July 30, 2014

July 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writer is going to try to write one page in less than half an hour. He knows he will be able to succeed if he doesn’t second guess his own ideas. This is an important thing to remember for the upcoming TEDxChico audition he participates in. It doesn’t really matter so much what he is going to say what matters is how he is going to say it. The essence of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is how we sound while we speak. In SVB we unanimously agree that we all sound good. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by contrast, we all sound terrible. It is important to know that in SVB we all sound good together, but in NVB we all sound terrible together. We haven’t listened to ourselves enough to acknowledge that this is the case. If we would listen to ourselves while we speak, we would have first-hand experience of our own sound. If we would all do this together, we would all agree that we sound good.  

During NVB we all think that other people are sounding terrible, that others do not communicate correctly or that there is something wrong with the way in which they speak. This process always goes both ways, but because NVB has not been challenged, one person always wins from another or one group always wins over another. In SVB, however, both parties are enhanced by the conversation. 

In SVB, there is a win-win situation, but in NVB, we think there is a win-loose situation, but, when we explore the difference between SVB and NVB, we find that NVB is a loose-loose situation. In other words, in spoken communication there is no win-loose or loose-win situation, there is only win-win or loose-loose. Said differently, we either communicate or we do not communicate.

In SVB we communicate and in NVB we don’t communicate. The fact that we have accepted NVB as our normal way of communicating is a big problem. The reason that we have done that is because we have nothing to compare it with. Although we have all experienced SVB, we can’t contrast NVB with SVB, because we have not had it on an ongoing basis. We have only known SVB in moments, but we have not deliberately, consistently and consciously produced it.  When we begin to do that we will find that previously we were not communicating.