May 24, 2015

May 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is an extremely delicate matter and is easily disturbed or made impossible. This is the reason we keep missing it. If we wish to continue SVB, we must know how to maintain the environment that allows it. As long as we think that we are doing it, we are not creating the environment in which SVB can take place. We are not individually causing or originating it. Even when we are just by ourselves, we cannot decide to have SVB, because SVB will only happen when our notion of deciding our own behavior has been understood as false. There is no inner self that causes us to behave. Only when we have experienced this understanding can SVB happen. 

Whenever people talk, they think that they do the talking. Likewise, whenever people listen, they think that they do the listening. All the problems involved in talking and listening can be traced back to the common belief that individuals cause their own behavior. No matter how widespread this belief may be, this is absolutely wrong. SVB makes us realize this is not anything intellectual or philosophical. It disappears immediately if our thinking about it is inaccurate. 

To go somewhere one has to know the way. When one knows the way one can go there, but it is not a decision, it is possible to go there. One goes there because one is capable. Thus, it can be said that only certain people can have SVB, while others can’t, although nobody causes it or prevents it. It is equally wrong to think that someone causes SVB as to think that someone prevents it.

The fact that some people can recognize SVB doesn’t mean they can produce it. We first recognize it and only then can we produce it. Many of us cannot produce SVB because we have never recognized it. We think that we have recognized it, that we can do it, but in reality we don’t recognize it and what we are doing is not SVB, but Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB, we think that we can do it, we think that we can try to do it, we feel responsible for doing it and we think that way of others as well. We can only recognize SVB to the extent that we have been exposed to it. There is no way for us to recognize it if we are not exposed to it. We may have been exposed to it, but we didn’t notice that we were exposed to it, because nothing made us recognize it as SVB. It may be happening and people may not be able to recognize it. SVB and NVB are happening but we don't discriminate them and so we are stuck with NVB.