January 9, 2014

January 9, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

The reader is now reading something that was written with the letter type called “Dotum.” As you can see, it makes the words appear wider apart and I really like that. In my hand writings I often made attempts to achieve this effect, but not with a whole lot of success. I noticed that my words became more legible if I spaced them wider apart, but my habit of writing them close together again always came back to me. Now I realize that writing my words so close together represents speech in which I am talking fast. Writing words further apart expresses my calm speech. I enjoy expressing my calm speech, but I must know more about my disturbed speech to be able to have more calm speech. 

In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the words follow closer after another, but in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) they are further apart. The gaps between the words in SVB signify a sense of peacefulness, beauty and joy. They have their own function and they add meaning, which is revealed in a natural and relaxing manner. SVB is effortless and simple, but NVB requires effort and is complicated. The space between the words in SVB indicates that not all meaning is verbal. It gives room for thoughts which would not occur when words are crammed together.The denseness of words in NVB suggests that meaning can’t exist without words. Of course, meaning depends on words, but the proximity of too many words often confuses rather than clarifies. A person, who tries to say too much at once by talking too fast, is easier to be recognized as someone who is emotional in speech than in writing, but the effect of such a person’s writing is very similar. We say “we can’t get a word in edgeways” when we don’t have the opportunity to say something because someone is talking so much or so quickly. If texts become too wordy, we also can’t think anymore and we stop reading.

January 8, 2014

January 8, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear reader, 

This letter type, which was chosen to write about Sound Verbal behavior (SVB), is called castellar.  It is a very strong letter type, which can only be written in capitals. Like SVB, it can’t be missed. Authentic human interaction is really there, it is visible and audible, but it can only be visited by those who come in peace. It reminds of the old saying “my home is my castle.” The reader is asked to think of svb as their home, This is needed to feel protected. They are invited into the castle of the author. He built it together with those with whom he has communicated, who agree that Without the experience of safety there will always be fear.  

Castles used to be built with towers, a draw bridge, thick high walls and heavy doors to defend it. Similarly, SVB allows us to defend ourselves. It makes us see our enemy, noxious verbal behavior (NVB), from far away. it will not let NVB come close. The reader, who seeks protection, will be accepted into the castle as a member of the svb tribe. As such He or she will talk in such a way, which prevents the nvb clan from doing any more harm. SVB is a force to be reckoned with. Those who attack us are bound to loose, but attacks on svb are rare, 

because the nvb clan knows that it is fighting a losing battle. Svb has never attacked them. It was always NVB who attacked svb. NVB lost many of its members to SVB. Although NVB still tries occasionally to attack SVB, it knows very well that those who have survived this ancient battle, Those who were able to switch sides, became SVB’s strongest guards. Readers may praise themselves lucky to join forces with those who cherish the treasure of human relationship. Protection is guaranteed now that they have survived the suicidal mission that they, as members of the nvb clan, were on. The false notion that we cannot and should not trust each other, which was their motto, was transformed into a new way of relating, in which trust is no longer an issue, because it is the bases of everything we do. Welcome, reader, you are now part of us.   

January 7, 2014

January 7, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

The author chooses the letter type called agency to address an issue, which, according to him, is widely misunderstood. From a behaviorist perspective, agency refers to participation. As already explained in his earlier writings, there are environmental reasons why there are more readers than writers and more listeners than speakers. When the narrative of the reader is created and therefore determined by the writer, readers are, supposedly, no longer needing to speak for themselves and have been made to believe that their involvement in communication is not necessary, Readers who only read and do not write are like listeners who only listen but do not speak. Their participation in communication is reduced to that of an audience. As such, they have become disengaged, passive and dull, but, above all, completely dependent on others. 

