wasn’t always the case. It has only been in the last couple of weeks that this has begun to occur and it is only just now that I took note of it. I used to have incredibly paranoid and tormenting dreams. They were nightmares really in which everything which could go wrong went wrong. It was a relief to wake up from such fearful dreams, but those terrible dreams back then filled me with a sense of impending doom.

The changes which have happened to me and are happening every day, are also going to happen to you once you begin to engage in SVB regularly. Like I stated, this wasn’t always the case either. I used to want to have SVB, but not have it, but now I that I am having it every day, I am amazed to find I no longer long for it. There was a time when my life was a anxious and disorderly mess, but now my days are filled with beautiful conversations, friends, music, study, work, nature and writings like these. If today would be the last day of my life, I would die happily.

A tremendous reversal has been taking place. I used to be involved in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and I would argue with just about everyone. The greatest injustice, as far as I could see, was that everyone was so very convinced that they were right, but that I was wrong. Also, it seemed so unfair that with me it was always obvious I was wrong. I have always admitted my wrong doings and even though I tried to lie as child, I was always found out. At the same time, it was unacceptable to me that those who were mean, forceful and dishonest, seemed to be right and could continue doing what they were doing without me. Presumably, I was the one who made all the mistakes and I was punished, rejected, avoided and silenced each time I had angrily protested and spoken out.

In the dream I just woke up from, I was talking with people who had previously ridiculed me. They had read my writings and were asking what it meant. I was at long last having the conversation with them which I had been asking for so many times, but which they had refused. They had studied my writings and had come prepared with some questions. They were holding the printed versions of my writings in their hands and were tightly holding on to it as if this was going to be their final proof that I was wrong and that they were right. They thought they had the evidence in their hands and as they spoke, they read my text from the paper. My response was similar to what I had written and as they listened to me, they slowly looked up, lowered their papers and begun to really talk. We engaged in SVB. They now read my writings out loud while they engaged in SVB with me and they expressed their awe about that it didn’t matter at all whether they read my writing or talked with me.

January 13, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am looking for a committee of established behavioral scientists, who will award me the Ph.D. in behaviorism for my discovery and formulation of the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Do you know someone who is courageous and sincere enough to explore, verify and videotape this construct together with me and say four or five others? The committee members first have to become face book friends with me, then will have a skype conversation with me and they will listen on Walden III to ALL the videos about SVB. Also, they will have to sign a form, which states that although they have read and watched a lot of my work, they don't know anything about it, but are willing to learn about it from me!!! (During the presentation it will all be very apparent why these precautions were necessary and we will have a good laugh about it). Lastly, it is agreed upon that at no time any questions will be asked about whether empirical research was done or whether data was collected. Since the answer to these questions is NO, there is no need to ask. Thus, it is agreed beforehand that the Ph.D. will be solely rewarded for the investigation of the speaking and listening behavior of those present, who will engage together in a three hour long conversation. I am 100% serious about this and look forward to hearing from you. Kind greetings from Maximus Peperkamp in Chico CA USA.

January 14, 2018

Dear Reader,

When people say “I never would have thought that!” they usually mean that the thought never occurred to them or that there was nothing they could think of which would have caused the thought to occur. Thus, they use this expression when they hear or discover something which surprises them. Also, people would say things like “I would have never believed it.” This is after they’ve found out that something, which they didn’t or couldn’t believe, turned out to be actually true. I would like you to consider another explanation for why you would never think of certain things or why you are unable to believe things which are true.

As conversations about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) have brought about many new ideas, we want to think about these ideas and we also want to believe in these new possibilities, because thinking and believing in the SVB/NVB distinction has wonderful implications. We can’t help but notice that we have now accumulated a knowledge which nobody knows about or has access to. There is no way anymore in which we can avoid the realization that it is up to us, as we are the only ones who know. Moreover, we are right about what we know. We know that we know that we know something which others absolutely don’t know.

Being right always comes with great responsibility as we cannot undo what we really know. We can only go further with it, knowing that we are someone who is fully conscious about how it works. This realization confront us with our fears about being right; the fact that we are right makes us see that everyone is wrong. However, we are right not because we have SVB and they aren’t wrong because they have NVB, but we are right because we can see what is what and they can’t.

