Interesting Post today.  Some direct personal experience with clarks, scotts and rogers shared by the Progenitors and Downsprings that comprise the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers).

…what is that?  you want to know in Twenty five Words (25) or Less!  what exactly is the Wakefield Doctrine?  ( Who the hell let that apostic heckler in the house, damn!)

!…, they are just not gonna go away…shit, starting to piss me off…don’t they know I am the source of all wisdom in this heaven-gifted blog?   Alright, binyon!  You want to hear a whole worldview and means of understanding our fellow humans reduced to a damn TV Commercial?

The Wakefield Doctrine (trin…trin…trin) (theory of, no the certainty of…clarks, scotts and rogers… not ralph, steve and edna…clarks, scotts and rogers)

Wakefield Doctrine, the; (noun):  to see the world as another sees it, to understand not only why they act a certain way, to understand that is the only way…
(CHA…CHING! 25!  count’em twennnteeefive, not 23 not 27 Twenty Five) (and it almost makes sense, too) (take that, you Diet-of-Worms, wait for a mistake, tear down-to-try-and-be-noticed-intellectually-inconsequential, poseur!) (Yeah! I called you a poseur, and what are you going to do about it? huh? Let’s hear a retort, not so easy when you have to do more than sit in the back of the room, in the dark and  take potshots at the person standing on stage, up in the lights?) (And when the hell did this culture turn the corner where sniper was a role to be admired?)

What? is this thing still on?  Heh…heh…Lets get back to the Post and put this ‘unpleasantness’ behind us, shall we?

With the onset of the New Year, we will be trying to present the Wakefield Doctrine in ways, we hope, will make finding ‘local’ applications much easier.  (An awkward way of saying, ‘we want you to be able to read this thing once and be able to say, “yeah I know who the rogers in my life are” or “of course, so and so is what they are calling a scott“).  None of us here at the Doctrine is a professional or otherwise trained writer, (‘no!  I just won’t accept that!’).  This is not so uncommon in the, ‘desire trumps skill’ world of blog writing.  I have written elsewhere that one hundred years ago, the authors of this blog, if the wherewithal was present, would have arranged to have pamphlets printed which we would take to a busy street corner and try to inveigle the passerbys to stop and listen and take and read what we had to say.  In any decent sized town (100 years ago) you might have found one, maybe two of us engaged in such street corner/public square eccentricities.  But today….for a thousand dollars I can ‘print’ a million of my pamphlets and the the ‘street corner’ has a million passerbys who I can try and get to read my little treatise.  Some things never change.

But that was then and this is now….(no shit!, never really got why people get anything from that particular expression). But the thinking is, lets really make an effort to present the Wakefield Doctrine in personal terms, such that the first time Visitor/Reader will have a much easier time making sense of this, this…(damn, can’t find the word).  Anyway, what follows are the responses of the Progenitors and Downsprings to the question:  can you give us a brief description of people or a relationships in your life and relate it to the Wakefield Doctrine?

(From Joanne):

I was visiting Dave M., a Roger, from the Friday night gang, in the hospital yesterday. He’s ok, they’re doing tests…some heart issues. Anyway, he and I, both Rogers, started talking about our favorite TV shows..it’s funny, we were both nodding our heads in unison as we each mentioned any shows that we liked: Extreme Engineering, History channel stuff, Ask This Old House, Haulin’ House (Dave, not me…yet). Lots of how-to stuff. All of this is opposed to conversations with my friend Miki (Scott) “.just give me the damn hammer and I’ll do it. By the time you listen to all of that stuff, it could be done”. And I reply…”But not well”. We went Christmas shopping a few weeks ago, and she found a couple of things she thought would look nice on my mother and aunt. I would have thought my way out of not buying them…they just looked too big or not right, or what if she didn’t like them and would be forced to wear them. Instead, she just held them up…said” These will look great on them!” ran over to the register and bought them. Wouldn’t you know it, they looked great! Don’t know how she does it..but I’m trying to learn.