The fact that someone else is usually doing all the talking and all the writing for us is based on the notion that others are better at it, that we ourselves are not good or not educated enough, that we are incapable or unwilling or that we are ashamed. The reasons for not speaking and not writing are so immense, that even those who do speak and write only do so in a fashion, which, according to this author, for the most part, is to be considered as Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). What this author is trying to make clear is that most speech isn’t speech and that most writing hasn’t got anything to do with human interaction. In real communication, in what this author calls Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), speakers and listeners, writers and readers always take turns. One moment speakers are speakers, but another moment they are again listeners, Likewise, listeners at one moment may be listeners, but at another moment they are speakers again. It is because of this turn-taking that listeners never merely see themselves as listeners, but also view themselves as speakers and speakers don’t only see themselves as speakers, but also experience and understand themselves as listeners. 

In SVB the speaker is the listener and the listener is the speaker, but in NVB speakers speak without being listeners and listeners listen without becoming being speakers. In SVB the person who speaks simultaneously hears him or herself. In SVB we listen to ourselves while we speak. In SVB speakers don’t act like speakers and listeners don’t act like listeners. There is a great difference between acting like a speaker and being a speaker and acting like a listener and being a listener. In NVB speakers act like speakers and listeners act like listeners, but in NVB speakers don’t really communicate and listeners don’t really listen. Only in SVB can speakers completely become speakers, because only in SVB are they being listened to. Similarly, only in SVB listeners are truly listening, because they can always speak with the speaker. Indeed, in SVB there no need for speakers to act like speakers, because they can really be speakers; in SVB there is no need for listeners to act like listeners, because they can really be listeners; in SVB we really communicate.  

A colleague was wondering what the saying “if these walls had ears” has to do with the issue this author is addressing. This writer decided to use this question as an exercise to explore what would happen if he brought his verbal behavior under control of the exploration of this statement. He thought about circumstances in which he would have used that saying. The author thought of a visit a long time ago to a castle somewhere in the Ardennes in Belgium. He was in a dungeon where prisoners had been tortured. While looking at the machines that were used in that process, he imagined what it must have been like to undergo such treatment. As he looked at the walls of this dark chamber, he was terrified by the thought of suffering and the painful death imposed on poor individuals. The statement “if these walls had ears” makes sense in the situation in which people have become deaf to what it is like to be human. Prisoners were brutally treated and were forced to say things because they were tortured. Nobody heard their despair and their agony, all that mattered to their captors was their ability to coerce another human being into saying something they wanted to hear. 

This saying raises the question: how far have we really come with our human interaction? Walls don’t have ears, humans do, but do we use them? Walls don’t speak, but because we fail to speak, we imagine in our despair that they do. And, because we go insane if no one listens, we also imagine walls having ears. A related saying is “one might as well talk to a wall.” In both sayings the wall represents the lack of listening, the absence of reciprocation. Nothing comes back from a wall. Perhaps it is safer to talk to walls than to people? People talk back and if they do, they often do so in an aggressive and vicious manner. Is that why so many people barricade themselves, why most people are so thick that you can’t get through to them,  why they have walled off what is left of their real self? The schizophrenic supposedly is “talking to unseen others” but if we aren’t really talking with each other, aren’t we too merely “talking to unseen others?” Isn’t insanity the breakdown of human interaction? And, isn’t the cover up of this breakdown driving everybody more insane? 

Although we may be inclined to think in terms of the coercer and the coerced, the torturer and the tortured, in NVB everyone is coerced and everyone is tortured because something is fundamentally wrong with us. This author believes that our need for metaphors signifies our need for improved, more accurate communication. However, our metaphors only created the impression that we have improved, in reality communication only became worse. It is easy to see that our time-worn metaphors have enormous influence on us, but it is only when we look at how they came about, that we begin to wonder how useful these outdated sayings actually are. In NVB we keep saying the same things over and over again. The question is not “if these walls have ears” but “if these humans have ears.” Of course, humans have ears and this is a stupid question. The question might better be changed into “are we using our ears?" or "Why aren't we using our ears?" When it comes to hearing only what we want to hear, we are not really using our ears. In essence, we are deaf to what we don’t want to hear. We don’t want to hear suffering, pain, anxiety, sadness, despair and frustration. 