Although those who are ignorant about the SVB/NVB distinction can and will reject us who know about it, they can’t affect our knowledge. As a matter of fact, our knowledge is strengthened from all this rejection. We certainly can and do affect those who don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction, although it doesn’t really matter for us whether we chose to do so or not. We may for various reasons stay with those who are unaware about the SVB/NVB distinction or we may at some point decide to leave them, but no matter whether we stay or leave, we leave them anyway as our knowledge can’t be stopped from expanding.

We know what we know and this knowledge is such that nobody can put us under their control anymore. We don’t have any obligation to change them, to help them or to suffer because of them as we have already done that and we know we are not going to do that again. We know that we know that we know that they don’t know. Nobody else can know for us. Although we share what we know with others, who, like us, know what is true, we remain independent and are aware about the taboo of claiming our knowledge. We, who have acquired this precious knowledge, are very different and we are each going our own unique way with SVB. Our certainty about the future is that it will be exciting, fulfilling, stimulating and novel.
 
Dear Reader,

Of all the people, it is, of course, the behaviorist, who ought to be able to understand, acknowledge, and, most importantly, explain, that our more and more polarized, destructive, political discourse is a result of environmental variables which are not discussed by anyone. The reason that nobody is capable of analyzing today’s politicization of just about any topic is that we fail to acknowledge that it has to do with our way of speaking. Due to the feedback which is provided by our social media, our way of talking can no longer be hidden or diverted away from. 

Everyday our horrid Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is visible and audible, but yet we haven’t been able to do anything about it as we refuse to trace its origins to the environments from which it emerges. Since we are all fighting and arguing with each other it should be obvious that we are either finding ourselves in hostile environments which inevitably elicit our current NVB or we express such high rates of NVB since we have for so long been in and endured and survived such aversive, threatening environments. Most likely it is a combination of both.

Once we recognize the difference between NVB and Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) there is no escaping from the profoundly troubling notion that SVB is, for the most part, made impossible, and, therefore, only occurring at a very low response rate. Yet, this natural way of talking in which communicators are at peace with each other is essential to relationship and to the way in which we bring order in society. Those who promote fabricated advantages of NVB would consider the possibility of SVB as idealistic, as they lack the necessary skills to teach it to others.

SVB is NOT as superficial as merely trying to talk nice to each other. The issue of trying to be nice indicates we presumably have to overcome some tendency of not being nice. Similarly, we are also told to have more respect, to be more open, to be more empathic and to be less judgmental, less violent, less impatient. Where are the knowledgeable behavior analysts, who would be capable of saying that we are only told to be all these things, which never seem to get accomplished, while we are involved in NVB? The fact is, they don’t exist as they have yet to learn about the SVB/NVB distinction. Had they learned about this distinction, they would have known that safety and comfort are absolutely necessary for SVB as well for learning any other proper social behavior. Rather than being political, rather than participating in and reinforcing NVB, they would have advocated for the science of human behavior by promoting SVB.

January 15, 2018

Dear Reader,

People tell me every day what it is like for them to listen to the sound of their voice while they speak. Of course, I listen to the sound of my voice every day as well. Consequently, I have gathered a lot of information about what it is like when we listen to ourselves while we speak. Nobody in the world knows about this matter as much as I do.

People keep telling me that nobody has ever told them to listen to themselves while they speak (we were all basically told to listen to someone else and not to ourselves). In other words, it is because of me that they begin to seriously listen to themselves. They may have listened to themselves before, but they had never done it consciously and continuously.

When people listen to themselves while they speak, they engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and they realize that they were not listening to themselves in most of their previous conversations. They recognize that they were not capable of doing that before. Now that they are capable of having ongoing SVB, they are able to acknowledge that previously they were mainly involved in and conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), and, therefore, they would mainly produce NVB. They discover that they don’t need to do this anymore and they begin to explore SVB.

The more people explore SVB, the more they will have it with me, with others, but, most importantly, with themselves. In ongoing SVB they are able to say and understand new things about themselves and others, which they had wanted to say, but couldn’t say before. SVB is about expressing all our private speech in public speech. Of course, this is impossible under most circumstances. When people express what they think and feel regardless of the negative consequences, they are said to have no boundaries. However, no matter how inappropriate it is to tell others what we are really thinking and feeling, even if we sometimes do this and get rejected, punished, ridiculed, judged and humiliated, it is still a valuable experience. I suggest to everyone to spend a lot of time just talking out loud by ourselves as this creates the least negative complications for us.

