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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘remind us to complete this post tomorrow!’

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

They don’t call it RePrint Monday for nothin’

But wait! Wait!

Once again validating the RePrint approach to self-prompting for topics of post, see that photo above?

That was the image we used on the post we could not find this morning. (And still cannot, which means we’ll have to recreate it in the small amount of pre-dawn time left.)

So, it may have been before the concept of ‘the Everything Rule’ coalesced or, it might have been just afterwards, but we described, by way of illustration (and therefore, explanation) a scene:

a clark, a scott and a roger stand on the sidewalk directly across from a very popular restaurant at noon. On a Thursday. (Or Friday. Any day, except for Monday. Or Wednesday.) In any event, there is a line out the door and up the sidewalk.

In keeping with one of the stated goals/benefits of an understanding of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, what is it the three are seeing. More to our point, what are they  experiencing?

Take your time. If you run out of space, raise your hand and a proctor will provide you with an additional blue essay book.

Begin:

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… of development, writers clubs and understanding the world around us.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Do we outgrow the past or do we simply forget? Do the improvements, growth and developments we achieve (through effort, ambition and circumstance) become like, well, the way it is.

We admit to a fondness for the occasional peculiar word or phrases that, although uncommon in everyday conversation, are fun. Today (in light of the opening sentences) the fun word/phrase/expression is raison dêtre. (which our friends at wikipedia define as  “…a French expression commonly used in English, meaning “reason for being” or “reason to be”.”)

The Wakefield Doctrine is the reason for the existence of this blog. All, and only, because it hit me one night that it would be good to ‘formalize’ my personal system for explaining the world and the people in it.

The Wakefield Doctrine holds that we are, all of us, born with the potential to experience the world as one of three characteristic realities. At an early age we ‘pick’ one of these three ‘worldviews’ and we are on our way to becoming clarks, scotts or rogers. The Wakefield Doctrine, as a personality ‘theory’, is not concerned with how you would describe yourself, the results of questionnaires created to identify traits and interests or even what you think that girl is doing sitting out there in the middle of the field looking back towards the house filled with people she may or may not be related to (well, sometimes we enjoy the traditional approaches; I mean, damn! give yourself away in one description much, clark? lol). Unlike other tools developed by psychology, sociology and phrenology, tools easily transposed to popular media such as ‘the Face Book’ where they lie, attractively packaged, club-shaped mirrors waiting for someone to notice, “Oh, honey! Come here! I found this personality test in my magazine and it so has you down to a T! Lets take it together. You first.”

Central to the hypothesis of the Wakefield Doctrine is the notion that we all live in a reality that is, to a certain degree, personal. Nothing weird, mystical or magical. Simply that if you and I are standing in front of the entrance to, say, a very popular restaurant, our experience of that moment will not be identical. The Doctrine takes this and jumps up above the individual and says, ‘Suppose the world was one in which individuals are separated from each other in a way not easily discernible or, better still, imagine that the life we wake up into after each sleep is that of the Predator, simple and direct, eat or be eaten; or suppose everything in the world is knowable and, to a degree established in a way that allows for complete agreement among like-minded people, that the universe is, in fact, definable and quantifiable.’

This is key to understanding the Doctrine. Children (you, me and the girl behind the counter asking if that’ll be Regular or Premium) all grow and develop (their) personalities in order to successfully interact with the environment that surrounds them. Social, physical, the whole thing. And this is done in the context of the nature and character of the world, as they experience it. These strategies evolve and develop into the style we refer to as our ‘personality type’.

I grew up in the world of the Outsider (clark). I developed a way of relating to the people and the world around me that permits me to stay out of the limelight (can’t have people pointing at me and telling everyone that we don’t belong) while at the same time giving me the tools and the drive to search for whatever it was that I didn’t learn when I was too young to realize it i.e. how to be a real person.

