Learned Helplessnes?

Dear Reader,

I want everyone to know that there is no such a thing as a “teachable moment.” Those who speak about teaching in that way, don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Humans don’t learn in one moment. This is not how behavior works. Also, there is nobody inside of you, there is no inner self, who is either willing or unwilling to learn. You don’t learn because you “suddenly get it”, because you “have a high IQ” or because you are “so intelligent”. This one special experience which supposedly “changed your life forever”, all your “profound insights” and all your laughable, mystical “haha-moments”, simply demonstrate you don’t know anything about human behavior.

Let me make this very clear: YOU, whoever you believe yourself to be, don’t learn anything, ever! The only thing which really happens is that your body has been changed over time by certain conditioning processes. Particular responses were reinforced and these behaviors are then selected and are more likely to occur in the future. Once again, you don’t ever cause your own behavior. When you find yourself having a certain behavior very often, just acknowledge that your behavior was reinforced in the past and, most likely, is being reinforced right now in your current environment. Behavioral change will only occur if you change your environment.

I teach you to have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) instead of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). You have very little SVB, but a lot of NVB, as you are almost constantly in aversive environments in which only NVB is reinforced. You need to be with other people and in different circumstances to be able to have SVB. Although you still believe you have to decide or choose your own behavior, although you have been conditioned to view yourself as a bad learner or a lousy student, there absolutely is no you inside of you, who does your behavior. There is only your body which was and which is conditioned and therefore changed by environmental stimuli, by certain circumstances, by what Skinner describes as contingencies of reinforcement. Obviously, if you have been in certain circumstances very often, if you stay in these same dreadful circumstances, change of your behavior will not occur. To change your behavior, you must change of your environment. It takes experimentation to figure things out.

Stop being busy with “learning things the hard way.” Coercive or forceful behavior control is rampant everywhere as people generally don’t know how to practice positive behavior control. If you find that most of your behavior is based on trying to avoid aversive consequences (as you are trying very hard to be polite, conscious, kind, open, genuine and positive), know that you are living in threatening circumstances in which you will never be able to have SVB. “Learning things the hard way” means you are not learning anything at all. It is just another horrible saying to justify Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). And, here is another punitive saying for you: “If you don’t want to listen, you will have to feel the consequences.” Of course, you don’t want to listen to abusive NVB speakers, who will always shame you into believing that you are creating the negative respondent behaviors which they elicit. I repeat again: you don’t cause your own behavior!!! It is totally natural to you move away from aversive stimuli. “Avoidance learning” is the process by which an individual learns a behavior or response to avoid a stressful or unpleasant situation. The behavior is to avoid, or to remove oneself from, the situation. If you didn’t do that you wouldn’t be able to survive. However, repertoire that is based on avoiding negative consequences can never make you happy. As most of your behavior is coercively controlled by what behaviorists call negative reinforcement, you only have little repertoire that is controlled by positive reinforcement. By acknowledging the environment in which you can have ongoing SVB, an increase of repertoire that is controlled by positive reinforcement will naturally occur and you will feel very confident.