When we talk out loud with ourselves and when we listen to the sound of our thoughts and feelings, but without trying to change anything (we are not trying to sound good, confident or happy), it is apparent how easy and effortless SVB is and how this should also be possible with others in the same way. We all know that when we are with others immediately all sorts of complications arise. Thus, to get used to SVB, it is much more practical to explore it alone, as this gives us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the contingency which makes SVB possible.

To have ongoing SVB with others, we need to be able to create and maintain, with our way of talking, the same safe, comfortable, supportive contingency, which we have already experienced and explored by ourselves. Of course, we make ‘mistakes’ and engage in NVB when we may believe that we are engaging in SVB, but as we ‘catch up’ with ourselves, no time or energy is lost on having guilt feelings about NVB as this is all part of NVB. We can express our sense of shame about again and again engaging in NVB as we realize that we have gotten it wrong all along.

There is no reason to blame ourselves or each other as we were all conditioned to have high rates of NVB. We can’t help speaking Dutch or French and it makes absolutely no sense to feel bad about the fact that we grew up in a Dutch or a French verbal community. The same is true for NVB. SVB, therefore, is really like speaking a foreign language, however, the only big difference is that you know it already by the mere fact that you are able to speak. When you engage in SVB, you immediately notice how incredibly comforting and energizing it is and you also suddenly are able to understand why NVB is incredibly energy-draining.

In NVB you were never really attending to yourself as you always were preoccupied with others. It is not narcissism or ego-centrism to talk out loud by yourself and to discover that what you really think and feel is necessary to live a healthy, happy, productive and peaceful life. With NVB there was nothing but trouble. Just as it is easy to ‘forgive’ yourself for the fact that you were involved in it and couldn’t help being involved in it, it is equally easy and simple to let others know that their suffering is over once they engage in SVB. I know that all the cynics will love to attack me on this as they have done so every chance they got. The fact is, however, that their attacks are part of a pattern of vocal verbal behavior (NVB), which has nothing to do with me.

I have investigated, understood and acknowledged the pattern of speech, which I call NVB. This pattern is totally different from the pattern which I call SVB. Those who engage in SVB are not engaging in NVB. They may be affected at some point and engage in NVB again, but they either engage in SVB or in NVB. In other words, they always only engage in one or the other. This knowledge is comforting, but unknown to most people. Consequently, everyone is trying to improve, everybody is trying to have a better relationship, everyone is either working on themselves or on others. However, once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, we stop working on ourselves or on each other. You could actually say that we suddenly find ourselves without work.

When we engage in SVB, we don’t do what we usually do. Thus, SVB instantaneously replaces NVB and the issue of SVB ‘outcompeting’ NVB doesn’t even arise! The immediacy of this shift is verifiable and apparent to all. When one person is in front of people who are familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, they will all agree when he or she shifts from NVB to SVB or from SVB to NVB. Moreover, even after we have become trained in observing our own and each other’s SVB and NVB, we keep being intrigued and stimulated by the beauty and freshness of SVB. We all find out how to express SVB in the way which is unique to us and we can recognize each other’s uniqueness.

Dear Reader,

Since we, as human beings, can acquire very quickly the vocal verbal behavior that is appropriate to a particular environment, we don’t have much of a need, as Skinner writes in his paper “Selection by Consequences” (1981), for “an innate repertoire.” A baby, who was born in the United States and is raised in the Chinese verbal community ,will learn to speak Chinese and a Chinese baby which is raised in the United States readily learns to speak English without any problem.

Ideally, the operant learning involved in becoming verbal not only supplements natural selection, but it actually replaces it. It has yet to be recognized, however, that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is absolutely needed for respondent behavior to be outcompeted and replaced by operant behavior. Stated differently, we have not been able to become fully verbal as our environment inevitably favored Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

Although there are obviously tremendous advantages to our more sophisticated operant verbal repertoire, we have not been able to capitalize on this as the SVB/NVB distinction was not yet known. NVB has unknowingly been a stand-in-the-way to verbal learning throughout human history.
Skinner gives two simple examples: one about food and one about sex. He differentiates between food, which is eaten simply for survival value (in which case eating is a product of natural selection) and eating that results from “the evolution of special susceptibilities.” Under the former circumstances food “does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer,” but under the latter circumstances eating is operantly controlled. Also, when sexual behavior is simply a product of natural selection, “sexual contact does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer.” Like food, sex only becomes a reinforcer “through the evolution of special susceptibilities.” With these two examples it is very easy to think about our verbal behavior.