A friend of mine grew up in the reality of the Predator (scott). She’s a lot of fun to be around, gets more done in a morning than most people do in a week. She is always on alert, never is not paying attention to whats going on around her and everyone likes her…except for the ones who are terrified of her. Temperament is often un-fairly pronounced with the accent entirely on the first syllable… we prefer the word: mercurial. You want something done right away, you ask her and step out-of-the-way.

If you want that thing done right… you find my friend who grew up in the life of the Herd Member (roger). He will know how to do it so that the joints line up, the glue doesn’t stick out at the ends and it stays the way it’s supposed to be… forever. He knows the simple fact of the life that there’s a Right Way.  No, nothing as an alternative, no second-runner-up. One way. Fortunately, my friend has so many other people around him that grew up knowing that they all belong. Sure there’s minor disagreements over decor, but it’s all one big hap…. Herd. The world is good. Just have to understand.

OK enough for a Monday morning.

 

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TueJay -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

So the computer we use 99 percent of the time is in the shop. We’ve brought our office laptop home to stand-in.

It is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Except for one thing: it has no letter ‘J’.

sibilant! minoris

(Now, alert rogerian Readers are going all Moonlight Sonata Third Movement on their computer keyboard about that last, next-to-last sentence.)

well, like we were all taught in catholic school, ‘That’s why god invented RePrints”

hey, that’s an idea! (no, not catholic school! RePr… ) Wait a minute! Surely we’ve written repeatedly on this topic, after all, why else would they call blogging, ‘the ill-grammared Language of Torment’?

let us go search the ever-ironic term ‘Sisters of Mercy’

Now, children! everyone find someone else and hold onto their hand

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine, class. If you pay attention, and listen closely, then at some time later in your life, much, much later, you will remember what you have learned here today. And when that time comes, you will say, (to your spouse, your friend, the police, your priest, the nurse or the man with the hearse)…”there was this place and there were these people and they told me about clarks, scotts and rogers and how it was so simple to understand other people if only I understood the Wakefield Doctrine! I see now that they were so very right…it is just sad that it is so very, very late for me…if only I had…written a Comment“!

Well, it’s not too late, binyons! You can participate, join in on the fun.  We are only a third of the way through the 90 Day Challenge, plenty of time to turn this bus around. Speaking of buses, lets make that the topic of today’s Post! (and the Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day).

First Day of  School Trauma!

AlrightAll-right! I’ll go first…

… oddly enough, I have no memory of 1st grade but I do remember that my 2nd grade Teacher’s name was Mrs. Brennan. Starting with the 2nd grade I attended a parochial school  and for the most part all the Teachers at Our Lady of Mercy (who doesn’t hear James Brown, “mer-cey!!”)School were nuns. Real nuns, not just sallyfield-looking-hey-just-a-normal-girl-who-happens-to-be-a-nun, no sir! These were Nuns of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy. En regalia, full-dress nuns. For those unfamiliar with the look, we’re talking about white on black habits, with face and hands as the only clue that there is a human there, never mind a female human. Damn! (The borg look like nudists compared to the Sisters of Mercy back in the early 60s.)
(Back to my First Day of School Trauma). Arriving in class, the very first thing I learned from a classmate was,  “if you don’t eat all your lunch, they make you eat in front of the whole school and for the first day of school they always serve something called Welsh Rabbit”. I spent the entire morning of the first day of school in the Second Grade in fear of what would happen when I refused to eat the Welsh Rabbit. We are talking “worry” on a level such that I was so focused on trying to come up with a plan to avoid the lunchroom embarrassment, that I almost got sent back to the First Grade.I could not have spelled my own name when called on, cause I was busy! I had to think of something!  Sitting in one of those desks with the fliptop writing surface and the seat attached and the whole thing held together by a wrought-iron frame. Somehow I survived. I look back now, from the vantage point of the Wakefield Doctrine, can there be any doubt that there was a clark sitting in that totally uncomfortable seat in September, trying to figure his way out of spot that (he) was barely equipped to deal with.

