Month: July 2010 | the Wakefield Doctrine

So many fantastic colors, I feel in a wonderland.

July 26, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to:

the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) a unique, effective and fun way to understand the behavior of those around us. Whether at home or at work or at play, the Wakefield Doctrine allows you to finally make sense of the actions and reactions of your friends and family! It will also give you the capability to predict (their) behavior in virtually any situation!

Pretty bold claims, no? No, (apparently not when compared to what else there is out there under the category “understanding people”).
I just did a quick search of the internet using understanding other people/behavior or others/human behavior…damn, there sure are a lot of awfully official and highly respected websites and blogs out there! Not only are they all very well credentiallated, but they have little pictures of the author, underneath which they let you know that you are dealing with a serious writer-thing…allow me to present some examples:

Smart, authentic insights for solo advisors, practice leaders and consulting firm leaders

Your real edge is how you do what you do. Not your methodology but your humanology. Are you genuine? Do you really care about the results you’re creating? Are you likable (but not a sycophant)? Do you use humor effectively? Do you get clients the answers they need and help them feel good about working with you? Even when—especially when—you’re doing tough, game-changing work?

Readers of the Doctrine know that we are quite comfortable copy-pasting whole websites, photos, videos, pretty much anything we feel will help us write a Post. The above excerpt got me going, so I speed-surfed through a ton of blogs and sites when I came upon the following “About the Author”. There was something about the completeness of the bio that totally stopped me in my tracks. Here is what I read: (am not making this up!)

I’m a professor. It’s my second career. Before that I was an activist. I had lived for six years on The Farm, the world’s largest hippie commune. I co-founded 20/20 Vision a National environmental organization. I ran a foundation. I was director of Public Affairs at The Body Shop International. I consulted to green companies like Ben and Jerry’s. I developed water projects in Guatemala villages and earned a degree in Public Policy from U.C. Berkeley..Now I teach college-level psychology, economics, history, philosophy, marketing and sociology at Expression College for the Digital Arts. With Deacon and other collaborators I research and write academically about some of the greatest and grandest of mysteries, the origins of life, how hierarchies emerge (like from physics to chemistry to life to consciousness), the physical origins of purposive systems (about how mattering emerges from matter) the relationship between energy and information and the nature of information.

I have three children ages 28, 25, and 18. I play upright and electric bass (including 7 string) and sing in jazz, funk, soul, rock and folk bands. I kid around a lot. My students say I teach as though my hair were on fire. I love a good conversation. I’m pretty bad at small talk. I speed listen to audio books and prefer it to reading texts.

A few months ago I heard the only definition of spiritual that I’d subscribe to: An open channel between intellect and feeling, rationality and gut, taking theory to heart and heart to theory. Most academics don’t trust this approach. They think it distorts the theory and that detachment is better. I think it certainly can distort, so my main aim is to figure out how to create the open channel without distorting. I’m primarily interested in how to cultivate a sophisticated gut–wisdom–by means of more skillful and subtle critical thinking skills and methods.

Ask a question or send a topic. It could well turn into an article

Damn! No wonder we are not being contacted by major universities and/or multi-national corporations. Our “About” content so totally sub-par! Really need to spiff up the resume and maybe monetize a little and perhaps some sponsorship from a Consultants-R-Us blog. That might be the best path.

Wait a minute! Hold on now, there is something about the two clips above that is, somehow familiar…what the hell is it?…where have I seen… direct short sentences, but “…methodology…humanology…” there ain’t no such word! Hey! there’s a clark in there somewhere! Yeah, that’s it!
And the second one…what is it about those long, very impressive sentences…”I ran a foundation…I consulted Ben and Jerry…I developed Guatemalan villages…I teach everything to Harvard Deans…I sing in funk-soul-rock bands… isn’t that a lot of personal pronouns?…Wait a minute! …” roger!!! Come out of there! damn only “an-ascot wearing,-smoke-a-briar-pipe-while-holding-a-carved-Meerschaum-in-one-hand-with-the-other-resting-on-an-authentic- medieval-globe-all-while-listening-to-a-Miles Davis-interprets-Giuseppe-Scarlotti-album-(as played by Pat Methany)”, only that level roger could write an About Me like this.

We came “this” close to deleting the whole Post this morning as being either: “poor Wakefield Doctrine, we are not as famous as everyone else is” or “jeez all those other writers have better bios than we have”. And then the obvious became obvious enough…in the above examples you see a roger and a clark writing blogs without stopping to consider the implications and ramifications of their un-realized potential aspects stuff.
Hey, we do that kind of stuff everyday without breaking a sweat! (No example of a scott writing a blog, the scotts are on TV selling self-absorbing, free handdrill-powered sweat rags, which double as mascara applicators).

Better now.