Our verbal is like any other behavior. Stimuli in the environment set the stage for our verbal responses, which are followed by consequences, which then either increase or decrease their likelihood. In operant conditioning we speak about reinforcement when we refer to the increase of behavior and punishment when we refer to the decrease of behavior. NVB is a function of our innate endowment. This coarse-grained behavior is insensitive to the environments in which people are reinforced for a their more fine-grained version of behaving verbally, environments in which SVB can and will occur. Just as food and sex are not reinforcers as long as they are only function of our phylogenetic history and only become reinforcers due to “the evolution of special susceptibilities”, so too can our verbal behavior become a reinforce or remain constrained. As long as our verbal behavior is still reactionary, involuntary behavior, it is controlled by our innate, nonverbal repertoire. Only if verbal behavior is (like food or sex) a reinforcer, is it under operant control.

We receive more positive reinforcement during the early stages of our overt verbal development than in the later phases of our lives. Moreover, as we mature, our verbal behavior recedes to a covert level. Thus, most of our verbal behavior occurs as private speech, commonly referred to as thinking. Furthermore, it is believed that reinforcement is no longer needed when we get older. All of this presumably prepares for being able to navigate our world in which NVB is everywhere, but SVB is happening only accidentally, momentarily and sporadically. At the early stages of development verbal behavior is under operant control, but during later phases of our lives, our verbal behavior is often, sadly, way too often, controlled by classical conditioning. Surely, becoming literate is all about becoming verbal, but while we are engaging in NVB, we are less verbal than we believe to be. Only in SVB can we be fully verbal.

January 16, 2018

Dear Reader,

If you don’t like to read my long texts, I would like you to suspend your tendency to stop reading. Why don’t you stick with it for once? And, why not read my words out loud so that you can listen to the sound of your voice as well? It is easy. It doesn’t cost you anything. As you do that you find that listening to yourself while reading these words out loud teaches you about listening to yourself while you speak. You may have never thought that speaking could be so effortless and so enjoyable, but it can be if you let it.

I am well aware that there are a million things which attract your attention, but I want to challenge you to listen to yourself instead of to others. When you read this text, you are not listening to me, but to yourself. As you put more energy into what it is like to listen to yourself you find that you almost never do this. This text is giving you the opportunity to do something which no other text would let you do. These words bring your attention to yourself. Because you listen to the sound of your speaking voice, you become aware of how you are feeling in this moment. These words don’t tell you what to feel, but they make it possible for you to pause a moment and take note of what you feel. You feel something different every moment, but when you speak with others, it is seldom possible to address these moment-to-moment fluctuations.

These words support you in feeling whatever you feel at this moment, no matter what it is. It is completely up to you to let yourself know what you feel. Many people have problems expressing what they feel as they don’t really know what they feel because it keeps changing from moment to moment. The confusion is not about what they feel, but it is their way of talking which doesn’t allow for the expression of the changes which happen from moment to moment. Once you get used to expressing whatever you feel, you will be no longer so confused. It is possible to do this. You are doing it right know whether you know it or not.

My long texts have an accumulative effect which can only be obtained if you read the whole piece. I don’t want you to race through these words and I write in such a way that this is not possible. Why are you so much in a hurry? Why can’t you slow down a bit and have some relief from your racing thoughts? If you want to continue being rushed, anxious, stressed and agitated, you probably don’t want to continue reading this description of your behavior as it is annoying and confronting. However, if you listen how your voice is expressing the sound of your hurry, fear, tension and anger, you would appreciate these words much more.

The longer time you spend listening to your voice, the more the importance of it begins to make sense to you. It is often said we should get better at listening to each other, but even if we do our best in trying to be better listeners, we still don’t succeed. Few us know that our ability to listen to others is only as good as our ability to listen to ourselves. In other words, we can’t and we don’t really listen to each other as long as we haven’t been stimulated to listen to ourselves; self-listening includes other-listening, but most other-listening excludes self-listening.