( …Pero Principal Clarke, lo que Wakefield Lección Doctrina del Día vamos a tener de su historia muy interesante?… )

Why thank you, Miguel,  for that reminder. The Lesson of the Day is more an illustration of the clarklike personality. The reaction of the 8 year old clark in this story is that his response to a threat was to try and think of a plan to avoid the embarrassment that he perceived to be waiting for him at lunch (he really, really hated cheese). The saying at the Doctrine is: clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel.

 

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Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘a quick reminder of the value of the Everything Rule.’

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

the Everything Rule is the second-most significant development in the presenting of the Wakefield Doctrine to the werld.

The most significant, not really a development as a refinement in how we look at our little personality theory, came about when we started focusing on (our) relationship to the world around us (and the people who make it up). For all of a seemingly minor change, ‘the world we see/experience’ into ‘the character of our relationship to the world/reality around us’ has made a huge difference in both understanding and application of the Doctrine.

But we’re here to talk about the Everything Rule: ‘Everyone does everything at one time or another.’

It keeps the ‘them’ in ‘Unified Theory of Personality Types’.

lol

Seriously though, in the early days of this blog it was not uncommon to have a Reader ask, “I have a tendancy to …. is that a thing only a scott would do?” Or, ‘My husband is so… does that make him a clark?’

(Hey! We just appreciated how the two developments mentioned in today’s post are so intrinsically related. ikr? Been writing these posts for what, nearly fifteen years and we’re only now….?!?!)

We repeat, lol.

The Wakefield Doctrine maintains that everyone is born with the potential for one of three characteristic relationships with the world around them. While we all settle into one at an early age, we never lose the potential of experiencing the world as from ‘the other two’. Our personal reality is defined (and therefore, created) by this relationship and we, as all young lifeforms must, struggle to learn and create, practice and develop strategies for negotiating, interacting and, hopefully, thriving in our lives as:

  1. an Outsider (clark) the world is strange (with a hint of hostile), it is not simply that we know we are different, we begin to suspect at the heart of our difference is that everyone else in the world around us seem to relate to each other; seeing that, in the world of people, different is a risky proposition we begin to search for the knowledge that seemingly everyone else is in possession of, without being spotted doing it
  2. the Predator (scott) the day is simple: find prey, flee larger predators (or negotiate a standing in the pack). the only thing that does not makes sense about the world is… well, everything makes sense as long as you don’t spend too much time dwelling on questions that have more than one right answer, and/or get comfortable with the inner shadows. life is short and there’s no time to waste
  3. the Herd Member (roger) Life is Good. Not always pleasant, rarely ever perfect but it makes sense. everyone in your life knows what you know. except for a handful of people who clearly do not and even they are useful, if for no other reason than to remind others of how good it is to be of the Herd. your job in life is uncomplicated: discover the Right Way and share it with the others.

Damn! did not tie in the Everything Rule!

maybe a quick RePrintlette.

No, wait. We’re already at five hunert words.

lets move this along.

the most useful take-away from our Post on the Everthing Rules?

The bottom-line value of this perspective on the world is simple: become able to see the world as the other person is experiencing it. (italics totally deliberate)… to make sure you don’t forget that reality for all of us is, to a small but way important degree, personal. And since personal is, by common definition, private, the only way we can become aware of the personal of another person is to put ourselfs in their shoes. Not easy. Relating to the world as they do, much easy(ier). So next time you see someone do something inexplicable/fuckin-stupid/way dumb, know that you are capable of the same thing and then imagine your relationship to the world was one of ‘the other two’. and take a look.

fun, fun, fun

 

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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This Monday morning’s RePrint post is interesting. It is a point on the continuum of development that is the difference between, ‘Good-That-Explains-It*’ ‘Yeah, that’s the word we really wanted.’

