April 12, 2015

April 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Another successful seminar for the faculty of Butte College has taken place. Everybody stayed from beginning till end and they got it. When it was over, people were standing around talking about the seminar. They were clearly enjoying each other’s conversation. That is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

The topic of the conference was “Social Responsibility”, but, we are, and I mean that literally, at best only just talking with ourselves. Full time faculty doesn’t care about the part time faculty. “Social Responsibility” is merely a catchy term, but the issue is, of course, the lack thereof, or rather the fact that we accept Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is not communication.

We are dealing with the fact that our vocal verbal behavior, which is a subset of verbal behavior, doesn’t get the reinforcement it requires. Simply stated, we all buy into the notion that what is written is more important than what is said. Although, at the end of the day we still need to talk with each other, conversation is made more and more impossible. It is possible, but only when the conditions to make it possible, such as this conference, are arranged. It is clear that we get this opportunity, to hold this conference, to make it seem as if we have been given something, but in reality, we are only tossed a few pieces of food and we remain hungry and eager.

The reason why people accept they are enslaved is because their behavior is elicited, not evoked. Another way of saying this is that they are and remain afraid. They want to keep their job and still hope somehow one day they will get full time employment. Only obedient slaves get full time employment and it is unlikely I will get it. However, my success with my students still makes me a good candidate.

My desire to become a full time faculty is not based on fear. To the contrary, my behavior is based on my knowledge about behaviorism, on my ability recognize and analyze aversive stimulation. I am not too overly busy trying to avoid or escape negative outcomes, that is not my cup of tea. I am interested in and propelled by the power of positive reinforcement. Stated differently, I am not interested in decreasing behavior, because I focus on increasing everyone’s SVB response. As SVB increases NVB will decrease. It will happen by itself and no one needs to do anything to decrease NVB. I am benefitted by this conference, which was visited by only a handful of part timers. They are not showing up, because they are not feeling reinforced.

  

I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but all these so-called negotiations, all this so-called political organizing, is just more NVB. The issue is not whether we can increase “Social Responsibility.” The low turnout proves we can’t. The issue is whether we differentiate between SVB and NVB. We can and we did. Increase of SVB is based on our ability to discriminate between SVB and NVB. The conference was worth my while, because people have once again acknowledged the existence of this distinction.

An important aspect about verbal behavior is mediation of behavior by others. Our body mediates, or responds to, stimuli from inside and outside our skin. Walking to the building in which the conference is held, is a neuromuscular behavior. The question “Why do I walk to that building?” can have two answers. My behavior can be elicited or evoked. If I walk to that building, because I am frustrated about my status as a part time instructor, which means, I don’t have insurance and I don’t get paid for office hours and I am going to protest and demand my rights, then my behavior is elicited. If, on the other hand, on former conferences, I have enjoyed the interaction with my colleagues, because helping out and putting together the conference was great fun, made me feel validated and important, then my walking will be evoked. In the former, I have negative, in the latter, I have positive emotions. 

What I think or say to myself, while walking to that building, is also an elicited or an evoked behavior. Since it is witnessed by an audience of one, mediation of neural behavior occurs covertly. Unlike neuromuscular behavior, during my neural behavior there are no muscle contractions. During my neural behavior there are only neurons, bundles of neurons or cascades of neurons firing. Moreover, what I think or I feel is how my nervous system mediates my environment. There is no real difference between the environment and my neural behavior, which mediates my environment. The environment within my own skin is my neural behavior. In SVB, however, we become interested in the environment inside own skin, but in NVB, we remain preoccupied with the environment outside of our skin.

April 11, 2015

April 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

It is in the middle of the night and I just woke up from a dream. I was crying, because I was so happy that I finally got the fulltime job as a psychology instructor, the position I am currently applying for. However, my  boss was looking at me suspiciously. I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t feeling grateful to him for giving me a full-time job as teacher and I felt judged by him for showing my emotions. My inability to say to this person that I didn’t like him was picked up by him. 

Today I give another seminar at the Faculty Conference Day. A while ago, I had received negative feedback about my seminar at the previous Faculty Conference. The criticism was I had been too repetitive and apparently had made some of the faculty feel as if they were students. It came as a shock that they decided to tell me about this months later, at our department meeting. It made me feel awkward and now that I am presenting today, I feel I have to be watchful not to step on anyone’s toes. I am concerned about how I am perceived as I apply for the full-time position.

It is natural I should feel that way, since there is such great competition for the this full-time position. It is nothing new to me to get negative feed-back about my seminar. I would like to have that full-time job very much and that is making me so worried. If I don’t get it, it will won't be the end of the world, even if they won’t interview me.

