May 14, 2015

May 14, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The fact that behaviorism isn’t known widely, isn’t taught everywhere and isn’t talked about very often, is because behaviorists and non-behaviorists alike are used to a way of talking, which can be described as immature. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is a way of talking in which the people who talk believe they can get away with whatever they say as if there are no consequences. Since the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency, the listener in NVB, whether he or she opens his or her mouth or not, is going to assert some kind of counter-control. As this counter-control can’t be properly addressed in NVB (if it is addressed, it is not done accurately), it will primarily affect the private speech of the listener as negative self-talk.

Without the institutional recognition and promotion of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), communicators who are aware of the negative consequences of NVB can only talk among themselves about these negative effects. Moreover, they do so out of survival as they don’t want to lose their relationship or job. The fact remains, however, NVB is a form of talking that maintains and perpetuates inequality. Our so-called acceptance of aversive communicators is self-serving, that is, it leaves us with a sense that we as autonomous agents have decided to conform, to be pragmatic, to fit in, to be smart, because it was better to act in this or in that way. Consequently, we may say one thing, but do another, because for us saying and doing are two entirely different things. when in fact they are not. Saying and doing are both behaviors. It is intellectually immature to think otherwise. Intellectual maturity can only develop during SVB in which the false dichotomy between what we say and do becomes irrelevant. 

What we say is what we do. Only if we begin to recognize the extent to which we are conditioned by NVB, we will see an increase of SVB, which is the way of talking in which we are no longer speaking as individual selves, but as partners in an ongoing conversation. Our numbers are not determined by the amount of people who know about behavior-environment relations, but by the extent to which we are communicating SVB. I think that the learning involved in acquiring behaviorist knowledge must be preceded by SVB. 

SVB is not and cannot be about persuading someone into a particular way of thinking. However, NVB, on the other hand, is characterized by someone’s attempt to make someone else think in a particular way, by any means possible. The means serve the end. In NVB and it doesn’t matter if one succeeds with coercion, with tricks or by exploiting someone’s feelings, believes or ignorance. Even if one fails completely to convince someone about NVB or even if people don't buy into one's NVB, it doesn’t matter, because it always leads to new, more coercive, violent, persistent, punitive, insidious and inescapable attempts. The whole point of NVB is to dominate others. Complete dominance can only be achieved and maintained by keeping alive false belief about choice, autonomy and freedom. 

The fact that people imagine a behavior-controlling inner self in NVB isn’t something philosophical. Although they are, like the consequences ofType II Diabetes, very real, the consequences of NVB are often denied. The long held assumption by behaviorists that a cultural belief in an inner agent prevents individuals from being benefitted by natural contingencies is flat out wrong. People who believe in an inner agent are better benefitted by the natural contingencies then those who don’t believe in inner agents. Their majority just shows how much better they are at benefitting than radical behaviorists, who have for the most part been unsuccessful in changing their mentalistic ways of thinking. If behaviorists would have known about SVB, however, they would have had no problem separating themselves from NVB.  Rather than doing this, they made tried to separate themselves from the field of psychology.

There is no overlap between SVB and NVB and thus they always only happen successively. When SVB changes into NVB, this is not a problem, but it is an opportunity to learn. It is only experienced as a problem to the extent that a presumed inner agent demands things to be different then they are. If this agent doesn’t really exist, then there is no problem. When NVB changes into SVB, this is never seen as a problem. The alteration occurs at a biological level as a noticeable change of energy within our own skin.  Thus, when someone switches from NVB to SVB, he or she experiences a sense of well-being which he or she wasn’t feeling before. However, this sense of well-being will immediately end the moment a presumed inner agent claims it as his or her experience. SVB continues in the absence of someone who does it, which means, it doesn’t leave any trace of someone who can claim to have even learned it.  We can only say that we maintain SVB in each other. 

When we experience that we can only maintain SVB together, that is, when we acknowledge that in SVB the speaker is listened to and understood and the listener can become such a speaker and the speaker can become such a listener, it is a very small step to realize that we maintain NVB together as well. However, this step is easier to be taken when we talk with ourselves than when we talk with each other. While focusing on each other, chances are much bigger that we will still infer (like we have done for so long) the inner causation of behavior. It is easy to blame another person for his or her behavior and to find a reason to justify that blame. When we listen to ourselves while we speak (which ideally, of course, is done simultaneously with others), we can catch ourselves asserting our imaginary inner agent, who may at any given moment claim to think, feel, experience or remember this or that.  When we carefully listen to and pay attention to the sound of our so-called inner agent, who seems to direct our thoughts, feelings, experiences, mood and attention, we find that he or she doesn’t exist. By verbalizing in our own words, pace and rhythm, whatever comes to our attention and by calmly listening to the sound of our voice, we effortlessly achieve a vastness and peace, which wasn’t there before. When I first discovered this I called it “The Language That Creates Space.”

Except in NVB, there are no others to influence, convince or persuade. Most of what we are accustomed to is based on coercive control of behavior. Even the idea that one supposedly must pay attention is aversive. The effect which we have on each other is there without anyone doing anything and without anyone having to do anything. NVB is so insensitive that we never took note of this. 

During SVB, we put words to our unique, ever-changing experience and we discover we are energized by talking with each other. Everyone who has ears can verify that in SVB the sound of our own voice plays a detectable role in the chain of functionally related events, which enhance the well-being of both the speaker and the listener. A new way of talking is possible, when we begin to  acknowledge that there are no inner selves, but that we cause each other’s vocal verbal behavior in the minutest ways possible.