 

(From Glenn):

I was riding around in the car with my friend, Clark(a clark).   A subject comes up and he goes off on a tangent about “time-lines” and “strings”( or some such shit) and I have heard this stuff before.  I do not understand it—and it bores me.  So, I usually astrally project myself into another place and time while still listening to the drone of clark’s  narrative(the drone—not the words—the words will make your eyes bleed).  When the drone ends, we resume the conversation as if there were no tangent and as if I had been there all along.  Clark never suspects that I left.  Clarks seem to know that if they talk about some of their clarklike ideas, people will usually just not respond.  Clarks do not expect a response—and are not offended or surprised that there is no response.  Perhaps the clark says to himself after one of these musings, “I may have over-estimated this scott’s attention-span.  I better back off for awhile and talk about something less obscure and scary.  Then the scott will rejoin the conversation”.  Whatever, it all works out fine.  Fuck you most gratuitously.

(From AKH):

A long, long time ago I was the assistant to the Controller (Charlie) of a manufacturing company.  He was no doubt a Scott (just look at his title!).  Apparently there had been others before me who did not last long working with Charlie.  Most likely Rogers, as they do not have the propensity for standing up against outspoken, egotistical outsiders.  What a bunch of frickin’ spineless, whimpering babies.  Didn’t seem to bother Charlie.  Being a true Scott, he went on with the business at hand, unperturbed, pretending to be oblivious to his effect on people all the while knowing he was superior, making those sissy-assed Rogers squirm in their seats.  What an ego!  It was surprising that he didn’t fall over from weight of his large head. Very condescending with that smug grin on his face.  Needless to say (what a dumb phrase-just frickin say it), there were several Rogers at the company who couldn’t stand the guy. Always gathering (like a herd – strength in numbers) to talk about him.  They were all of the opinion that I wouldn’t last a month working for Charlie.  Being a Scott myself, I set out not only to prove their stupid asses wrong, but to prove I could stand up to another Scott without my tail between my goddamn legs.  And you ask “so did you?”  You bet your ass I did.  Long story short, Charlie and I got along quite well, constantly “sparring” in a supposedly “innocent” manner.  Overtly, and sometimes subliminally, testing each other, each of us knowing that we were right.  I outlasted my predecessors by 2 years before I had to leave due to personal reasons (no, absolutely NOT the result of working with Charlie).  In retrospect, it was actually quite stimulating working with know-it-all asshole.

From Denise:

As way of example (I will try to keep this short): in my last life I worked in a law firm.  I often had to deal with a lunatic scott attorney via telephone.  One day, trying to get a somewhat complicated settlement done, I was talking with “Joe” and thought how rude of him – he’s yelling at one of his workers when he should be giving me his full attention.  I held the phone away from my ear a few seconds and then with horror realized he was yelling at me.  This was a first for me (the being yelled at) but what surprised me more was my reaction.  I immediately (and still professionally) took hold of the situation.  I told him (in what a clark might think harsh way) I would do such and such and call him later.  Oh yeah, I slammed the phone down. When I spoke with “Joe” later that day it was as if I was his best buddy.

(to also participate, I will exert a teeny bit of editorial license and relate the story of the ‘eureka’ moment of the Wakefield Doctrine)

From Clark:

At one time in the past, Scott (the progenitor scott) worked at a music store doing, among other things, repair on equipment brought in by customers of the store. Visiting him one day I witnessed the following:

A customer came into the store and presented to Scott a ‘double cassette recorder’  (This machine had dual volume tone controls (for each cassette) and it had one master volume control).   The customer said to  Scott, “this thing is brand new, it worked for a couple of days, then it stopped working entirely, I can’t figure out what is wrong”.

Scott looked at the recorder briefly, took some electrical tape from under the counter, carefully put the tape over the master control volume (which he turned back up), slid the recorder over the counter and said to the customer, “there its all right now”.

The customer  tried the recorder, ran it through it’s paces, saw that it worked like new and walked out of the store without another word; totally satisfied that his cassette recorded had been fixed.
For whatever reason, it came to me that what I saw represented a distinctly different view of the world.  Scott saw the customer and the problem in a clearly different way and therefore his behavior was what it was.  If I had not been standing there, I am sure it would not have made the impression it did. (And I would now be typing the clark Doctrine (the theory of clarks).

Music? Of course there is music! How can you have a blog Post if you don’t have music?  You have music so you have to have a Post!

…hey!  When was the last time we did a non-music clip? Here is a little something you might be offended by! (the acts punchline says it all). (In case of negative reaction:  lighten up).

is this thing on?