October 2, 2016

October 2, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

On YouTube you can see videos on which I explain and explore Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). There you will be presented with the visual and the auditory stimuli which make clear to you what I mean by the SVB/NVB distinction. We are way too obsessed with visual stimuli to pay attention to auditory stimuli.

The distinction between SVB and NVB can only be made clear if we focus on auditory stimuli instead of visual stimuli, such as in reading this writing. Familiarity with written words is to our disadvantage as insistence on printed explanations prevents us from having tangible experiences that make us understand the necessity of this distinction.

We have been involved in many conversations and we have observed how others talk, but we could not discriminate the difference between SVB and NVB as someone would always say that other topics were more important. The lawful relations of our spoken communication are easily obscured because we are used to and conditioned by high rates of NVB.  

What we believed was causing our behavior turned out to be not true once find out about SVB/NVB distinction. Upon contacting SVB we are often shocked and ashamed to find out how wrong our assumptions about our communication actually are. All of this needs to be overcome.

Oddly enough once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction our spoken communication turns out to be much less complex than we believed it to be. No great technical or intellectual skills are needed to be acquired to be able to engage in SVB, which is an effortless phenomenon. The difference between SVB and NVB is: NVB is effortful and SVB is not.

If we listen to someone’s personal history, we can recognize instances of SVB and NVB in their narrative. During good times SVB happens at a high response rate, but during bad times NVB happens at high response rate. Everyone recognizes the experiences involved in good time or bad times, but we are often not aware this results into two ways of talking.

As our narrative is about positive or negative experiences, we generally don’t recognize the role that our talking and listening play in eliciting or evoking these experiences in others. It is easy to understand that certain levels of SVB and NVB characterize the customs and habits about what is believed to be right or wrong within a particular culture.

We cannot communicate effectively with people who are different from our own culture to the extent that we were unable to discover the uniformity of how we talk. Moreover, these uniformities must be made explicit. As long as the SVB/NVB distinction was missing from our conversation, we weren’t able to address our cultural differences.

When we assign SVB/NVB ratios to each verbal episode, we will realize that regularities occur in different populations which are comparable to languages. Within each language there are actually two languages: SVB and NVB. These determine how this language is being used.

NVB is always used by the superior speaker to coerce and oppress the inferior listener, who will have to remain obediently assigned to his or her role in the social hierarchy. SVB, however, is based on equality between the speaker and the listener and is used by the speaker to reinforce and emancipate the listener into becoming a SVB speaker.

SVB speakers create speakers of a SVB quality and demonstrate that in NVB only a few speakers do all the talking. Only non-hierarchical speaking or SVB is a scientific way of talking as it facilitates the necessary feedback and turn-taking for investigation and verification. In NVB, the mechanical speaker demands: my way or the high way.

October 1, 2016

October 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Anyone anywhere in the world in conversation with another human being can observe there are only two ways in which we talk: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). There is no need to search for uniformity, for order or for lawful relations among these naturally occurring events. In any conversation there will be speakers who speak with listeners, who then take turns with these speakers or there will be speakers, who speak at listeners, who don’t take turns with these speakers, who are only supposed to do as they are told.

In SVB speakers and listeners experience that they are one, but in NVB, speakers and listeners struggle with one another as they are moving apart. Only if we take a listener’s perspective of the speaker, only if we as listeners observe and evaluate the tone of the speaker’s voice, will we be able to take note of these universal response classes.

We couldn’t be effective in our spoken communication as long as we haven’t identified the homogeneity of these two crucially important vocal verbal patterns. It is not because of NVB that human relationship is deeply troubled, it is because as we don’t recognize the difference between SVB and NVB that we constantly mistake one for the other.

A genuine science of spoken communication has seemed impossible to achieve as we keep mistaking NVB for SVB. However, once we, as listeners, acknowledge these mutually exclusive ways of speaking, we understand why and when, we, as speakers, were either able or unable to speak with these speakers. The SVB/NVB distinction explains why listeners become speakers who speak with or who speak at listeners.

The listener’s experience of our spoken communication will be altered by the SVB/NVB distinction. As listeners we will be able to trust what we hear and no longer deny what we hear. We have experienced a great deal of trouble as we couldn’t be true to what we heard. People make a big deal about being heard by others, but don’t realize the real issue is that we hear ourselves, that we listen to ourselves while we speak.

We listen to ourselves while we speak only in SVB, but not in NVB. In NVB we are not even allowed to listen to ourselves as we are forced to listen to others. This is the reason why there are so many problems in the world; NVB keeps tearing us apart and only SVB can connect us.

The SVB/NVB distinction brings us a new understanding. As we have not viewed our communication and psychological problems from this level of analysis we were unable to solve them. Moreover, as our attempts to solve our problems have failed over and over again, our rates of NVB have increased and our rates of SVB have decreased.

We all know what SVB is when we have it, but we have lost hope in the increase of SVB. All of this is because we assume relations between events which do not exist, which are forcefully imposed on our reality. Rather than learning about and implementing scientific rules, we apply a model of spoken communication that is based on the fiction that each individual is causing his or her own behavior. This model had disastrous consequences and is maintained by our forceful way of talking: NVB.

We cannot contemplate our way out of our communication problems and SVB is the only way in which we can effectively deal with each other as turn-taking speakers and listeners. Predictions rooted in our ignorance about NVB will only create more NVB, while predictions rooted in our experience of and understanding about SVB reliably create more SVB.