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) stimulates us to listen to ourselves while we speak. When we engage in ongoing SVB we realize that listening to each other is never a problem. Other-listening is only a problem when we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As we are unfamiliar with the SVB/NVB distinction, we don’t realize that many, seemingly complicated, problems with listening to others are related to the fact that NVB speaker don’t listen to themselves, but force others to listen to them. My texts are long as they stimulate you to explore and accept the truth about the great difference between SVB and NVB. I do not claim to be able to convince you with my writings about the existence of these universal response classes; you will have to convince yourself.

January 17, 2018

Dear Reader,

As I am writing these words, I am not speaking out loud, but I have been listening to myself thousands of times. I have also read out loud what I was writing many, many times, but I am not reading out loud this time. I am reminded of the times I was speaking and reading out loud while I am just writing. These words are for you to be read out loud so that you can begin to hear your voice and realize how your Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is going to transform your life.

You are not going to changed by the SVB of others, but you are going to be changed by your own SVB. You have been wanting to hear the truth out of the mouth of a knowledgeable person, some authority, some guru, some teacher and you have listened to their lectures, their preaching and explanations, but none of that has made or could make you listen to yourself. To listen to yourself is something you have avoided. You have rehearsed your speech, you have been practicing what you were going to say, but that was not the same as listening to yourself while you speak.

When you listen to yourself while you speak, you have no notes, you don’t know what you are going to say. You are listening to yourself because you are not trying to listen to yourself. As long as you are trying to listen to yourself, you are not listening to yourself. To listen to yourself, you don’t need to try to listen to yourself. In other words, there is no tension in you at all when you are listening to yourself while you speak, when you engage in SVB. When that happens, it is so different from what you have been used to that you can’t help notice you weren’t doing this before. Thus, when you listen, you realize you were never listening before. Listening is always new, it renews you.

When you listen to yourself while you speak for the first time, you will not only realize that you were not listening to yourself before, but you also understand why you were not and why you could not listen to others. You didn’t and couldn’t really listen to others because you weren’t listening to yourself. While you are reading this and while you are hearing yourself say this, you also begin to notice that you are speaking differently. You didn’t speak like this and you couldn’t speak like this, but you are now learning to speak in a different way. You are learning to be SVB speaker instead of a Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) speaker. When you have SVB by yourself, you notice that you totally approve of it, you approve of yourself and nobody needs to approve of you.

I am able to write these words as I know what it is like to listen to myself while I speak and to engage in SVB. Your exploration will make you write differently too. As you learn to listen to yourself while you speak, you’ll find that self-listening makes you into a different kind of speaker, a SVB speaker who not only sounds differently, but who also says different things than the NVB speaker. The SVB speaker writes like this and as you should be able to notice, there is no writing like this anywhere. And, this Sound Writing Behavior (SWB) should help you understand that also SWB is nowhere to be found either. What you have been reading was not SWB, but Noxious Writing Behavior (NWB). In the same way that only SVB can help us understand what NVB is, so too only SWB can explain to us why NWB has been perpetuating NVB.

January 18, 2018

Dear Reader,

This writing is about being serious and about being taken serious. Most people are completely incapable of taking me serious as they don’t know how to be serious. Even if they try to be serious, they can never be serious enough. The person who takes me serious must be very serious. To take me serious, you must be as serious as I am and I tell you, I am very serious.

All the nonsense people post on their face book are failed attempts at being taken serious. People would like to be taken serious, but they aren’t as they don’t take themselves serious. Although they would rather be taken serious, people who take themselves serious really don’t care at all if other people don’t take them serious. They will not stop being serious when other people don’t take them serious. To the contrary, they will take themselves even more serious when others don’t take them serious. Since they know what it is like to be serious, they enjoy being serious. People don’t like being serious as they don’t know how to be serious. They make it seem as if there is something wrong with being serious, but since they can’t be serious, there is actually something wrong with them.

There is seriously something wrong with you when you can’t be serious about the way in which you talk. If you keep having Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), your life will be full of problems. To acknowledge that you are again and again engaging in NVB is a serious matter. You can blame me for being too serious, but your rejecting me is not changing the fact that what I say is true. You are constantly involved in NVB and this makes your life into a stressful, unhappy mess.

