October 7, 2014

October 7, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

As this writer reads every day a couple of pages from the highly recommended, well-written book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) by Stephen Ledoux, he becomes more and more convinced that although writing has certainly changed a lot of human behavior for the better, that is, we have become more scientific about things, it is very clear that writing didn’t and couldn’t improve human relationship. 

Writings simply lack the independent variable status that make the dependent variable, our spoken communication, manipulable . Our books and scientific papers create and perpetuate the teleological fiction that in some distant future, due to this knowledge, human beings will change their behavior. However, it didn’t happen. 

While educated people think they have an explanation for why things are the way they are, they have forgotten to analyze and have completely ignored the worst problem of society: spoken communication. They may be scientific about many things, but they aren’t scientific about how humans and how they themselves interact with each other. Hope for a better world has been continuously exploited by those who write and distract the attention from variables of spoken communication, which must be analyzed while we speak. 

Academic writings have stopped the conversation and have made us buy into the fiction that we can do something better than talking: read or watch. Mankind’s search for the causal variables, which make us communicate  the way we do, have only led to more papers, more books, more preaching, more written speeches (done by speakers who supposedly do the talking for others), more debates, more sales pitches and more politics. All of this, according to this author, could only increase NVB. 

Written words oppress spoken words. Compared to medicine which cures disease, written words haven’t had much of a healing effect and didn't alleviated the human condition. The reason has always been that written words can't supply the practical contingencies that involve the environment-controlling, verbal behavior-changing technologies. Functional control of how we talk results from environmental change, but, the environment in which we read and write is entirely different from the environment in which we speak and listen. Thus, to change the way in which we talk, we must attend to our environment, that is, to each other, while we speak.  

This author has given hundreds of seminars in which he reliably controlled the behavior of others. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) all participants get in contact with the real variables which cause them to speak the way they speak. As the participants explore and validate the difference between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), they are again and again utterly surprised that nobody has ever pointed this out to them. Although, due to certain behavioral histories, it is more difficult to point this out to certain people, SVB is always possible and self-evident. It takes a little while, but everyone who participates understands what SVB is! The same is true for the psychology classes which are taught by this author. As the semester progresses all his students eventually get it and participate more in SVB

SVB and NVB are two existing modes of communicating, which have been observed by people from every culture and from very walk of life. We are used to NVB, but we are deprived of SVB. This doesn’t mean that we don’t know the SVB, but that we haven’t been reinforced for it as much as we have for NVB.  This writer has taught so many different people about it that he knows it is possible regardless of history, for everyone to produce it.  For some it takes more work, but it is always possible.

Ledoux ends Chapter 4 by writing that “hopefully” his text “conditions skeptical sensitivity to scientifically inadequate explanations” (p.133). This writer would never use such language. This writer knows that no written texts will or can ever “prepare” for “adequate explanations of behavior." No writing can or will “condition skeptical sensitivity” of NVB. This writer would never  explain SVB as “Let’s make sure we get things as right as possible”, but he acknowledges that the use of such words stem from a vague and insufficient sense of the inadequacy of writing. 

In SVB we are not “hopefully” conditioning new behavior. Although the future isn’t causing our behavior, one experience of SVB is enough to predict what we are more likely to do under similar circumstances. During SVB we look to our future with great anticipation, because, while we know that we are having it, we are benefitted by recognizing the many possibilities we didn’t know we had. This window gives us hope which we otherwise wouldn’t have. NVB makes our outlook grim and negative. In NVB there is nothing to look forward to. Even if we can call the shots, in NVB the oppressors are as stuck in their behaviors as the oppressed. No matter who we are, as long as we engage in NVB, none of us is having his or her needs met.