In the first couple of years we, (using the 1st person), explained the perspective of each of the three predominant worldviews in terms of (our) seeing/experiencing the world. Everyone would see the world either as would the Outsider (clarks), the Predator (scotts) or the Herd Member (rogers) and act/react/develop accordingly.

This verb was replaced by various forms of the concept of relationship. Rather than our predominant worldviews being defined as the product of our perception, it became a manifestation of the relationship (more precisely, ‘how we related ourselves to the world’). This is ultimately much more useful. It’s the character of our relationship that determined our experience of reality. You might say, ‘how we saw was what we are’.

whhoah!! dudes, maximal gravitation!

Lets take a beat, post the RePrint and let the day unfold**

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

RePrint!

Friday -the Wakefield Doctrine- of pop quizzes and bulletpoints

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)marchhare

Don’t Forget! This Evening… Vidchat at Seven! (‘An Evening at George and Jane’s‘)  stop by!  it’s hosted by clarks, so that means what it lacks in social status, (“I can’t believe you missed it last Friday!! oh man! everyonewas there!!!!”), is compensated by  odd conversations, funny in an interesting way and (sometimes) totally outrageous!

I trust you all know that we’ve found the Wakefield Doctrine to be useful to (any) effort to self-improve oneself.  I (further) assume that everyone recognizes that the Doctrine is ‘three things to three people’. (And) that, it’s not even necessary that you determine which of the three you are, prior to trying to using our little personality theory to help you in your efforts. Start wherever you are right now.   After all, ‘you can’t break it and, you can’t get it wrong‘.  Yep, we still maintain that assertion about the use of the Wakefield Doctrine.

You do know, don’t you, that we can tell which of the three you are, purely on the basis of which of the three you initially say you are…. lol  (Hey!  New Readers! We have a Rule about identifying one’s predominant worldview. It’s your worldview, so no one can say, ‘By Power of the (fill in something relating to your own worldview) I declare that you are a ….!’  Well, they can say it, and you can even ask them to say it, but no one has any authority to impose their opinion of your worldview (dominant, secondary or tertiary aspects).  Doesn’t mean we’re not all willing to share our understanding of the characteristics of the three worldview that are critical to understanding and identifying a person.

  • For example: one of the more difficult ‘calls’ to make: attractive male person who appears very confident, even to the point of aggressiveness,  is he a scott or a roger? You might think, ‘Very aggressive  that must mean scott!’   ok… but you want to go deeper than that*
    they’re being aggressive, fine!  …with/at/towards who?  Are they ‘playing to the room’ or are they focused on one person.
    Now… (here’s a critical question), is it about them or the person they are focused on? What happens when they are rebuffed and/or told to go jump in a lake? Do they laugh or do they seem to be taking it personally?
  • another very common situation (more often when a person seeks to determine their own predominant worldview):   you see a clark, i.e. the poor posture, the mumbling, the odd, (but interesting), fashion choices, but then this very same person, for a moment, holds the attention of the entire room…. you’re thinking, ‘maybe this is a combination type part clark and part scott‘!  You’d be right…but with the wrong conclusion.  We all have one predominant worldview, but also the potential to see the world from the perspective of ‘the other two’. For some of us, this ‘secondary aspect’ is so significant that we develop some of the behaviors and strategies and coping mechanisms of this ‘other worldview’…. and these behaviors come to the surface at times usually at times of stress or duress, ( ‘hey! I want ‘cha ta meet someone!!  these are my two cousins, Stress and Duress…. aint’ they hot?!  you ever wanna to have a wild night  lemme know!).
  • so… bottom line on identifying a person’s dominant worldview:  we’re merely trying to infer how that other person is ‘relating themselves to the world around them’.  know this and you know them

OK!  end of Post.  Don’t forget to join us tonight.

….sure!  there’s got to be something I can say that will change your life (or have an effect for even just a single moment in your weekend)….