Being serious requires that you acknowledge your interactions aren’t working. You aren’t interacting. How can you call it interacting, if you are always right, if you always know it better, if you keep feeling upset, worried, stressed, fearful, angry and resentful? How can you call it interacting, if you force others? How can you call it interacting, if you keep separating from others instead of connecting with them? What kind of interaction is that? Seriously, when are you ever going to get serious about your superficial, insensitive, boring and unintelligent way of life in which you keep pretending to be better than others?

Unless you get serious about your involvement in NVB, you will never have any ongoing Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). You keep pretending to have SVB, but you are not having it. You keep pretending to be calm, friendly, positive, patient, open, understanding, empathic, accepting, in control, flexible, easy-going, loving, caring, smart, insightful, humble, spiritual, practical, capable, trustworthy, approachable, alert, truthful, hopeful, motivated, focused and reliable, but you are not. And, it is really bad you keep pretending to be all these things. There is seriously something wrong that you think that you already know what SVB is, when, in reality, you have no clue what it is.

If you really knew what SVB and NVB is, you would be writing and talking about it, but you are not doing that. The only way in which you can get serious about SVB and NVB is by talking and by writing about it. When are you going to do that? It also doesn’t make any difference if you repost what others have written. When are you going to take note of the undeniable fact that in NVB, you don’t care as a speaker how the listener is experiencing you? Once you as the speaker, begin to care about how the listener is experiencing you, you will speak very differently, you will sound very differently, you will write very differently as you will be thinking and feeling very differently. These words will be taken seriously by you only if they are spoken with your sound, which you are listening to, which makes you conscious, which makes you realize that being serious about how you sound is delightful.

january 19, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am a proud behaviorist, not one who was drilled by an educational system in which people are instructed not to be open to or experiment with the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but a self-taught behaviorist, who reads and knows more and keeps getting better at arranging his own environment to make his own behavior more effective. Although my behaviorism, of course, includes many others, it starts with me. If your knowledge about behaviorism doesn’t improve your life, you are incapable of improving the lives of others. If behaviorism doesn’t make your life better, you lack the skills to be able to make other people their lives better. And, if you pretend to make other people their lives better by bragging about you grand knowledge about behaviorism, you are causing harm.

To be a behaviorist, I don’t have to be talking about behaviorism all the time. Actually, I would be a bad behaviorist if I would be talking about behaviorism all the time. Those people who talk about behaviorism all the time are horrible behaviorists. I don’t agree with that kind of fanaticism and I don’t think it is productive. It is totally off-putting as it presupposes that you are somehow better than others. You may be right that you know more about the laws of human behavior, but the way in which you talk with others still determines whether that knowledge is accepted.

Unlike behaviorism, the SVB/NVB distinction is a topic which can and must be brought up every day. It deals with how we talk with each other and how your conversation not causes, but co-occurs with how you talk with yourself. Conversations with others relate to how you talk with yourself. The false notion that you are responsible for what you say to yourself, that you can cause what you think and believe, disconnects and dissociates you from how others have talked and still talk with you and how you have talked and still continue to talk with them. In NVB nobody is talking with anybody, but everybody is talking at each other.

The difference between talking at each other versus talking with each other is the difference between NVB and SVB. It can and it should be repeatedly described and explained as the difference between uni-directional and bi-directional interaction. I don’t think that uni-directional NVB, in which people talk at each other, push each other around, struggle and argue and put each other in their place, is interaction. NVB, which sadly is our common way of talking, is in fact a form of abuse. We have all heard about verbal abuse, but NVB is much more than that. The reason that NVB is so hard to analyze and hasn’t been touched by any behaviorist, is because it creates and maintains the illusion that we are behaving verbally, while in fact our words inaccurately describe and therefore make us disown our nonverbal behavior.

In NVB we pretend as if there are two environments: the environment which within our own skin and the environment which is outside of our own skin. You keep talking nonsense as long as you believe the lie which has been perpetuated by NVB that there are two environments. SVB, however, teaches you that there is only one environment. Thus, SVB considers private speech as a subset of your public speech. It is absolutely astounding behaviorists aren’t endorsing this more often, as the separation of our private speech from our public speech is the proverbial elephant in the room of human interaction. Freud with his free association technique comes closer to addressing the SVB/NVB distinction than Skinner, who as we all know focused on operant conditioning.