January 1, 2015
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer
By proposing to listen to ourselves while we speak, this
writer aims to change the contingency of human interaction. He is not
interested in changing the content of our conversation. The content can remain
the same, but what he cares about is that the context in which we speak is altered. However, the feedback loop
from hearing our own sound will surely change the content of our conversation.
It will show that our content cannot stay the same if we pay attention to how
we sound.
We always hear our own sound, but if we listen deliberately,
we realize that we can only listen to others to the extent that we are
listening to ourselves. In other words, if we ignore self-listening, as we do during
Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we are only able to pretend that we are listening
to others. In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we listen to ourselves, we
truly listen to others, because we listen to others in the exact same way as we
listen to ourselves. Stated differently, in NVB, we listen to others in a different
way than we listen to ourselves.
One way of listening occurs in SVB as a consequence of the
verbalizer’s ability to focus on him or herself. Thus, in SVB verbalizer and
mediator is one and the same person. However, in SVB verbalizers and mediators
are also different people. In SVB mediators understand verbalizers well,
because verbalizers do not put pressure on mediators to listen to them.
Verbalizers who listen to themselves while they speak will change
the circumstances in which they speak. Change is brought about by the
suggestion of this writer, who, due to his behavioral history knows that this
will happen. He has tested this phenomenon over and over. When someone, a
verbalizer, switches from not
listening to him or herself to listening to him or herself, this verbalizer is going
to talk in an entirely different manner. Moreover, both the verbalizer and the
mediator(s) will also acknowledge this. In other words, there will be
agreement, understanding, validation and reciprocal reinforcement between verbalizer
and mediator in SVB about what is
said and how it is said.
The contingency change that occurs in SVB is a result of a
behavioral change: listening to ourselves while we speak. Changing our behavior
is changing our circumstances. Yet, behavioral
change is not done by some agent, who makes us listen to ourselves. The change
that changes the contingency comes about as that part of the environment to
which we only individually have access expresses itself. Nobody can express
this part for us. The mediator mediates the verbalizer only to the extent that
he or she is one with the verbalizer.
Only to the extent that the mediator is or can be his or her
own verbalizer, will the mediator be capable of mediating the verbalizer as another
person. This poses two problems: 1) the mediator has never spoken to him or
herself as a verbalizer or 2) the verbalizer has never consciously mediated him
or herself as a mediator. The first problem is much bigger than the second.
There are many more people who have never spoken, who have always just
basically only listened, than that there are people who don’t listen, but who
speak all the time. Simply stated, most of the talking is supposedly done for
us by others. If we take care of the first problem, the second one turns out to
be a cover up of the first problem. We have heard so often that listening is
the problem, that people just don’t listen, but who is saying this? This is
obviously not being said by those who
are being listened to, but by those who want to and who demand to be listened
to. Those who tell others that they don’t listen seem to have achieved some
higher moral ground, but the fact is that they determine the contingency for
NVB.
In SVB we don’t
tell each other that we must listen. In SVB listening is not at all the issue.
In SVB speaking is the issue or rather, we cannot and do not have SVB because of our lack of speaking. We have
for the most part been taught to speak in a NVB manner and to the extent we
have been taught to have SVB, we experience constant problems as we find
ourselves in environments in which it is impossible to speak the way in which
we would like to speak. Consequently, we give up on speaking, we supposedly
‘pick our battles’, but the bottom line is that we stop speaking, as we must protect
ourselves from bad consequences.
Most people speak hesitantly, once they experience the
contingency which brings their attention to the distinction between SVB and
NVB. It is only after they experience this contingency for half an hour, an
hour, two hours or three hours that they begin to lose their hesitation and are
sure enough it is okay to speak that way. Repeated trials are necessary before
people realize that they actually want SVB
and not NVB. Initially, the distinction between SVB and NVB shows in what an
upside-down world we actually live: we are conditioned by and familiar with
NVB.
In his book “Running Out of Time” (Ledoux, 2014, p.262)
Ledoux states “such bodies are also behaving organisms and, like all organisms,
are limited to operantly and respondently conditioned responses that in one way
or another change the environmental
contingencies on another organism, human or other animal, and these contingency changes bring about
change in the other organism’s behavior.” This author views himself, like Ledoux, not
as ”behavior modifier” but as a “contingency engineer.” His challenge in
pointing out the SVB/NVB distinction is that he can only point out so much. In
order to change the operant and respondent conditioning processes, which maintain
NVB, people have to become verbalizers, who recognize and acknowledge
themselves as their own mediators. That this is accomplished without any effort
demonstrates that it is the absence
of some inner agent which makes SVB possible. This absence is experienced as
freedom.