The saying “if these walls had ears” basically expresses what we don’t want to hear. To justify that we are not listening, we fabricate walls with ears. Oddly, this fabrication can be of great help in getting us back into shape. When we catch ourselves saying that walls have human qualities, it is only a small step to admitting that humans have wall-like qualities. This is what needs to happen. Translated to NVB this means that we begin to acknowledge and recognize that it is not a pleasant experience to listen to how we usually sound. We don’t want to hear ourselves sound terrible and so we rather pretend that we are sounding wonderful. The fact remains, however, that those who try to sound nice always sound horrible. Those who really sound nice don’t try to sound nice, they don’t need to try to sound nice. Those who think they need to try to sound nice, who want others to sound nice, are not the ones due to which we are going to sound nice. It is not going to happen! It can’t happen that way! They will always elicit, with their aversive sounds, the fight-flight-freeze response.  

Any kind of statement that is meant to improve human interaction that has the word “if” in it prevents us from acknowledging what is going on. Ask yourself  “If we were friendly and peaceful with one another, if we sounded good, if we would listen to each other, would we have better communication?” If you still answered “yes”, you must realize now that that didn’t and couldn't help. If you answered “no” then you know that imagination and creative writing didn’t and couldn’t improve our communication. We need an approach that allows us to see what really happens. This has to be an environmental approach. Once that approach is taken, we find that SVB is not an approach. It is real human interaction, nothing more and nothing less. SVB is not a method. It is just a name for a process which we haven’t yet fully understood. 

How can there be communication in which we don’t understand each other? If we misunderstand each other, it is not communication. Neither the speaker nor the listener is to be blamed. We need to find out which stimuli are missing. Once we call it NVB, instead of misunderstanding, things will be discovered, why there couldn’t be any understanding. These things are usually people, who have become props, means to someone else’s ends. Students, employees, children, voters, believers, buyers, patients and citizens are conditioned to be spoken at , not spoken with. They are trained not to speak, but to do as they are told. and to obediently listen. They are trained to follow the communication rules which were determined for them by others and to buy and read all their books that are sold by the millions. They are told not to speak when spoken to. They live by the letter, which they perceive as their holy law. SVB questions all of this, not because it wants to or because it has to, but because it can. NVB can’t raise any questions about how we interact. Rather than admitting that we have failed to interact, NVB justifies mankind’s atrocities. We are so embarrassed to listen to our NVB that we have fabricated the nonsensical belief that we are incapable of hearing ourselves. We use real and imagined trauma to justify our own forcefulness. SVB heralds the end of our coercive and punitive behavior, which has always undermined human relationship. We have ears and we must use them to engage in spoken communication.

January 6, 2014

January 6, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

If writing enriches the experience of the writer, it is likely to enrich the experience of the reader, but if this writing is about the punishing experience of the writer, it is more likely to also punish the reader as well. This author claims that since most writing represents the punishment of the writer, the reader is mainly punished by most reading. This causes many problems in learning. Problems of learning would be solved if reading was less punishing and more reinforcing.

The reason that most writing is punishing to most writers is because they disconnect from their nonverbal experience while they are writing. A similar process occurs in most spoken communication, in which people generally get fixated on the verbal and completely forget and ignore the nonverbal. It literally goes without saying that when writers disconnect from their nonverbal experience while they are writing, then the readers are stimulated by such Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) to do the same. The reason reading isn’t reinforcing is because it obfuscates our nonverbal experience. Without nonverbal experience the verbal never makes much sense. 

Since nonverbal learning provides the underpinnings for verbal learning, writers must connect their words to the nonverbal learning which makes verbal learning possible. Perhaps even more so in writing than in speech, words must be related to the nonverbal from which they emerge. Without this connection our language is disembodied. If there is no consistent reference to the nonverbal, we perceive language as something which seems exists by itself, without context. This way of using language dissociates us from our environment. If we don’t build on what existed before words came along, we are without roots. Since in most of our spoken communication we disconnect from the nonverbal, we are likely to do so in our writing as well. Since most readers don’t see themselves as writers and mainly read what others have written, there is little chance for them to realize the effects reading has on speaking. 

