the Wakefield Doctrine

So you want to know how to tell which of the three types of personality you actually are? …well, telling you sort of depends on what type of personality you are…

(To borrow from a 12 Step saying, ‘only you can decide whether you are a clark, scott or roger’.  Now that I hear that, let me just add: ‘ This statement is true only if you are a clark.’)

The basis of the Wakefield Doctrine is that the characteristics that comprise all the three personality types are inherent in each and everyone of us;  male/female, black/white , chinese/jewish, old/young. Everyone one of us. So, if you think you are a clark and a scott and a roger, then you are absolutely correct. (Thanks to Jason, over at Project: Enlightenment,  for the feedback/critique pointing this out).

All of the characteristics of clarks, scotts and rogers will seem appropriate for you at one time or another. More telling, they will seem familiar. If you read this blog you will understand this, but you want to know immediately, for certain, right now, ‘Which am I’? 

There is only one way that is not only effective but quick enough for you impatient readers, and that  is by the process of elimination. (yeah, scott, he said elimination. huh. huh)  Lets just get you to look around and understand which of the three you are not. (Then maybe you can continue to read this blog and come to an actual understanding of the whole thing. At least those of you who are clarks will, all of the attention-deficient scotts and most of the tell-me-more-about-myself rogers will be long gone.)

Fine, you want to know which you are? A clark, or a scott or a roger? Do ya?

Look around you. Who do you love? (Apologies to Elias McDaniel) Of the people you work with, who do you feel is your friend? One of them (the exciting one, the one you enjoy getting to laugh) that is your scott, the other ones are all rogers. (There will only be one scott). The person you now remember that you forgot is a clark.

Like you.

All right, you parents out there. Your spouse is reliable to a fault. At the same time they can be difficult and they seem to take a lot of the day to day ‘trials and tribulations’ very personally. He/She is a roger. You are a clark. Your first born is a scott.

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Now for those of you who want to believe there must be so much more to this Wakefield Doctrine, you rogers, well what the f*ck are you wasting your time on the Post for? There are pages and pages of information here. Read it! Most of it is about you!

Scott? Movies inside!

(Bonus hints!  If you can’t imagine wanting to, let alone actually watching the same movie more than once, you are a scott. If you think that civil war re-enacting would be an interesting and fun hobby, you are so rogerian. If you can seriously entertain the notion that you might be better off being someone/anyone else, hello clark.)

Alright. Back to your lives. You want more, leave a reply. Try not to notice when your boss seems to be talking behind your back, even though being your boss should mean that is not necessary. No roger there, just keep moving along. This Wakefield Doctrine stuff is kind of interesting, but it got nothin on your system of INHR/colour/zodiacial interpretation, clark.

I was speaking to (one of the other) Progenitors last night, discussing the Wakefield Doctrine in general and this blog in particular.  We got on to the topic of writing styles and attracting a following or at least a continuing readership.  At one point he said, ‘look, what we have here is not a hobby blog or a poetry blog, it is not even a blog about what we think about religion or philosophy or anything else!  It is an original idea, unfamiliar to people who might come upon it, so don’t expect most people to get it on the first try!’

That was a good point.  The actual writing part of having (a blog) is new to probably everyone who gets it into their head to start one.  Of course I am not counting the professional/trained writers, those people you can spot  the second you get to their site.  (These ‘writer blogs’ look good, read good, right out of the gate.)  No mistaking them.  But their subject matter is often secondary to the execution, they appear to be writing for the sake of writing. Not the worse thing in the world to do, but a little skillfully executed prose goes a long way when there is no original content.  As for the rest of us, we start with a writing style that is clearly untrained.  After a certain period of time, after the majority have given up the ‘blog project’, those of us who remain comprise the garage bands of the blogosphere.

Well…, that certainly was the long way back around to my theme of the difficulties encountered when trying to convey an original idea with no formal training in the medium.  (I once wrote in a Reply to another blog to the effect that,  ‘in olden days if I had the money, I would get pamphlets printed and stand on a street corner and try to get the  ten or twenty passersby to stop and take one and read it.  Now I have the internet.  I can try and get ten or twenty million passersby to stop and read my little electronic pamphlet’.)

The creating and performing of music is a major element in the background of the (original) clark, scott and roger.  We all grew  up in a time when, if you were not planning a real career (doctor/lawyer/accountant) then you played in a band.  In fact, 2 of the 3 Progenitors still do to some extent or another.  The metaphor of learning an instrument without formal instruction and performing in public are recurring themes in the lives of the people from which the Wakefield Doctrine has sprung.

