April 14, 2016

April 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand describes what has been described as ‘a seeker’s dark night of the soul’, “religious dark periods” which involve “continued effortful behavior without the foundational, induced behavior.” It is, of course, a religious person’s negative private speech, which we refer to when we speak of perseverance “with a calling in the absence of the felt grace of God” (italics by me). Rather than the absence of a non-existing God, it is the absence of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the spoken communication in which the speaker can become bonded with the listener and the listener can become at any time the speaker, which brings isolation, loneliness, depression and despair. Moreover, negative private speech didn’t arise on its own as it was always preceded by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) public speech. The person, who experiences SVB on a continuous basis, has no negative self-talk to get rid of and is therefore not prone to any superstition, which is what effortful religious behavior is.

“Induced religious behavior is apparently more rewarding than acquired religious behavior.” The person who experiences a lot of SVB will realize that genuine religious behavior is in fact based on communion, on the joining of speaking and listening behavior. For the person who knows the distinction between SVB and NVB, each period in which we have NVB is a dark period, regardless of whether we experience this alone as our negative private speech or together as negative public speech. It is not the absence of God, which causes the speaker’s dark period, but the absence of the listener. 

Actually, the grandiose speaker, who speaks AT the listener, may think that he or she is like God, but he or she is not really present either, for he or she acts like an unconscious, mechanical communicator. The tenacious belief that we cause our own behavior sets the stage for NVB. In NVB, the speaker is not really speaking and the listener is not really listening. In NVB we are disconnected from each other and from ourselves and we are not real. Our conversation with an imaginary God is just as unreal as our conversation based on an imaginary behavior-causing self; both are always NVB. It is not the grace of God, which cannot be grasped, but the listener, who cannot be forced. Forced listening will always elicit a non-religious pattern of behavior.

April 13, 2016

April 13, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes that “this experience [a monumental life event] is evoked rather than emitted, although it serves as the basic unit for emitted behaviors” [words added by this writer]. In other words, a life-threatening event, the foxhole experience, evokes respondent as well as operant behavior. As I have already explained in my previous writings, effortful and effortless behavior cannot occur esimultaneously; they always occur sequentially. Likewise, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as well as graceful and acquired religious behavior also occur successively. 

Strand thinks that “foundational religious experiences” may be “more complex than simply responding to the frame of self-as-infinite.” He quotes Ainslie (2001) who found that “concurrent schedules may give rise to attentional switching, which is the basis for a variety of experiential-behavioral phenomena including compulsions, addictions, psycho-genic itches and pains.” In my analysis, mental health issues, political grandiosity, as well as effortful religion are all labeled as being a function of NVB. 

This is where Strand’s analysis and the SVB/NVB distinction overlap, as it highlights that behavioral phenomena may be defined in terms of the patterning of responding that occurs across multiple schedules.” I think the patterning of responding is explained very well by SVB and NVB. However, we must account for how this “attentional switching” comes about. When an elicited escape response is ineffective, because it doesn’t change the foxhole situation, then, regardless of attentional switchinging, there will be an involuntary immobilization response, a freeze response and dissociation.

The veteran, who acquires PTSD under inescapable aversive circumstances, is plagued by hypervigilance, hyper-arousal and sleep problems. If, on the other hand, “attentional switching” comes about due to positive, supportive, happy circumstances, its quality is of a completely different order. During SVB we calmly investigate whatever is in our attention, but not during NVB.

April 12, 2016

April 12, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes that “a genuine religious act – prayer in the foxhole – serves as a minimal unit out of which less foundational, acquired religious behavior results.” Presumably, even such an extremely aversive situation can lead to a religious experience, albeit a less foundational one.  Strand mentions  that “the acts of revising one’s self-descriptions, of seeking like-minded companions, and attending religious services, are effortful and not graceful.” After surviving his foxhole ordeal the atheist becomes a believer as the situation forced him to contemplate his death. The resulting “re-description of self”, which “functions to generate consistency between current verbal descriptions of the self and one’s actual past behavior” and “derives from past social interactions in which reinforcement accrued to the construction of self-narratives characterized by consistency between word and deed” (Skinner, 1974), is made possible by a change of environment from one in which one experiences immanent threat to one in which one experiences safety. 

Behaviorists can and should demystify this fearful begging and praying for an imaginary helper, which presumably turns the atheist into a believer, as a form of private speech, which derives from public speech. As neither the higher power nor the inner, behavior-causing agent exists, it should be considered as a form of verbal behavior. More precisely, it is covert Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) or private speech, colloquially known as negative self-talk, which is a function of overt NVB or public speech, which explains the religious conversion. Strand writes “the point of the [foxhole] example is to illustrate the relation between graceful religious behavior and effortful religious behavior” [word between parentheses added by this writer]. However, the graceful religious behavior is a form of SVB private speech, which can only derive from SVB public speech. Thus, from this natural, behavior analytic account, we should no longer explain foxhole prayer or any other effortful behavior as religious behavior.

April 11, 2016

April 11, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand explains how religious experience is induced by a situation by giving the example of a soldier in a foxhole . “Regardless of one’s belief system, when faced with death people often pray or experience peculiar self-reflective and sensory experiences (as when one’s life flashes before one’s eyes; James, 1902/1958).” Surprisingly, Strand doesn’t characterize the fighting behavior of the soldier as effortful, as belonging to the acquired category of religious behavior. Instead, he states “According to the present formulation, these experiences are genuine, graceful, and foundational. They do not arise out of previous reinforcement, but, instead, are induced by the confluence of a history of verbal training that permits organizing behavior according to the frame of self-as-infinite, and a proximal stimulus that triggers that response pattern.” 

This writer agrees there is a great difference between effortful and effortless religious behavior, but he disagrees with the notion of the soldier who fights for his life as having effortless behavior. Such absurdity is against anything we know about biology. In the face of imminent threat human beings will experience fight, flight or freeze (read: dissociation) responses. To equate these responses with effortless religious behavior is to equate religious behavior with shutting down instead of opening up. Viewed from the SVB/NVB distinction, we notice that a lot and perhaps most of our so-called religious behavior should be considered as the shutting down of our spoken communication.

Most so-called religious behavior is our private speech getting out of control, meaning, getting out of touch with our pubic speech. Speakers who acquired Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) are the most extreme example of NVB, as they may experience a safe environment as threatening and a threatening environment as safe . As already stated, effortful religious experience maps onto NVB and effortless, graceful religious behavior maps onto SVB. There is no way of changing NVB into SVB. SVB can only occur when NVB has been stopped. Likewise, we cannot be effortful and effortless at the same time.