Writing down these thoughts and feelings clears my head. It amazes me how worked up I can get about this. Since I am convinced about my Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) teaching, I feel scrutinized and not sure if I will be hired with my revolutionary ideas. Let's face it, SVB cuts through all the crap. I am not supposed to say that or repeat that because it hurts certain people. It cannot and it should not be hidden that there is real human interaction.

What goes on in the name of human interaction is something else. If they don’t hire me, if they don’t even interview me, there is nothing I can do. All I can do is prepare myself as best as I can for my seminar and make it into a success. The theme of today is “Social Responsibility”. This topic was chosen because of our lack of communication. To me communication equals social responsibility. If we would have communication, we would have social responsibility. These are different names for the same thing. We are so often beating around the bush, because we are avoiding the real issue: what goes on in the name of spoken communication is not communication. Everyone is continuously buying into this, but I am not. I can’t deny what I know. 

Let the chips fall as they may. If I am accepted, I will be accepted for who I am. Each of my presentations has made clear I am not into any esoteric or political bullshit. I mean business when it comes to human interaction. My success as a teacher is due to SVB. I am responsible for conveying the knowledge I have gathered. There is no way back. It got me where I am. I stand for it and I am not crying about it anymore, like in my dream.

This is my midnight preparation for today’s presentation. I will point out that all sorts of things have become important, when in fact, everyone, just like me, is getting worked up about stuff, which is distracting from and replacing the real thing: communication. I will put it back on the map again. I have a world map hanging on the wall in my office. I put a sticky note on California saying: Communication. I came to this country with a mission: to spread my message of spoken communication and to change the way we communicate. 

I never knew it would be such an undertaking, but I am proud and satisfied with what I have achieved. The other day, I realized I was lucky to be let go from my full-time job as a caseworker with parolees after my probation period was over. Working with students is more reinforcing to me. Also, it was a blessing in disguise that I withdrew from my graduate study, because I would never have had the chance to study behaviorism the way I currently do. Furthermore, if we hadn’t returned to Chico, I would never have tasted what teaching at Butte College was like. My part-time job as psychology instructor is the best job I have ever had. This already is the peak of my career. Another important decision I finally was able to make since I got back to Chico was to stay away from my toxic family. All of this has freed me. 

Like everyone else, I also got side-tracked because I was conditioned that way, but SVB kept guiding me and has only gotten better and better. In my seminar today I will emphasize that it is our social responsibility to learn about and recognize SVB. With SVB, we will create a better world, we can improve our teaching and our relationship with our students and colleagues.

April 9, 2015

April 9, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

I rode my bicycle all the way from my home to downtown Chico. On my way through the park, I noticed my tire had gone flat and I walked over Main Street to the bicycle-repair shop. They couldn’t immediately fix it and I had to come back and pick it up later. Consequently, I had to walk the streets back home, which was quite a walk. Since I haven’t walked the streets like that for a long time, it was a refreshing experience. 

When one walks, one contacts contingencies which one otherwise misses or remain oblivious of. For instance, I walked by a bush with flowers that smelled delicious. I already caught the smell two houses away, because a soft breeze blew the perfume into my direction. As I was about to cross the street, a homeless person, who was talking out loud with himself, crossed the street, while the light was still on red. Because he suddenly started walking, I almost also started walking too, but I could luckily hold myself back. A car nearly missed him and honked loudly at him, but the disheveled man didn’t even seem to notice. As I still stood there waiting for the light to turn green, he crossed the street again and created an identical situation. 

At one point, I had to cross the street because the side-walk on my side of the road had stopped. A whole bunch of cars drove by, but one driver saw I was trying to cross the street and stopped. I could see his friendly face. He waved. I thankfully waved back at him. This was an uplifting moment on my hour long journey back home. He made a difference for me that day.

 

I enjoyed looking at the houses and gardens. The way people arrange their yards says a lot about who is living there. One garden contained a self-made art piece, which looked very nice. It was one of those rocks found locally. It was sculpted like an egg with a dragon coming out of it. It was done very skillfully and it was placed inconspicuously among many of other rocks. 

Other gardens, like the houses, were dilapidated and were not getting any attention from the owner. Gardens around apartment buildings are boring. The bushes and hedges were cut in uniform fashion and there seemed to be something mandatory about the perfectly mowed lawns. However, many vines were crawling over the fences and I enjoyed looking at this invasion.

Other interesting features were drive-ways and garden paths. At one house, there was only grass. At the street side there were big wooden poles with a heavy, rusty chain connecting them. The poles were about three feet above the ground and five feet apart. Someone had hit one of these poles. The pole that had been stabilized with a huge piece of concrete now lay exposed at the entrance of the driveway. Next to it was a big whole. It had been like that for a long time, since the gap was overgrown with many weeds.

