January 8, 2018

Dear Reader,

I went through an arduous process before I became capable of writing and speaking about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in its current form. When I first discovered it, I didn’t know anything about radical behaviorism. I believed, like everyone else, that I was causing my own behavior. I thought I was responsible for producing SVB. Although I longed to engage in it, I kept getting involved in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as I had no idea that it was my environment which caused me to engage either in SVB or in NVB.

For a long time, I felt burdened knowing that SVB was possible and beneficial, but my knowledge about it was totally inaccurate. It wasn’t until I learned about operant conditioning, which is explained by the three-term contingency: Stimulus, Response and Consequence, that I became aware of environmental antecendent stimuli, which either set the stage for SVB or NVB, the response, which is then followed by postcedents or consequences, which will then make SVB or NVB more or less likely to occur in the future.

We must acquire basic scientific understanding about how our behavior is determined, not by us, as some behavior-causing agent, but by consequences which follow our behavior. Behaviors which occur at a high response rate are behaviors that are reinforced. If we often engage in NVB, we must be in environments in which this behavior is reinforced, but, if SVB occurs at a low response rate, we must be in environments in which this behavior is not very often reinforced.

This contingency-based way of thinking makes it easy for us to learn to have more SVB and less NVB. We engage in SVB or in NVB as we find ourselves in the environments in which one or the other is reinforced. This means there is no need at all to try to have SVB. If we are having SVB together, this simply means that we are somehow reinforcing it, but if we keep having NVB, it means that we are together reinforcing NVB. We will reliably acquire novel or more effective behavior and decrease any ineffective or unwanted behavior, as our behavior is being reinforced or not.

I don’t think we need to learn how to reinforce SVB or how to not reinforce NVB. We need to take note of when we are engaging in SVB or in NVB as this is when we are reinforcing one or the other. We will be effortlessly able to have more SVB, once we reinforce it. Currently we don’t reinforce it. As we realize how different it is to reinforce NVB or SVB, we will change our environment. As we witness the great difference between SVB and NVB, we will reinforce only SVB.
 
Dear Reader,

You can only come to know about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by learning about it from me or from someone who has learned it from me. I know it sounds preposterous to say that I know something which nobody knows, but once you talk with me I guarantee that you will agree it is true. You can only learn about SVB by fully acknowledging, admitting and accepting that you don’t know anything about it.

Learning about SVB always starts with not knowing. You will not be able to understand it immediately, but you can experience it without understanding it. I know that you insist on understanding it and that if you can’t understand it, you will not consider it, but I urge you to experience without understanding it. You will understand it only after you have experienced it. This is how SVB, genuine human interaction, works. I am not saying that understanding is not important, but this understanding comes out of your experience.

If there had really been someone who you could totally trust, who knew exactly how to stimulate you so that you would reliably experience SVB, who was capable of pointing out to you that knowing about SVB is secondary to experiencing it, you would be having SVB already. Fact is, however, such a person was never there. It is very hard for us to acknowledge that this is actually the case: nobody knew about SVB!

We have learned some bits and pieces of SVB and we may occasionally have experienced fleeting moments of it, but we never had it continuously, deliberately and skillfully. Those who have taught us about how to communicate didn’t know anything about SVB. So, we have never for any extended period of time been exposed to someone who could teach us about SVB. Such reinforcing exposure is absolutely necessary.

SVB is not a course in miracles. Those who believe in causation of behavior by a divine entity are equally unfit to learn about SVB as those who adhere to the myth of a behavior-causation inner self. The laws of human behavior don’t depend on your superstitions. SVB is simply a skill which will only be acquired if it is reinforced by someone who knows how to do that. Right now you are mainly reinforced for having NVB. Consequently, your NVB happens at a high response rate. SVB happens at such a low response rate as it is seldom reinforced. Once we know this we can take the drama out of many of our problems and conflicts.

January 9, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am reading a second time from the “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense if we construe antecedents as “discriminative stimuli or signs which alert the organism to the presence or availability of a particular contingency (behavior-consequence relation).” A SVB speaker’s voice sounds totally different from a NVB speaker’s voice. The sound of the speaker’s voice informs the listener if the contingency for SVB or NVB is going to be available.

Antecedent stimuli are also addressed as “establishing conditions”, “an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus”, as “a state of deprivation, which give to subsequent events their reinforcing (incentive) or disinforcing (disincentive) properties as the case may be.” At any given moment people are hungry to hear the voice of a leader, who sounds strong, simple, superior, rigid, dominant and in control or of someone, who sounds sensitive, flexible, complex, open and sophisticated.

