January 24, 2015

January 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a third and final writing about the discussion which went on in the Dutch parliament about the radicalization of muslims in Holland and how to prevent violence attacks such as the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris. The increased call for curbing the influence of Islam is not isolated to Holland, but it happens across Europe. It took a long time for the free western verbal community to rise up against this globally-competing muslim verbal community. The argument that one represents modernity and the other, in the eye of the former, barbarism, doesn’t and can’t begin to address how our verbal behavior is maintained by our environments. If we want to change our verbal behavior, we must change the contingency that maintains it. This requires the exploration of the SVB/NVB distinction. 

Another speaker started out by appealing to SVB by saying “I am certain that the whole Dutch parliament is against extremism”, but he then followed with the NVB accusation that the anti-muslim politician was “feeding hate and extremism.” Moreover, he strongly warned that “continuing to speak out against the one million muslims in Holland would be very dangerous.” His plea for another analysis than the one from the anti-muslim politician was again one in favor of SVB. This writer agrees that polarization equals NVB and will only make things worse, but unless the distinction between SVB and NVB is made clear, we are surely going to end up there. What is missing from the discussion of “what is really dangerous” is the objective understanding about how human interaction, that is SVB, really works. Vague allusions about SVB are made, but scientific understanding is still completely lacking. 

The only female politician in this debate expressed SVB understanding for the fact that the anti-muslim politician “must be very afraid and upset”, but wondered if his “spreading of fear was not a victory for the terrorists.” Here again we see the switch, from one moment to the next, from SVB to NVB. The anti-muslim politician redirected the discussion, because he didn’t want it to be about his personal fear, he wanted to discuss the fear that is felt by the many people he represents. He was trying to be more objective about fear and consequently he moved into SVB. In effect he was trying to discuss the actual conditions which create and maintain fear. By appealing to the fact that he must be feeling very angry and fearful, since he is constantly threatened to be killed, another NVB attempt was made to make it into a personal matter. Also, the refusal by most Dutch politicians to collaborate with him was raised as a personal issue, because supposedly it was caused by him. The anti-muslim politician refused to make it into something personal, because he wanted to do something about it. His reasoning for changing behavior of others was SVB. His ability to step away from himself, allowed for a calm description of the independent variables pertaining to the killings of thousands, by people who can be characterized by a striking similarity in their verbal behavior. In answer to the SVB-facts by the anti-muslim speaker, the female speaker then increased her NVB by accusing him of “creating fear and helping the terrorists”, but the SVB anti-muslim speaker refused to respond.

At the end of the debate, in which the Paris killings and the problems with muslim radicalization in Holland were discussed, one of the speakers asked what practical steps can be taken to increase security? This was a SVB request. The anti-muslim speaker, however, answered in a NVB manner as he expressed his frustration that the law he had proposed ten years ago, to prevent jihadist from re-entering into Holland, had not been discussed, let alone passed. What is clearly visible here is a pattern which was repeated over and over again: as on person produced SVB, the other increased his or her NVB, but when that person then produced NVB, the other person increased his or her SVB again. Of course, none of this requires any reference to some inner agent. None of these politicians speak the way they do, because inside of them there is a self which is directing and controlling their verbal behavior. How they speak is mostly rule-governed, that is, they adhere to common rules about how they as party-members are expected to speak in the Dutch parliament. Their verbal behavior is also contingency-governed, that is, it is affected antecedently and postcedently by environmental stimuli, which change as a consequence of the dynamics of the debate.


Because of the content of the debate it is apparent that various politicians felt personally upset about the uncommon and confrontational verbal behavior of the anti-muslim politician. They spoke about being afraid, angry and appalled, by the killings, but when confronted by the anti-muslim speaker with their lack of decisiveness, they accused him of being like the terrorists. However, his behavior is not much under control of the other politicians, but is determined his party who wants him to address this issue. 

     

Let’s summarize some pertinent aspects of SVB and NVB. As the debate illustrated, NVB continues and is likely to increase. There are reasons why NVB occurs. When what is said becomes more important than how we say it, when verbal expressions are incongruent with and disconnect us from our nonverbal behavior, we will have NVB. When we want others to listen to us, but when we are not listening to ourselves, we have NVB. When our environment, which consists of other speakers, is aversively affecting us and we are constantly trying to change how others talk, we are having NVB. More precisely, we will elicit NVB responses, because the sound of our voice functions as an aversive stimulus to our listener. We may start out with SVB, but we will revert to NVB at the drop of a hat. The rapid ongoing changes from SVB to NVB and from NVB to SVB, always involve fluctuating environmental variables, which must be controlled if we want to continue our  SVB. Such control is made possible and preceded by our familiarity with and understanding of the SVB/NVB distinction. This distinction brings us to the essence of human interaction. 