The ‘garage band’ metaphor is actually quite apt.  Back in the day, we spent time among friends playing in living rooms.  That sounded good but it was not enough, we had to see if we could get the same reaction from strangers. So we practised in garages and (in one case in a 14′ by 14′ room in an abandoned factory building), but we practised and eventually went out and played  for high school dances, then wedding receptions and (finally) bars and night clubs.  The underlying motive remained the same throughout, ‘could I get the reaction that I got from friends when I performed in front of total strangers?’

This blog is the attempt to get the same reaction that I get from friends and family when I talk about the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers only from total strangers,  people who have never heard of the Wakefield Doctrine.

This thing has legs.  I bet that with time and a stack of Marshalls the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers will have a following.  I make that statement because I have had people that know of the Wakefield Doctrine tell of hearing people who have heard it third hand, make statements like ‘man, what a roger he is’, or ‘not too much a scott, is she?’  So if the Doctrine is sustainable enough to propagate on a purely anecdotal level, with a little effort and a lot of promotion and an increasingly efficacious style of teaching and illustrating the concept, everyone will know about clarks, scotts and rogers.

So, in keeping with the theme of this Post, if you are new here and are reading this, write a Comment/Reply.  (Metaphorically applaud or throw a beer can at the stage).  This thing will continue…

OK. I have it together now. No need to get excited. Just sit here, clear the mind, the content is in there. Just relax.

My compliments to any of you out there who have maintained an active blog for more than 3 months. Jesus, this coming up with Posts all the time is not as easy as it looks. And this from the perspective of  ‘as long as there is a new Post once a week’  blogholder. But no one is holding a gun to my head… (‘hey theres an idea for a Post!)

SOMEONE IS HOLDING A GUN TO MY….

Sorry, forget it. Sure one of the 103,000,000 blog authors in the world today has already done the definitive, ‘Someone is holding a gun to my head’ treatment. Maybe there are some studies that I can cut and paste and fill up some of this white space and then I can call it a day and get back to my real life!

Alright, seriously now. I do mean my compliment to those of you who have the ability and talent (acquired or learned) to write something new and different and sometimes even interesting, Post after Post after Post/blog after blog after blog. Not bad. But since I am not ready to give up on this little blog of mine, I had better t t try to get it together and come up with a Post that will keep the crowdlette coming back for more.

Being that this is the Wakefield Doctrine (aka the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) I would do well to keep to the subject that I know best. (See? Right there! I don’t know much about grammar and good writing and all, but that last sentence had at least two tenses, and easily three pulperfects in it. Man, this is worse than the first time I recorded myself playing guitar along with Jimi Hendrix. Suffice it to say, if you were there you would not have had too much trouble telling us apart.)

This writing and grammar thing is really starting to annoy me. It is bad enough that I regret now that I did not take a typing class when I was in high school. (At my current age, in my high school years Typing Class was for people taking a Business curriculum, which meant you were going to be a secretary which meant you were a girl. That simple, end of cultural subtext). But with this damn blogging thing, I am being forced to confront the fact that I do not have mad writing skills.  I should have paid attention in my English classes. (Look, it was the 60s when I was in high school, how cool is that?) But the inescapable fact remains that the skill set I would value the most this October morning is not how to play the opening riff of ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Its funny about how people, at least in the current (american) culture, we seem to have an expectation to be able to do certain things well, just because we think we can do them at all. By this I mean singing and writing. Most of us know that we can sing our favorite song in the car, on the way to work, therefore I think we all equate that with being a singer. Writing, the same. I can, with the help of spellcheck and a lot of proof reading, write a report at work, so how hard can it be to be a writer?

(I have resisted the impulse to hit Preview to see if I’m down far enough on this page to call it a day.) But anyway, you are here because you want to know all about the Wakefield Doctrine. Right?

The Wakefield Doctrine will cause you to see the world in a slightly different manner. Nothing earth-shaking, no flashes of light; ‘oh my god I understand now’ will not be on your lips. What will happen if you read most of this blog and the associated pages will be that you might find yourself saying, ‘that person is such a roger‘, or you might find yourself thinking, ‘here comes so-an-so what a scott he is’ or you could think, ‘shit, I’ll bet I’m one of those clarks the Doctrine is talking about.’

If this happens to you, I have succeeded. If it does not then I have failed. If you have a question about the Doctrine, leave a Comment or email or whatever the hell people do around here. I will get back to you as soon as I finish my Adult Education class, “You too Can Write Like The Prose’, that I am taking at my little local high school.

(for fans of 1970’s rock and roll albums, I paraphrase: “people keep asking, wheres the roger?”)

Being the being that be what I am, I indulge in the following screwing with the system, a re-positioning of a comment by the (Progenitor) roger. (Hint: he is one of the three in the picture to the left.)