Besides, if we were to re-write the About Section here at the Doctrine, there simply would not be enough room. What with DownSprings Joanne, MS AKH, glenn, Phyllis and DS#1 and, of course, we would not leave out Janie and Britney and Jimmie, and Mr. B. not to mention the Slovenians and Mel and Jason and Ronin and Pixieblonde and all three Progenitors . Damn, there really is not room for all of the “authors” to do a proper About the Author…unless…

“And the Above all are founding Members of the “Millard Fillmore Gregorian-Jazz Glee Club and FUnk Revival Band”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGzdLeFtH1k

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine

Oh you’re so condescending, Your gall is never ending

July 25, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Sunday Morning? Yeah. The subtitle reference? Why Twisted Sister, of course! (And the Author of this Post is: (please choose one) a) a clark b) a clark c) a clark or d) a clark.)

And the Correct Answer is: the answer you picked is not important (Correct Answer: C) (Don’t worry, a lot of people get this wrong, mostly choosing A). What is important about our little Sunday Morning test is, “Why did you choose the Answer that you did”? And we all know the answer to that, don’t we?

Having established that Sundays are the ‘slowest’ day of the week here at the Doctrine, we can get into some of the more esoteric aspects of this thing of ours. After all, most of the scottian Readers are off doin’ stuff, even the rogerian followers are busy doing other things. Wait a minute…. there’s our topic!

Rogers and the Herd.

the Progenitor roger is currently doing the ‘solo album’ thing. (You know how after a band forms, they have huge success and sell a ton of records and invariably one of the band members discovers that they need to find a place where they can have more artistic expression/freedom. Sometimes it is a contentious evolution, i.e. David Byrne and sometimes it is not a bad thing. This is usually the case when more than one (of the) band members does this thing; Think the Beatles at the end of the ’60s.
Anyway, in our case the roger is off doing the Secessionist Rag. The raison d’etre for his blog is to create a “collaborative novel”, online, within the blog itself.
(My understanding is that anyone and everyone can visit the blog and contribute to the ‘novel’. There is a requirement that all entries be in multiple of 50 words but otherwise no limits, no constraints, no guidelines, no directives or direction). Just write. An interesting idea and, by early indications, it seems to have some legs.
But…(you knew that was coming, didn’t you?), it is this un-structuredness, non-directedness that seems to account for the most difficulty, in terms of encouraging participation by Visitors and Readers. Now, the reason “the Rag” is interesting to us here at the Wakefield Doctrine is not what people do to contribute to roger’s little project, rather it is what roger thinks he will/can/should get, in terms of a response from Readers who go there. How many people will contribute, and why. Also will the contributions that are offered result in a coherent “novel”. The jury is still out, way, way too early to conclude anything. But it is an intriguing notion and bound to be instructive to us here at the Doctrine. Sort of a laboratory of the rogerian “mind”.

What we here at the Wakefield Doctrine are in a position to learn from this (by “we”, of course, mean the clarklike Readers, although I would not overlook some of the more adept and mentally agile scotts (like AKH) or the more open-minded rogers such as Joanne), is simple, “what the hell kind of reality do you people live in?”
But let’s get all basic and review the Doctrine as it describes rogers…

… and rogers feel…
rogers(adv rogerian; pronunciation: ‘roe -jeer -riann’)

The ‘premise of identity’ for a roger is that of group member, similar to those in his group(herd), definitely different from nearly all other not members of the herd she might see, in the world at large. There is a (self-awareness) of being emotionally capable, perhaps even superior.

The ‘perceptual bias’ exhibited is that the world is an ordered place, filled with similar people all who appear to enjoy the company of others like themselves. To a roger the world is, basically good provided the rules and guides and laws are expressed and conformed to all… hostile. From the perspective of a roger, especially when in the context of the herd, the roger is never, ever the outsider…

Herds symbolize the point of view that places the value of the group over the value of the individual. Herds do not have an internal hierarchy and do not evidence a purpose (to benefit individual members), other than survival. Herds do not organize to attack an enemy or to catch/kill/trap food.

If anything, a herd’s only characteristic as a grouping… The members of the herd are happy simply being in a herd.

Rogers live to be with who they perceive to be, those like themselves. They accept the existence of others (non-herd members) but only in the most transitory sense. Individual herd members will be picked off (by scotts) but so long as the herd survives (and they are not the ones being picked off), the roger is content.

…The primary benefit of the herd for a roger is to know that there are other rogers

So in conversation with roger it becomes apparent that he believes a “collaborative novel” is a possibility, provided there are enough rogers coming to the blog and responding to the invitation to join his herd. This is as it should be for rogers. The intriguing question is a two part question:
a) will clarks and scotts be able to intuit the rogerian directive/subscript that is implied in his blogsite experiment
b) why would a roger feel the need to join another herd?

Interesting questions, no? lol, please do not answer that question in print…I know the answer…but don’t take my word for it, go to this place, Secessionist Rag (beats the hell out of me, ask the roger what it means…).

Lots to ponder, reflect upon, improve your understanding of the Doctrine…but I must say this…I can’t wait to finish this Post and get outside, and I wrote the frickin thing…music…lets have something to get us out of the damn house/office/plant or wherever we might be…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQtAWKQ_M7w

(Coming next week, the Good…the Bad…Decide Right Now!! back to school shopping ads)

Hey, Does James Brown totally spin in his grave everytime this commercial is played or what? damn, corporate dudes, suck much?