Whenever “the organism’s behavioral propensities are shaped or honed by past experience of the immediate consequences of behaving in that way in one’s own case” behaviorists talk about “contingency-shaped behavior.” Thus, SVB is “contingency-shaped”, as in SVB speakers are immediately positively reinforced. NVB, by contrast, is “rule-governed behavior” as it is “controlled by a verbal specification of the relevant antecedent-behavior-consequence relation.” The nonverbal sound, facial expression or gestures of the NVB speaker, but also their verbal behavior, specifies the “antecedent-behavior-consequence relation”. In other words, NVB is elicited or respondent behavior, but SVB is emitted or operant behavior. Only SVB is mediated behavior as NVB is controlled nonverbally.

Dear Reader,

I am reading from “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

Whenever two or more individuals interact, they will either create and maintain an environment in which they reinforce their equal or their unequal status. In the case of the former, they engage in SVB, but in the case of the latter, they engage in NVB. Place describes the relation between the three “terms” as follows: “(A) A set of Antecedent conditions which call for (B) some Behavior to be emitted or omitted by an organism (the ‘owner’ of the contingency) and (C) the actual or anticipated Consequences of so behaving.”

What is to be emitted or omitted is, of course, NOT determined by the speaker, but by the “owner of the contingency,” which is BOTH the speaker as well as the listener. Place, however, who considers the speaker as the “owner of the contingency” refers to NVB, in which the speaker dominates the listener. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker and the listener take turns, which means: the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. In effect, they own the contingency together and share control over the conversation. Stated differently, in SVB speakers and listeners mutually reinforce each other, but in NVB only the speakers are reinforced by the listeners.
In SVB neither the speaker nor the listener is having any concern about what is emitted or omitted, but in NVB the speaker and the listener are continuously preoccupied with what is to be emitted or omitted. In other words, in SVB there is no restriction at all on what is to be emitted, but in NVB what is emitted or omitted is always determined NVB by the speaker.

Dear Reader,

As long as I have known about the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I have been trying to talk about it. A selection process has occurred which made it more and more clear why most professional people don’t want to talk with me or with those who have learned about these universal response classes.

My insistence on talking about SVB is related to the growing certainty that I and those who explore it with me have come to know something, which others are ashamed to admit they don’t know anything about. It is embarrassing to fully comprehend our continuous involvement in NVB. Our biggest chagrin is not what we have done to each other, but what we have done to ourselves. We dread becoming self-conscious.

The fact is, however, that only in NVB our private speech is at odds with our public speech. Rather than feeling mortified about and resistant to the possibility of expressing our private speech in our public speech, in SVB we experience an ongoing sense of relief and wonder and sheer joy as we have finally stopped our struggle. Once we engage in SVB, we know for sure that we were merely pretending to be NVB speakers.

January 10, 2018

Dear Reader,

The problem is NOT that you can’t change from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but that you don’t know about SVB and NVB, and, therefore, you don’t really know about how your behavior actually works. Even the most supposedly intelligent individuals keep selecting NVB, but they can’t engage in SVB as long as they haven’t studied the difference between SVB and NVB.

The conditions which are necessary to discriminate SVB and NVB and the environments in which they occur cannot be created or maintained as long as you keep being trapped by NVB. Stated differently, the necessary interchange between the organism and the environment is gravely impaired due to how you speak. Neither your fanatic belief in some higher power nor your desperate belief in yourself, neither your grandiose confidence, your so-called identity, your over-rated values and morals, your boring politics, your criminal intelligence, your outdated knowledge, your reactionary gut-feelings, your greedy psychic powers or your commercial talent or your utterly disempowering genetic pre-deposition, could stop your NVB, but SVB can and is already doing it. 

The fact that you are not part of this new movement is not your fault. It is part of a long respondent or Pavlovian history for which nobody is to be blamed. Your tendency to engage again and again in NVB is because your speaking and your listening behavior is under control of environmental stimuli which make operant learning of SVB impossible! Your NVB speech is reactionary as it is elicited by aversive stimuli!!!

Dear Reader,

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is eventually going to be selected as its consequences are far better than your Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although you don’t know this, your knowledge about SVB is bound to outcompete your ignorance of NVB. Moreover, your unwillingness to learn from others about NVB is already repeatedly being exposed, challenged and dissolved by their SVB. Your stubborn refusal to talk is a failed attempt to conceal your bias and ignorance.

The shaping and maintenance of SVB is an essential aspect of becoming a more sophisticated, modern human being. Whether you know about SVB or not depends on whether you participate in it or not. It is your loss if you don’t want to learn about SVB, as those who know about it will refuse to talk with you. They will not reinforce your NVB anymore as they experience the great relief of not talking with you. 