At another house someone had recently made a path with pavers leading from the mailbox to the front porch. The mailbox was attached to a metal structure that looked like the Eifel Tower. There were not enough pavers on the path, they were spread too far apart and they were too small. However, the sand around the pavers was raked with great perfection. Anyone visiting here would feel obligated to jump from one paver to the next. 

Then, I came by a house with three fancy cars in front of it. Two men in suits and with sunglasses and a woman in a white dress with long blond hair were smoking cigarettes standing near these expensive cars, The two men looked irritated and the woman looked submissive, but also defiant. I had to pass them closely, but looked away. I felt sorry for the woman and believed she was oppressed or abused by these men. They were territorial and I wasn’t going to look their way. I felt relief after I had passed them.

When I had almost reached my street, there was a father with his young son coming my way. As the pavement was not very wide and as the child was riding a small bicycle, I stepped into the gutter to let them pass. Although he was able to keep steady, the kid enjoyed meandering from the left to the right side of the pavement. When we passed, the father gave me a smile. He was proud of his son and I could see how much he loved his child, who was showing off a little bit. I felt good when I finally reached my street. On the corner was an old rusty car on the drive way, which will probably never run anymore.   

April 8, 2015

April 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday’s class was a success, because I had given my students, who split up in four groups, different written assignments. As we were talking about development, we had covered events taking place at birth, middle age and old age. I thought it would be a good idea to address end of life issues. Each assignment was a folded piece of paper with a question. 1) In what way have you been affected by the death of a loved one? 2) How does your family deal with death? What do you think about death? 3) What do you think about a person’s right to die? 4) Give some arguments for or against euthanasia? The flood gates had been opened and everyone was talking. The discussions were incredibly sincere and there was so much to talk about that we continued our conversation the entire class. 

What was so eye-opening for me was that, although I, of course, set the stage for these discussions to take place, they happened because of a little piece of paper with just a few words on it. The discriminative stimulus was a simple written instruction and the response was enormous. It is important to acknowledge the impact of these instructions, because it was not until the students opened their assignment that they knew what they were going to talk about. In other words, although the topic was embedded in the lecture, the conversation had reliably been triggered by a question on a piece of paper.

The class was already going well and we had been watching and discussing some interesting footage about attachment. First, we saw the old Marlow study with monkeys and then we looked at related research by Ainsworth’s about attachment styles. While watching these videos the light had been dimmed and when the end of life assignment had been handed out, the lights had still not been turned back on. This created an intimate atmosphere, which seemed to get the discussion going. Initially, only a few people spoke, but gradually, everyone joined. Normally, people are not this engaged, but this time also people were talking who usually don’t say much. Moreover, they all seemed comfortable and calm about it. The conversation which went on in their groups about their different assignments was noticeably moving. 

The conversations were quiet and students were serious. Although they were sitting at their tables in rows, they had all turned to each other and were taking turns. It felt like something really important was happening. Students were so deeply involved in their dialogues that they didn’t even seem to notice that I was standing right next to them and was listening to them. I had not made up my mind at what point to end this discussion and didn’t want to break it up. I moved from group to group to hear if they were ready to round off their conversation, but they were so immersed that it seemed like the right thing to do to let them continue. On two occasions, some students took note of me standing next to them and gestured as if they were saying: thank you for letting us talk about this. I nodded and became even included in their conversations, which brought up many emotions.

The atmosphere was beautiful. I saw some students wiping tears from their eyes, others were hugging each other and everyone seemed surprised and happy that they were able to unite around this topic, which, they all agreed, is so often is avoided in regular conversation. Students addressed their own mortality and said emphatic, supportive and validating things to each other. When different cultural habits were discussed, it became once again clear that the American way of dealing with death is surrounded by a lot of denial. 

As I had moved around to the back of the class, I noticed that I had left the light dimmed after the showing of the video footage. Two of the three switches had been turned off. I only turned one back on and this noninvasive signal let everyone know the time had come to end their conversation. After I had moved again to the front of the class, there was a sense of reference in the room. I praised everyone for their participation in the talking about this important topic. Various students shared with the class what they had been conversing about within their group. There was hardly any need for me to direct the conversation which naturally flowed. The class of 30 students acted as one unit and everyone listened to what each person was saying.

Today's class felt like an awakening. We were all involved in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and everyone knew it. The process had been organic and a sense of warmth and community had been created. I was so happy that I was able to come up with these four written assignments and make use of the light. As I am writing this I feel love and gratitude for my students who were doing so well. Also I feel so fortunate that I am able to teach.