  • clarks:  keep in mind this little fact that is shared by clarks alone…. more often than we allow, ‘it’s them, not us!  If you walk away from a surprise conflict (is there any other kind for us?) feeling bad with a tinge of  guilt that it was your fault? it’s them not you
  • scotts: yeah… your gut on this one is right and even though you almost can’t imagine how that family member can believe something so wrong about themselves…. it’s true  and….and, chances are they’re used to it, so you don’t need to do anything immediately  but, definitely know that they will appreciate whatever you try to do, even if it is ineffective
  • rogers: give yourself a break…. no, really. while finding and living ‘the Right Way’ confers to others nearly as much benefit as it does to you… they’ll survive if you take the weekend off, hell, they’ll enjoy it and you’ll have a re-energized feeling afterwards

7:00 pm

EDT

* the process of identifying a person’s dominant worldview is a lot like an optometrist eye test.  you start looking at the person through the lens of two worldviews (you always throw out the obvious ‘no way’…. in our example above where we said, ‘attractive….confident…aggressive’?  the ‘no way’ is a clark  which leaves you with scottand roger. From here, you go for more and more intrinsic characteristics and you’ll find that one of the views becomes less clear as the other becomes more and more focused.**

** this same process is used when you identify your own worldview

* to clarks, at any rate1

1) it remains true that anyone returning to this blog more than twice is a clark or (a) scott/roger with a significant secondary clarklike aspect

** sure, extra credit any Reader who just now got a visual of:

  1. the muy creepy box thing in the HellRaiser franchise
  2. an automated mechanical-rabbit thing at dogtracks
  3. the intro-scroll from the start of the first Star Wars movie
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Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘…in which our dauntless Curator empties his pockets in a Courageous Search for Clues”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

While this is, (and will always be), ‘that blog about those three personality types that, as strange as it seems at first, not only makes sense and is useful, and a total hoot once you learn the basics’.

Yeah, that’s us.

The ‘Curator’ in the Dickensian subtitle? That would be us, your Humble and (mostly) Reliable Narrator. Say what you will about RePrints, we’re finding the process of reading old, (especially the ‘old old’ as opposed to ‘recently old’). One change in writing that jumps out at us is the POV of the early ones. Counterintuitive, at least to us, is the use of the first person singular up until… damn, don’t know (at the moment) when we shifted to this, the ‘editorial we’.

(Funny story. So I just searched for something along the lines of 1st person versus 3rd person POV and, being a clark, the ‘APA Style’ in the first search return I clicked on transformed itself, (all without telling us… I mean me….) into ‘CMS Manual of Style’! It wasn’t until I read it again did I notice the APA was American Psychological Association…. lol damn! We love it when (we) notice that kind of shit happening.

Anyway, back to our citation

Referring to yourself in the third person

Do not use the third person to refer to yourself. Writers are often tempted to do this as a way to sound more formal or scholarly; however, it can create ambiguity for readers about whether you or someone else performed an action.

Correct: I explored treatments for social anxiety.

Incorrect: The author explored treatments for social anxiety. A

(APA STYLE as opposed to CMS)

Damn! We’ve totally lost the train of thought, as often happens to we scholarly types. Also lost the Clipboard Copy of the RePrint post that was to serve as a example of our early writing.

Suffice for the moment to say, at the point we currently are, the editorial ‘we’ is preferred. It serves as a reminder of the serendipitous nature of the decision to start (and continue) writing this weblog.

Speaking of reminding, remind us to return to the topic of the writing style of the early years at the Wakefield Doctrine.

segue!!

Tonight is the unofficial start of the week’s Six Sentence Story. (as Christmas Eve is to Christmas Day… for those us less mature and adultistic* the former is the exciting time). In any event, we’re engaged in a Serial Six. Co-written with Tom. It’s a story of Supervillains and ordinary folks (well, as ordinary as characters frequenting a certain Strip Club and Lounge, at any rate) so be sure to stop in tomorrow for a bunch of fun with flash-fiction.

* not a ‘real’ word

 

 

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