(From the Roger; Beware the UltraRoger)
Being a Roger, I am eerily cognizant of how important it is to other Rogers to have a supply of regularly updated examples of our kind in action in the world. Helps us to look up from the particular patch of grass that we are currently obsessing on, and take notice of other elements in our world that we can be equally obsessed with.( Ah, bitter sarcasm…) And maybe someday, through simple repetition, to rise above obsession altogether. To actually achieve complete spiritual freedom. Nirvana. Salvation. I find it quite ironic that the ultimate lesson of the Wakefield Doctrine is to be able to abandon the Wakefield Doctrine. If you meet the Clark on the road, kill him…
So… today’s illustration begins with me going, as I often do, to the local library. Chance would have it that today they were hosting a book sale, which is normally a somewhat less than stellar event. Typically attended by a sporadic assortment of damaged and battle-weary Rogers and Clarks, with an occasional flanking raid by a half-starved and fervently desperate Scott. But this one was way different. It might have been the driving rain that did it, or an aftereffect of a tanked economy, but the place was packed. Overrun with the flat-out strangest damned array of human flotsam I’ve seen in a while, and between years of rock and roll bands and re-enacting, believe me, I have seen some truly jaw- dropping weirdness. I am not aspiring to separate myself from my brethren, but these people worried me. There is, in the world, a very particular and really disturbing faction of casualties who seem to lurk in the corners of public places, and especially favor libraries. ( Of course I am NOT included here; I always have a very good reason for being there. I peruse; they just wander aimlessly) From the teenager with the hopefully functional cassette walkman who sat in a corner doggedly going through an entire mountain of books on tape, to the three old ladies running what I think was meant to be a row of antique tables but was actually an assortment of broken lamps and crockery, truly filthy small kitchen appliances ( a blender with several multi-colored rings inside of it, really very Van Gogh if you looked at it from a safe distance) and possibly the strangest of all; several boxes of old dolls, all of whom seemed to be missing limbs. Now , all this has been seen before, at flea markets and such…but at the library?
The massive display of books was very well organized, each section with a dutiful attendant bagging books and answering the geuinely strange questions that can be posited only by a tragically twisted Roger or Clark. ” There is a particular James Patterson title that I need. Why don’t you have it? Why can’t you get it for me? Do the other libraries have it? Can I get it from the regular library shelf? Why not?” And so on. Not a single one of them seemed to understand the subtle nuance between a Borders retail store and…a library fundraiser.
As implied, Rogers were in great supply here. All shapes and sizes. All social groupings. Families, with children posing weird questions to their parents, who in turn demanded them to the hapless and exasperated librarians. Couples…” no, honey, get the other one.” This, overheard while a pair of Land’s End professorial sorts pored through a few dozen of the same Dean Koontz title, looking for the most recent printing. Why? Why is this important? Am I less of a Roger for wanting to reprimand them? For realizing that if they were at the outer edge of the herd, even a badly wounded Scott could get them both with one stroke? One should remain vigilant while the other indulges. This is a cardinal rule for fledgling Rogers.
And then I saw them. The Rogerian couple of all time and space. Consisting of a typically attractive but totally subserviant Rogerian female, and…him. Pretty impressive for suburban Rhode Island. She all but swept the floor before him as he passed through the crowded aisles without allowing any inferior creature to come into direct contact. Brown suede boots, straight jeans, Australian-style duster coat ( I hate those) and a meticulously polished and perfectly placed leather outback hat. With a chinstrap.( Hate all that, too.)Thank God that they don’t allow horses in libraries, he would have been sidesaddle, with a parasol. The look of utter distaste and contempt as he waited for the female to search for acceptable material for his perusal.He also had a carry-basket gleaned from the nearby supermarket. She would bring him a book; he would inspect it thoroughly ( for what, exactly, I could not determine), check the cover ( for tears, I suppose)and finally… smell it. Yes. Smell it. As if he were verifying Satan’s babies’ diapers. And then, if acceptable, it went in the bin. I observed, and resisted the urge to grab the chinstrap and try to fling him across the room. A small opportunity did present itself, however. The female brought him a book which he had just started inspecting when she brought yet another. He put the first one down while he was distracted by the second, and on impulse, I quickly moved in and grabbed the first one. Moving away, I immediately went to the checkout line,( I had had quite enough by then)and bought the damned thing just to screw up his day. Turns out, I now have a copy of an old Andrew Greeley detective novel. Completely useless. But it was worth the dollar. And it smells ok to me. But… the weirdest bit is that the main character in it has my same last name. It’s a pretty unusual name. Remember my other rant about Rogers and sychronicity? I know that it means something, but I haven’t the slightest idea what…
Oh, and I also got a copy of the Eric Clapton biography that came out last year. It was in a section marked ” Rogerian Apologists.” ( That is not true.)

So, kindly leave a donation on your way out, mind the stairs and be sure to come back.