September 24, 2015

September 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to “Establishing the Macrobehavior of Ethical Self-Control in Arrangement of Macro Contingencies in Two Macro Cultures” (2014) by Aécio Borba, Emmanuel Zagury Tourinho and Sigrid S. Glenn. The author’s solution for “individuals whose diets are rich in sugars and fat because they dine at fast food restaurants would be to limit the number of restaurants in each zone of the city, making access more difficult and raising the response cost of consuming that type of food” (see Lydon, Rohmeier, Yi, Mattaini, & Williams, 2011). Although this is a straightforward behaviorist solution, it leaves out the screens on which and the magazines in which the advertisements are seen or heard, which affect what we say to ourselves about fast food.

We will go out of our way to get what we want, if we don’t address what we say to ourselves. Furthermore, what we say to ourselves is determined by how others speak with us. If there is or was a lot of NVB, this means there is or was a lack of care and attention. This translates into a lack of self-care. Obesity is a symptom of a lack of self-care rather than lack of “ethical self-control.” Lack of self-care is determined by a lack of care. If people have higher rates of SVB, they have experienced higher levels of care and consequently have higher levels of self-care. Thus, eating diets rich in sugars and fat has nothing to do with self-control. And, changing the “macro-contingency” cannot facilitate a higher level of care. Much more effective would be if we could change the “shared environment” by reducing NVB and increasing SVB.

In SVB, we share a positive environment in which the speaker and listener enhance each other, but in NVB, the speaker and the listener share an aversive environment in which the speaker coerces the listener. This affects the environment within the skin of the listener to which he or she only individually has access. This always results into NVB private speech in the listener. Access to our NVB private speech is very different from access to our SVB private speech. We don’t want to make contact with the former, but we long to make contact with the latter. However, we will only be able to have access to the latter after we have dealt with and have overcome our fear of coming in contact with the former. A change in our private speech occurs only as a result of a change in our public speech. Public speech always comes first. The bad eating habits, which are in reality a consequence of a lack of care, can only be solved by caring and supportive SVB about food. However, SVB cannot be provided by those who didn’t experience enough care. SVB is a real event which is grounded in the philosophy of naturalism.

The only way in which SVB can be measured is by focusing on how the listener experiences the speaker. SVB is how the listener experiences the speaker, but in NVB it is presumably unimportant how the listener experiences the speaker. In NVB the speaker is ignorant about how the listener experiences him or her. This lack of feedback leads to all sorts of assumptions in the speaker, none of which address why the listener is turned off. However, the listener’s reason for not listening to the speaker is a culmination of preceding events. For instance, the speaker usually notices he or she is not being listened to. A teacher in front of classroom is a good example. He or she realizes the students are not listening, but he or she doesn’t necessarily acknowledge what he or she does because of which they don’t and can’t listen. The NVB teacher turns off all students who have more SVB behavioral history than him or her. This is true for all NVB speakers. They turn off all those listeners who have more SVB history. Indeed, the more SVB history the listener has, the more turned off he or she will be. This is often completely misinterpreted and the listener with more SVB history than the speaker is blamed that he or she is not listening, when in fact it is the speaker who makes it impossible for him or her to listen. NVB is a detectable event, but only if we pay attention to how we sound while we speak.

Events of not listening are preceded by aversive-sounding speakers.

It is those preceding events, in which the speaker repeatedly hurts the listener with the sound of his or her voice, which make the listener less and less inclined and, most importantly, incapable, of listening to the speaker. When we acknowledge this we have a whole new way of understanding autism. The speaker, who notices that his or her effect on the listener is not what he or she wants it to be, will inadvertently attempt to have another, a better, effect on the listener. Unless the speaker realizes, that is, directly experiences, that his or her NVB has this effect on the listener, he or she may try to anxiously make changes, to supposedly help the listener. Such changes can’t help the listener and make the NVB of the speaker even more intense. The real problem is that the speaker thinks that he or she is doing something positive for the listener when in fact he or she is doing something which is negative.

The lack of control over the behavior of the listener, such as children not listening to their parents or students not listening to their teachers, is because of the accumulative effects of preceding events, that is, the NVB of the parent or the teacher. If we would adhere to a philosophy of naturalism, we would be able to predict and verify that the absence of these functional antecedents would cause different responses in the listener. However, manipulation of the sound of the speaker’s voice as an independent variable is tricky, as acting that we are happy is not the same as being happy. Likewise, acting as if we are friendly, calm and open is not the same as being friendly, calm and open. Those with more SVB history will be turned off or even feel threatened, by speakers who are faking it. In SVB, the speaker doesn’t try to sound differently, but he or she can sound differently, because of his or her behavioral history. Our ignorance about the natural causes for why we speak the way we do is such that speakers demonize those who are not listening to them. However, once we experiment with the SVB/NVB distinction, we stop doing that because we finally realize what was causing our own NVB. Rather than believing that we control ourselves or others, we become aware that both SVB as well as NVB is not caused by us, but by others, who are our environment. Thus, SVB only happens when it can happen.