Your NVB explanations can’t explain SVB. Those who know about natural selection realize why you can’t help it that you want to hang on to your fabrications. They are not trying to convince you. They will move on without you. They don’t need you. They have an adaptive advantage you miss out on. Their way of life remains unknown to you as you can’t relate to them. It only seems you have the power to refuse to talk with them, but the fact is: they refuse to engage in NVB with you, as you can’t engage in SVB with them.

January 11, 2018

Dear Reader,

Once you know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), you realize how dumb Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is. To have more SVB, it is necessary that you recognize and withdraw from NVB. Initially, it still may seem as if you are missing out on something, but, as your ability to engage in SVB increases, you understand that NVB is a hoax, a hype, a deception. The word hoax comes from hocus pocus, disguising what is actually happening; NVB is meaningless talk.

NVB is an act intended to deceive and trick you into obedience. While you are engaged in it, you are never allowed to talk about how it works. No matter how hard you keep trying, as long as you remain engaged in it you can’t talk about it. Only this realization will take away from NVB. The moment you realize this, you will engage in SVB, naturally and effortlessly. The moment you shift from NVB to SVB, you have broken the spell. There is no way back. You must learn SVB. 

The NVB speaker’s perceived superiority as well the NVB speaker’s perceived inferiority have historically always been (and continuous to be) established by fraudulent means. Throughout history human beings have always struggled with each other as they have endlessly tried to dominate and exploit each other. Those in authority, in one way or another, have always fabricated and trumped up their ascendancy. There has never been any agreement among those who presumably were first, second or third class.

The inferior as well as the superior NVB speakers are all liars, schemers, pretenders and swindlers. NVB speakers will always betray each other while giving the impression of trustworthiness. Inferior NVB speakers aren’t any better as superior NVB speakers. They may seem to be humble, modest and willing to sacrifice, but they literally step over dead bodies, they will use their so-called spirituality, their mindfulness, their simplicity and kindness to be holier than others.

January 12, 2018

Dear Reader,

I keep having remarkably vivid, happy dreams about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I just woke up from such a dream. It seems to me as if I am only dreaming about SVB these days. Every day is filled with SVB and so are my dreams. I want you to know that this wasn’t always the case. It has only been in the last couple of weeks that this has begun to occur and it is only just now that I took note of it. I used to have incredibly paranoid and tormenting dreams. They were nightmares really in which everything which could go wrong went wrong. It was a relief to wake up from such fearful dreams, but those terrible dreams back then filled me with a sense of impending doom.

The changes which have happened to me and are happening every day, are also going to happen to you once you begin to engage in SVB regularly. Like I stated, this wasn’t always the case either. I used to want to have SVB, but not have it, but now I that I am having it every day, I am amazed to find I no longer long for it. There was a time when my life was a anxious and disorderly mess, but now my days are filled with beautiful conversations, friends, music, study, work, nature and writings like these. If today would be the last day of my life, I would die happily.

A tremendous reversal has been taking place. I used to be involved in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and I would argue with just about everyone. The greatest injustice, as far as I could see, was that everyone was so very convinced that they were right, but that I was wrong. Also, it seemed so unfair that with me it was always obvious I was wrong. I have always admitted my wrong doings and even though I tried to lie as child, I was always found out. At the same time, it was unacceptable to me that those who were mean, forceful and dishonest, seemed to be right and could continue doing what they were doing without me. Presumably, I was the one who made all the mistakes and I was punished, rejected, avoided and silenced each time I had angrily protested and spoken out.

In the dream I just woke up from, I was talking with people who had previously ridiculed me. They had read my writings and were asking what it meant. I was at long last having the conversation with them which I had been asking for so many times, but which they had refused. They had studied my writings and had come prepared with some questions. They were holding the printed versions of my writings in their hands and were tightly holding on to it as if this was going to be their final proof that I was wrong and that they were right. They thought they had the evidence in their hands and as they spoke, they read my text from the paper. My response was similar to what I had written and as they listened to me, they slowly looked up, lowered their papers and begun to really talk. We engaged in SVB. They now read my writings out loud while they engaged in SVB with me and they expressed their awe about that it didn’t matter at all whether they read my writing or talked with me.

January 13, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am looking for a committee of established behavioral scientists, who will award me the Ph.D. in behaviorism for my discovery and formulation of the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Do you know someone who is courageous and sincere enough to explore, verify and videotape this construct together with me and say four or five others? The committee members first have to become face book friends with me, then will have a skype conversation with me and they will listen on Walden III to ALL the videos about SVB. Also, they will have to sign a form, which states that although they have read and watched a lot of my work, they don't know anything about it, but are willing to learn about it from me!!! (During the presentation it will all be very apparent why these precautions were necessary and we will have a good laugh about it). Lastly, it is agreed upon that at no time any questions will be asked about whether empirical research was done or whether data was collected. Since the answer to these questions is NO, there is no need to ask. Thus, it is agreed beforehand that the Ph.D. will be solely rewarded for the investigation of the speaking and listening behavior of those present, who will engage together in a three hour long conversation. I am 100% serious about this and look forward to hearing from you. Kind greetings from Maximus Peperkamp in Chico CA USA.