We need SVB to be able to talk about NVB. Without SVB, we will talk in a NVB-way about NVB and we will be unable to describe NVB correctly. Our inability of describing what is happening will increase our NVB to higher and higher levels. Absence of SVB is the absence of relationship. Presence of NVB is the absence of SVB. The either-or-effect of our way of communicating is like electricity; speakers either turn the listener on or off. “Another way of saying this is that SVB allows mediators to talk about how they experience the verbalizer. SVB is the mediator’s perspective of the verbalizer. Unless the listener likes, recognizes, understands what the speaker says, interaction is not happening. NVB is not communication.

January 23, 2015

January 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is a continuation of yesterday’s observation about how we keep going back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It describes the debate among Dutch politicians who tried to talk about muslim radicalization. It is good there is a third party, a “madam speaker” who stimulates some disentanglement of the knots created by NVB, but it is also clear that this is not sufficient. 

Although people try to focus on what they say, emotions take over and when that happens we have an emotionally-loaded NVB. This writer claims that since most conversation is NVB, we are not really rational even when we are trying to be rational and we are not really honest about emotions even when we try. Only in SVB are we and can we be truly rational and authentically emotional. In NVB, by contrast, our reasoning is convoluted with our emotions and our emotions are distorted by our rationalizations. During NVB, someone is always either overly rational or overly emotional. 

When madam speaker had spoken of “the many balls that are in play” and urged speakers “to remain rational”, she was presumably referring to emotions that may prevent rational issues from being addressed. However, she was not realizing her own emotional NVB-talking was causing negative feelings that were not triggered by the muslim issue. Her fear that the debate might get out of hand, besides being emotional, of course only added fuel to the flames. In NVB there are many attempts by speakers to tell other speakers how to speak. As long as people are trying to correct each other on how to communicate, they are going to have NVB. 

Only in SVB do our emotions maintain our healthy relationship. In SVB people talk with each other, not at each other. Interestingly, during the debate, SVB was more often happening when the speaker was directing him or herself to madam the speaker, to a third party and not to the other speaker. There were moments in which the third party didn’t even seem to exist and in those moments the speaker’s NVB attacks were the most vicious.

When one listens to thirty minutes of this debate, it is astounding how many times one speaker accuses another that his or her way of speaking is not the right way of speaking. The utter futility of these attempts, which are the trademark of NVB, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Everybody seems to be thinking that this is how we should talk. When one person decreases his or her NVB, the other person immediately increases it. While they keep appealing to SVB, they never maintain it.

One speaker wondered how we can “make sure the tension in society is not increased, but decreased” and wanted to know from the anti-muslim speaker if “he ever even thought about how he could contribute to this process?” This was initially an appeal to SVB, but when that speaker ended his momentary peace-making by insinuating that the anti-muslim speaker doesn’t contribute to this process, he was back to NVB again. The speaker didn’t fall for the set-up and continued to explain his view. 

Another speaker spoke about the elevated tone of voice of the anti-muslim speaker, who, for ten years has lived under the constant threat of death. According to this speaker it was difficult to collaborate with him, because he elicited negative responses. He made a correct analysis. However, his SVB only fueled the NVB of the justifiably fearful anti-muslim speaker, whose argument is that nobody is really listening to him. This too was an absolutely correct observation: in NVB nobody is listening to anybody. 

The leader of what has now become Holland’s biggest political party, who came to power because he articulates the population’s resentment about the Islamization of their country, remarked that he would “only sing in a lower key if others would listen to him.” In other words, he would only stop his NVB if others would stop their NVB and he pledged to increase his NVB if others increased their NVB. This is exactly how we have dealt with each other across the globe and this is why NVB is everywhere and why SVB can’t happen. Unless we see that NVB prevents SVB, we will ratchet up the conversation and we will prevent SVB from happening.

Because of the constant death threats against him, the anti-muslim speaker is more familiar with the elicitation of fear than most of his opponents. This allows him to debate in a style which completely eludes others. He is capable of unleashing his emotions much more effectively than anyone else.  Yet, in spite of the life-and-death situation he lives in every day, he is able to have more SVB than others. The force and impact of his words derives from the congruence between his verbal and nonverbal expression.

January 22, 2015

January 22, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

There was a serious debate in the Dutch parliament about the Charlie Hebdo-killings in Paris and the politicians were discussing what could be done to prevent such events from happening in the Netherlands. The politicians tried to communicate, while attacking the leader from what has become Holland’s biggest party, the Party For Freedom (PVV), which claims that the Koran and Islam incites violence and intolerance in its believers.

