The myth of ‘behavior’

We're showing the world what we're all about here at ND3 with our first series: Mythbusters.

Myth #1: “Kids need to be taught good behavior.”

Gotta take this a step further: “There’s such thing as ‘behavior.’”

We don’t have time for frivolity. We’re diving right into the heart of rights-based advocacy by calling out behaviorism for the oppressive, colonizing agent - comprised of complete and utter nonsense - that it is. This could be a whole book. Actually, it already is - there are many, many books and articles that have been thoughtfully and powerfully written by talented neurodivergent/disabled authors, educators, therapists, researchers, and advocates, and I stand on their shoulders as I echo their message and shout from the social media rooftops: “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEHAVIOR.”

“Okay, now she’s gone off the deep end”, you’re thinking. “There’s no such thing as behavior? I mean, we’re all doing things, right? Isn’t that…behavior?” Yes it is. But that flower also just bloomed, and that butterfly just landed on it, and that plane just flew overhead, and you just said “What is that?” as it did. All of that is equally “behavior.” As is my typing on this keyboard, taking a deep breath, blinking, and swaying my foot that’s crossed over my other leg, and then texting a friend and smiling as I read her response.

But if all of it is “behavior,” where does the behavior that’s, you know, Behavior with a capital ‘B’ start, and the rest of that less important stuff end? I suppose at the intersection of a thing occurring and it posing a problem to someone else? Then, as I see it, the overhead light in this room is behaving badly with its blinding wattage. I know, the light isn’t alive, so it can’t behave badly. But the person who turned it on is, and can. What do we make of that problematic light-turning-on behavior? Was it a “behavior”? If so, when did it become one? When she put her finger on the switch, or when it started hurting my brain? Or is my squinting and complaining of a headache, the "behavior"?

Behaviorism can't outrun the problems it creates; sterilizing all human activity and experiences into the broadest and most basic ever category of “behavior” intentionally serves to limit our thinking. Behaviorism is a thought-terminating framework that clouds our lens as we look at one another not with a presumption of complexity and unique internal realities that exist beyond our expertise, but with the assumption that everything we need to know is observable AND accurately interpretable to an outsider, AND that we have the right to impose on that which we observe. How anyone takes that perspective seriously, I'll never understand.

Because contrary to the dogma behaviorists will proclaim/act according to, we humans are not simply vessels with organs inside, moving robotically through space and time as we carry out “correct” or “incorrect” actions according to some data-synthesizing brain that outputs decisions and directs us to perform “good action likely to reward us” and refrain from “bad action likely to punish us”. We know a bit more (though not actually all that much!) about human diversity and also nervous systems now that we’re out of the dark ages. (Back in the olden days, behaviorism gained traction because it was an effective means of judging, controlling, and erasing those deemed “lesser” under the guise of “scientism”. It “worked” because it served/serves those in authority, and in the past we've had less to refute it, with the oppressed having even less of a platform to speak their truth (though it continues today, most harshly against those who are most marginalized- children, disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, non-native English speakers, etc.). Extra point in the meantime for my gloriously neurodivergent parentheses-within-a-parentheses!).

Back to business: a human child will “behave” (do, express) as their nervous system, body, and experiences of their environments (past and present) dictate for immediate and future self-preservation. This is non-controversial in terms of logic and evidence, but this take on “behavior,” which accounts for internal, diverse, past and present realities a human is experiencing, can feel threatening to those in positions of authority, because it invokes their role and the responsibility of everyone around the “problematic behavior vessel”. It also adds the slightest bit of complication - humanity, nuance - to an otherwise easy “problem” (person did thing we classify as uniformly "bad", we manipulate them without their informed consent to not do "bad thing", they comply under duress, problem solved!).

If we accept that a person will do as they feel they must to preserve their well-being, what do we then do about them and their “behaviors”? The things that are creating an issue for someone else. The things that reveal the distress they're experiencing. What responsibility do the rest of the people around them bear for that person’s experience? What do we do with the fact that we, the outsiders to the person, don’t actually have all the information we need (what they're expressing, feeling, needing, experiencing, now and in the past, what they're thinking about, etc.) to decide what is best for them in that moment (or in general) and to thus justify our manipulation of them?

To reject “behaviorism” as an entity - to recognize it as the most blatant logical fallacy, not to mention the supremacist endeavor that it is - is to own our humanity, our diversity, our humility in recognizing we are not experts in nor in a position to impose on another’s experience, our interdependence, and our collective roles and responsibilities in one another’s lives. If we are to reject behaviorism - shame, judgment, blame, rejection, knowing all the “answers,” thinking there are “answers”! - the inverse is curiosity and compassion.

The opposite of behaviorism, the cure for behaviorism, is thinking and feeling.