Only SVB allows us to prepare ourselves and each other for more SVB. As we know how to set the stage for it, we will achieve more SVB and we will control the conversation which is going to happen in the future. There is nothing magic or idealistic about this, it is beautiful science.

September 30, 2016

September 30, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Whether human beings will ever be able to deal with the facts of what happens when they talk with each other is determined by our ability to distinguish between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Many people who came to know about this distinction have said it clarified something they had been thinking about for a long time; it stimulates them to be scientific about their own way of talking.

Scientists investigate the reality which is misrepresented by popular opinion. They acknowledge that speakers influence listeners with the sound of their voice. This fact remained out of sight as it cannot be seen; it must be listened to. As the speaker is his or her own subject in SVB, he or she listens to him or herself while he or she speaks.

Listening to others couldn’t make anything clear about the SVB/NVB distinction. Instead of listening to others, we reject authority outside of us and we listen to ourselves. To know about the nature of human interaction we cannot rely on what authorities have said or are saying.

Scholarly writings about interaction are of no help to anyone as they take our attention away from the spoken communication which contains the facts. However, the SVB/NVB distinction brings us in contact with the facts; in SVB speakers aversively dominate listeners, but in NVB speakers and listeners mutually reinforce each other. Moreover, if we are going to be scientific about our interactions with one another, we have to recognize that even knowledge itself is of no use to us as it distracts the speaker from listening to him or herself. Anything that interferes with this process prevents our own formulation of SVB.  

The more we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, the more we realize that although we would like to have SVB, fact is that we are constantly engaged in NVB. Only a scientist will accept such a rather painful fact. Whether they know it or not, unscientific people seek to fulfill their wishes to have SVB by believing that peace can be achieved by war.

The high rates of NVB, which can be observed everywhere, are not because man is innately such a brute beast, but because we haven’t yet developed the skills which will make SVB possible.  In the same way that math can be learned, SVB can be learned. SVB is peaceful and NVB is war, but we cannot believe and imagine our way to having SVB.

If we achieve SVB it will not be because we wished for it. We wish for all sorts of things only during NVB. Scientific endeavor is not beholden to our wishful thinking. Although science has always put a high price on intellectual honesty, it has not yet made a point of emotional honesty. The SVB/NVB distinction considers emotional honesty more important than intellectual honesty as the former makes the latter possible.

SVB is needed to realize that intellectual honesty doesn’t guarantee emotional honesty, but emotional honesty guarantees intellectual honesty. Presumably, scientists are also interested in results which do not confirm their theory, but, due to the way in which they talk, few are able to admit that they are emotionally biased to their own theory.

As scientists constantly engage in NVB they cannot be honest with themselves. The feelings of the scientist are an important subject matter to be investigated. Only SVB can make scientists intellectually and emotionally honest. Staying with the facts pertaining to human interaction requires a procedure not as blunt and ineffective as NVB.

Once we learn about the SVB/NVB distinction it is apparent that SVB supports and NVB prevents progress. We haven’t yet figured this out as we have elevated written descriptions over spoken descriptions of facts. This disaster continues to discourage the exploration of spoken while it occurs. No matter what the facts are, we still need to talk.  

September 29, 2016

September 29, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

When we extend the methods of science to our spoken communication it is easy to forget that the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) was made possible by the ordinary conversation between scientifically informed communicators. The results of such an interaction is different from those obtained by politicians, philosophers, believers, poets, business people and artists.

I was able to gain knowledge about spoken communication just like a biologist, a chemist or a mathematician would; I studied this topic for years and read many books about it. However, the biggest difference between me and other researchers is that I have been and continue to be my own subject. The essence of the SVB remains concealed from most other scientists as they refuse to experiment on themselves.  

Without being one’s own subject behavioral scientists as well as other scientists will not be able to fathom the importance of the SVB/NVB distinction which clarifies what many ‘great’ thinkers have thought about, but were unable to figure out. My writings, my accumulated knowledge, are not science itself, but are the products of my science.

Although measurement instruments like video and audio recordings can be used for certain purposes, they are useless for when it comes to our spoken communication. If we want to know the SVB/NVB distinction we must begin to use our own voice and our own ears. Our own voices and our own ears are more important than the devices we have used that have improved our observation of our world. The science of spoken communication depends on how we speak and listen, on our attitudes.  

September 28, 2016

September 28, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Although we don’t know about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we seem to agree to have a lot of NVB, but very little SVB. The little SVB we still have is meaningless. SVB is meaningful only to the extent that it is increasing, but unfortunately for the vast majority of us the opposite is true. 

Even if we were raised with fairly high rates of SVB, as we get older we have less and less of it. Only a scientific conception about our way of talking will increase the rate of SVB throughout our lives.  So many problems are created by NVB, but we haven’t done anything to stop it. 

Only when NVB stops can SVB begin. NVB was stopped at times, but never long enough to make us want SVB more than NVB. We never had enough SVB to notice these different ways of talking. Presumably, we are free and responsible individuals, but our NVB tells another story. 

What does our so-called freedom of speech mean if not a word is said about the importance of listening? In NVB the listener who is not him or herself the speaker is the only one who tries very hard to listen, but the speaker him or herself is not listening to him or herself at all. 

In SVB each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. This natural phenomenon of speaking and listening simultaneously is seldom carefully examined. We may think we know it, but fact is that we don’t. 

Once people engage in SVB they realize how beautiful it is. We have had it, but we turned away from it as we knew from our own experience that positive behavior was punished. SVB happens at such low rates as there are not enough people who know how to reinforce it.