This writing is not about any particular person or any particular political view. This writing is about the Dutch way of communicating, which, like everywhere else, goes back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although SVB and NVB alternate, the response rate for SVB is much lower than for NVB. During the debate there were a few moments of SVB, but most of the debate was NVB. 

    

The debate started out with some words of SVB sympathy for the politician, who, because he has spoke out against the Islam, has received multiple death threats and lives under constant police protection. Soon, however, there was a switch from SVB to NVB, when the politician stated “Having said that, I must now speak politically.” He then compared the anti-muslim rethoric of the politician to the terrorist themselves by accusing him of “spreading fear”. While qualifying his words, the verbalizer informed the mediators that he was about to say something totally different from what he had just said. And, he surely did. 

Another NVB verbal accusation against the Dutch anti-muslim politician was that he “was spreading hatred with his words” and “although he used different weapons”, in essence, he was “perpetrating violence just like the terrorists.” It is important to realize here, that the accuser was attempting to appeal to SVB as he was asking whether what the speaker had just said “could in any way or form contribute something positive to the problem at hand: the radicalization of young muslims in Holland?” From the view of this writer, this appeal utterly failed, because there was no congruence between what the speaker said and how he said it. What he said referred to SVB, but how he said it was NVB. Moreover, how he said it did what it was meant to do: it upset and offended the anti-muslim politician. Stated differently, what was said covered up the deliberate negative effect of how it was said. The accuser insulted the speaker with how he said it and he effectively accomplished this goal by switching from SVB to NVB. 

         

Given the constant death threats against him and given the fact that he doesn’t advocate violence in any way or form, the anti-muslim politician was obviously very upset about this false accusation, but he was in control of himself and sharply stated “the person who just spoke has a sick mind” and left it with that. Although he defended himself and certainly produced NVB, he then turned to madam speaker and said “it is better under circumstances as these not to speak to the person directly, but to madam speaker” and the moment he did that, his verbal behavior changed from NVB to SVB. He regained his composure by withdrawing from NVB stimuli to the more neutral madam speaker, whose function metaphorically guarantees SVB.

Then an example was given that one can “only fight darkness with light.” Again, the words seemed to refer to SVB, to light, but the nonverbal subtext was an accusation and thus NVB. This was quite obvious to the accused, who then responded calmly, in a SVB fashion, by comparing the Dutch tradition of tolerance and freedom of speech to the light and the recent violence, which according to him derives from the Koran, with darkness or NVB. Although the speaker made his point emphatically and victoriously, he didn’t revert to NVB. Surprisingly, however, madam speaker admonishinged everyone and suggested that “given the many balls that are into play, it is better not to call each other names” and “to stay focused on the content of the debate.” Since this was said immediately following the words that were spoken by the anti-muslim politician, this was not a general cautionary comment, but in fact the exact personal attack she had just said that nobody should make. Her directive remark was meant to put the speaker in his place. However, he hadn’t made any transgression in civility, he didn’t call anybody any names, to the contrary, he had addressed all the indecisive members of parliament together, madam speaker included, and he had held them responsible for the worsening of the situation. 

In a failed attempt to distract the attention from the gravity of the words by the anti-muslim speaker, madam speaker made the supposedly rational appeal to “stay rational”, by urging everyone “to fixate on the verbal.” NVB is based on the false assumption we can decide to stay only rational. NVB is not prevented by trying to keep our cool. This only increases the anxiety and the hostile NVB-tone of the debate continued.

January 21, 2015

January 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer has dedicated his life to a particular kind of verbal behavior which he calls Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). He has gone through many ups and downs with his discovery that real human interaction exists and can reliably, repeatedly and more skillfully be differentiated from what goes on in the name of it. He calls the latter Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is not anyone’s choice to carry on with NVB and to disregard SVB.

He has had many successes with SVB and based on that there is nothing to prove. Participants in his seminars and students in his class are happy. The fact that he doesn’t have a book, hasn’t published an article, a paper or, doesn’t have a website or an agent, doesn’t make any difference. He has four You Tube videos though. He found something that nobody else did, which, because it is new and special, doesn’t fit with anything we know. 

SVB is not about selling a product, promoting a brand or getting involved in something which will make us more money. There is much more to  human interaction than that. To explore that, we have to sanitize it from our usual objectives. First our NVB has to be stopped. This is not going to be funny or enjoyable; it is actually rather embarrassing for most people as it will confront us with everything we have not been able to talk about. This writer pays the price which others can’t pay. He has the capital and he takes pride in his work. He will continue with SVB as he is not indebted to anyone.