April 5, 2015

April 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

I haven't written for a couple of days and want to start again. Actually, I didn't stop entirely, because in the meantime I have written a couple of songs and I have been working on a paper. The paper is coming along slowly and each day I look if my friend Arturo has given me feedback. We connect once a week, but I think I need more feedback to be able to write the way in which I am supposed to write. I realize this is quite task.

The songs I have written are very nice and singing them is fun. I even met some musicians with whom I might sing these songs. I would like to do that. I saw Maurice perform and enjoyed hearing him sing blues and jazz. He imitated Louis Armstrong really good. Singing and song-writing creates more diversity in my life. 

Bonnie and I are working on the yard. I was getting upset with her. I asked her opinion about something and she told me how she wanted it, but I felt she was not appreciative of what I did and I felt pissed. She said, she was just making a suggestion, but she only wants things to be her way and often immediately rejects what I propose. I lost my cool. 

A mental health client from the past, an ex-convict-addict with a terrible traumatic history, called me up, out of the blue, to wish me happy Easter. He was doing well and receiving the help he needs. I was working with him in 2011 when he had just had a stroke. Now he is a wheel chair, diabetic and has lost vision in his left eye. He told me that I am good person and I thanked him for that. He was attuned with me for a little while, but he was not very capable of making good conversation. I appreciated him for his call and let him know how nice it is that he would still remember me and wanting to be in contact with me. He said that he would always be my friend unless I would let him know that I no longer wanted to be his friend.

Things kept changing with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The other day I was going to a seminar, but the presenter was in an accident. Since the room had filled with students and faculty, I suggested that I could give a seminar. It worked out well and they loved it. It was once again clear how easy it is for me to do something like that. However, I know that such one-time events don’t make much of a difference. To learn SVB, we must have at least have twenty of these presentations in which people can experiment with it. In this format, in a one-time-event, I am more like a performer, an entertainer and others are the audience. There were a few valuable questions at the end, but not much learning can occur under such conditions. One question was how a person can have more SVB. From the question is was clear that the person recognized and liked SVB and wanted to have more. This was my answer: the conditions are created that will make SVB possible when we discriminate what it is and realize that we want it. This establishing operation is like thirst, which makes drinking reinforcing. There is no thirst for SVB in most people because they don’t know what it is. They will know what it is only when they realize that listening to me or some other authority is simply not enough. They will have to produce SVB themselves to learn it. 

When we create the conditions for SVB it will occur. It is like speaking another language. Nobody can speak Chinese for someone else. At best such a person can be an interpreter. This is what I currently am. I am not happy as a translator. It doesn’t do me or others much good. I want people to learn SVB. I can teach them to speak SVB, not just once, but always.

I was hearing about the empty churches of Europe. I envisioned myself as a traveling teacher visiting those places and attracting people who don’t believe in god anymore to have SVB. Churches would be ideal places to teach SVB. Of course, SVB is not religion, but it could take the place of religion. Our so-called communication with a higher power is in essence an expression of our need for SVB, for authentic, peaceful communication with people from our verbal community. It is Easter. People don’t long for SVB, because that longing was diverted into religion. I view SVB as sacred because I don’t have a religion. Only SVB can fill the void, which is left when religion is gone.

The link between SVB and religion or meditation, has often been made. SVB fills us with wonder and tranquility. However, due to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) nothing seems to be sacred. NVB involves the whole-sale abandonment of our need for goodness, beauty and peace. To prevent the decline of our culture, we need to have something modern, something to base relationship on and to get along with each other. Belief systems that are based on the denial and diversion of interaction are outdated and cannot help us anymore.