January 14, 2018

Dear Reader,

When people say “I never would have thought that!” they usually mean that the thought never occurred to them or that there was nothing they could think of which would have caused the thought to occur. Thus, they use this expression when they hear or discover something which surprises them. Also, people would say things like “I would have never believed it.” This is after they’ve found out that something, which they didn’t or couldn’t believe, turned out to be actually true. I would like you to consider another explanation for why you would never think of certain things or why you are unable to believe things which are true.

As conversations about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) have brought about many new ideas, we want to think about these ideas and we also want to believe in these new possibilities, because thinking and believing in the SVB/NVB distinction has wonderful implications. We can’t help but notice that we have now accumulated a knowledge which nobody knows about or has access to. There is no way anymore in which we can avoid the realization that it is up to us, as we are the only ones who know. Moreover, we are right about what we know. We know that we know that we know something which others absolutely don’t know.

Being right always comes with great responsibility as we cannot undo what we really know. We can only go further with it, knowing that we are someone who is fully conscious about how it works. This realization confront us with our fears about being right; the fact that we are right makes us see that everyone is wrong. However, we are right not because we have SVB and they aren’t wrong because they have NVB, but we are right because we can see what is what and they can’t.

Although those who are ignorant about the SVB/NVB distinction can and will reject us who know about it, they can’t affect our knowledge. As a matter of fact, our knowledge is strengthened from all this rejection. We certainly can and do affect those who don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction, although it doesn’t really matter for us whether we chose to do so or not. We may for various reasons stay with those who are unaware about the SVB/NVB distinction or we may at some point decide to leave them, but no matter whether we stay or leave, we leave them anyway as our knowledge can’t be stopped from expanding.

We know what we know and this knowledge is such that nobody can put us under their control anymore. We don’t have any obligation to change them, to help them or to suffer because of them as we have already done that and we know we are not going to do that again. We know that we know that we know that they don’t know. Nobody else can know for us. Although we share what we know with others, who, like us, know what is true, we remain independent and are aware about the taboo of claiming our knowledge. We, who have acquired this precious knowledge, are very different and we are each going our own unique way with SVB. Our certainty about the future is that it will be exciting, fulfilling, stimulating and novel.
 
Dear Reader,

Of all the people, it is, of course, the behaviorist, who ought to be able to understand, acknowledge, and, most importantly, explain, that our more and more polarized, destructive, political discourse is a result of environmental variables which are not discussed by anyone. The reason that nobody is capable of analyzing today’s politicization of just about any topic is that we fail to acknowledge that it has to do with our way of speaking. Due to the feedback which is provided by our social media, our way of talking can no longer be hidden or diverted away from. 

Everyday our horrid Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is visible and audible, but yet we haven’t been able to do anything about it as we refuse to trace its origins to the environments from which it emerges. Since we are all fighting and arguing with each other it should be obvious that we are either finding ourselves in hostile environments which inevitably elicit our current NVB or we express such high rates of NVB since we have for so long been in and endured and survived such aversive, threatening environments. Most likely it is a combination of both.

Once we recognize the difference between NVB and Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) there is no escaping from the profoundly troubling notion that SVB is, for the most part, made impossible, and, therefore, only occurring at a very low response rate. Yet, this natural way of talking in which communicators are at peace with each other is essential to relationship and to the way in which we bring order in society. Those who promote fabricated advantages of NVB would consider the possibility of SVB as idealistic, as they lack the necessary skills to teach it to others.

SVB is NOT as superficial as merely trying to talk nice to each other. The issue of trying to be nice indicates we presumably have to overcome some tendency of not being nice. Similarly, we are also told to have more respect, to be more open, to be more empathic and to be less judgmental, less violent, less impatient. Where are the knowledgeable behavior analysts, who would be capable of saying that we are only told to be all these things, which never seem to get accomplished, while we are involved in NVB? The fact is, they don’t exist as they have yet to learn about the SVB/NVB distinction. Had they learned about this distinction, they would have known that safety and comfort are absolutely necessary for SVB as well for learning any other proper social behavior. Rather than being political, rather than participating in and reinforcing NVB, they would have advocated for the science of human behavior by promoting SVB.