Writing can potentially have a profoundly positive effect on speaking, but usually it only has this effect sporadically and accidentally. Our inability to agree with each other about the importance of  language is caused by our overestimation of the importance of words. Words make sense in a context in which words can make sense. Non-verbally, words can be understood only if they are presented in a non-threatening manner. And, if the context of written language isn’t reinforcing, students will feel intimidated by teachers, books and colleges. Our lack of attention for the nonverbal origins of our language has led to a situation in which reading has become more important than writing and listening more important than speaking.

This author argues that reading is to be improved by writing and listening is to be improved by speaking. The best way to accomplish this is to first increase speaking and only then to stimulate writing about this speaking. It is common to be upset about our so-called freedom of speech, yet very few talk about the obligation to speak. Supposedly, one only has the right to speak if one knows or if one can afford to and one is required to listen to those who know or who are in authority. In other words, one’s speech is measured by one’s influence. The importance of one’s speech is seen by its effect on others. If others learn and become intelligent, one’s speech must have been intelligent, but if one’s words elicit fear, anxiety, stress and apprehension, then such speech must have been negative. These results are visible and audible everywhere. 

Yet, those who haven’t spoken, those who couldn’t speak and those who weren’t allowed to speak, have something very important to say. That is what this writing is about. This writer does not claim to be to say things for others, but he knows from experience that, if given the chance, they will say things which can’t be said by those who dominate the conversation. This writer has given many people the opportunity to speak and write their own narrative. He is capable of doing this because he feels reinforced by his knowledge about spoken communication. This writing is about what makes Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) possible.      

January 5, 2014

January 5, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

While reading something that is enriching one’s well-being the reader should know with certainty that what he or she was  reading was enhancing to the writer too. If writers make available something that was worth making available then readers will be benefitted. This bidirectional aspect is often lost in writing as well as in speaking. The reason this happens is because nobody knows how to accurately communicate it. To do that, the writer must make it his or her goal to tap into his or her joy of writing, but with the specific purpose of talking with the reader about why this is so enjoyable. As few  writers write well enough to be able to do this, not much has been written on this topic. This writer, who knows what he is talking about, maintains that most writers can’t write about it, because they don’t know how to achieve it in their spoken conversation. The exact description of spoken communication can produce writing which is bidirectional. The verbal is embedded in and emerging from the nonverbal and writing is a function of spoken communication. That writing may seem to exist separate from talking indicates how out of touch with speech we are. Readers feel relieved because such writing makes them forget and takes them away from spoken communication. 

What is distracting us from spoken communication is not helping us to get any better at it. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distracts us from and thus prevents Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, each time NVB stops, and it does stop, SVB presents itself again. Yet, NVB never stops long enough for us to recognize what SVB really is. For this to happen we must begin to discriminate the contingencies of reinforcement that set the stage for SVB. As we identify and describe stimuli that make SVB possible, we also begin to recognize the circumstances of which NVB is a function. 

We can’t recognize NVB without first recognizing SVB. The understanding of NVB is preceded by the discovery of SVB. We weren’t able to acknowledge the negative consequences of NVB, because we weren’t capable of continuing with SVB. We couldn’t continue with our SVB, because something was wrong with our environment. Nothing was wrong with us. We are conditioned to think that there is something wrong with  us or with others, but this perspective prevents us from looking at our environment. There is, of course, also nothing right or wrong about our environment, but fact is that SVB couldn’t continue in an environment in which stimuli that made it possible are no longer present. Such stimuli at one moment are there, but may be gone the next moment. It is because we don’t notice the presence or the absence of these stimuli that we can’t continue SVB and inadvertently produce NVB.