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, the Wakefield Doctrine

I’ve got nothing to say but it’s O.K. Good Morning, Good Morning.

July 24, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Weekend. Work or not-Work…still Weekend! Let’s take advantage of this little quirk and take the Wakefield Doctrine out of the workplace/school and see what it can do for us on the weekend, in “the land of different time schedules” that is the Weekend. Come on Readers! We are taking a leap, arbitrarily establishing the premise that for the next two days, your (day’s) schedule is more flexible, variable and most importantly, less employment-centric. (You may still go to work, but there is a different tone, feel, mood to the place, be it a factory or retail outlet or office building.)

(…”hey, you got to go in to work today? that sucks, dude”…”listen we really need some help Saturday, just in the morning…” “I want you to know we really appreciate your coming in today, I know you had plans…”) You know, that Weekend.

OK, Weekend milieu established. What now? How is the Doctrine, it’s use or application different just ’cause it’s the Weekend? Mostly it is different because during the Weekend you are dealing more with family and friends, than co-workers.

Oh… Oh… indeed!! You sense the minefield that we encounter when the Wakefield Doctrine as applied directly to family and friends.

This is a rather intricate, subtle and difficult aspect of the application of the Wakefield Doctrine to our lives and will need quite some time to do properly, for today however, it’s the Weekend! So let’s go easy on our own damn selfs. (An “Overview and Out Early” class, as the kids at Mill Fill would say.)

the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) is a unique, useful and fun way to understand the behavior of those in our lives, at home, at work/school and at play. With the perspective of the Wakefield Doctrine, not only can we understand why they do the things that they do, we can predict how the people of our lives will act and/or react in any situation.
So the Weekends can be a very educational and instructive times for those of us interesting in seeing how (the principles of) the Doctrine are expressed by our family and friends. Some are too easy, your husband shows up head to toe in spandex plastered with corporate logos (the worse thing about this is that they are such common, ordinary corporate logos; Cox, Sprint, Staples. (Staples?!! Staples??!!! eiiee!! who the hell would want to be a fricken human sandwich board* for Staples?!) (Oh, I’m sorry I know the answer to that…rogers would want to be fricken sandwich boards for Staples…”How big is your herd?”)

Anyway. You now can correctly identify the rogerian family members…easy one.
Scotts?….sorry, they have so already left the house or wherever they pretended to sleep…Never slow down. Or your scottian daughter/wife/girlfriend/sister? See the crowd gathering at the beach/lake/mall/backyard barbecue…all the guys facing the same direction…with the logos on their backs? just above the little fannypack thing?…there she is…lol What? where are the girls and women?…find your scottian son/husband/boyfriend/brother? that’s where everyone else at the beach/lake/barbecue/campsite/backyard is…

…clarks? you want to find your clarklike daughter/son, wife/husband, girlfriend/boyfriend, brother/sister? jeez I don’t know… (not!). Hear that weird music with the clicking of a computer keyboard?…off in some corner…probably writing a blog or someth….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH37iMVfaVQ

* sandwich board, an outdated form of advertising…a person who was paid to wear a sign on their front and back, connected by a suspender sort of thing and they would walk up and down the sidewalk a pedestrian area…very low level marketing, not exactly high level employment

the Doctrine is nothing, if not diverse…lol

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, the Wakefield Doctrine

the beagle flies on Friday

July 23, 2010 By clarkscottroger

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

The Wakefield Doctrine is: a unique, useful and fun way to to understand the behavior of those around us, at home, at work and at play
The Wakefield Doctrine is not: a theory of personality or a categorization of characteristic behaviors

The Wakefield Doctrine is: a description of the way that people perceive the world they are born into and grow up in
The Wakefield Doctrine is not: a rigid, one-type-fits-all/one-type-only, forcing a person to accept the label or designation of one and only one type

The Wakefield Doctrine is: effective in that if used as intended, will allow one to modify the very nature of their interactions with other people
The Wakefield Doctrine is not: easy to learn or to effectively apply to one’s life.

There. Good to get the ‘serious’ part of the Post out of the way early, that leaves us with some time to look at the response to the Good…the Bad…Decide Right Now!! This week it was Animal Shows. Voting rates were up, all of 4 votes! (Given that there were over 100 views on the 2 days, that’s a great voter turnout!) Really. In the world of Reader active participation ( here at the WD), that is a very encouraging number.
The results of the voting are in, and tabulated ( wikipedia: “the word tablature originates from the Latin word tabulatura” to put in a table). What we see is a 4 way tie! What we do not see is much of a discussion about the Wakefield Doctrine in the context of these shows, which is unfortunate.

To borrow from the “is/is not” device used to start this Post, the purpose of the Wakefield Doctrine blog (in general) and each and every one of these Posts (in particular), is to present the Doctrine in such a way that a person stumbling upon this site, reading as much as they can in 10 minutes can then, it is hoped, recognise what we mean by clarks, scotts and rogers. This is the goal, the Mission Statement (to get rogerian) this blog. Everything else you find here is meant for the amusement of the Writer(s) and (for) those who come to the blog; serving as illustrations of the concept that is being put forth, yo.

It is worth noting that no one is being told what to write, in terms of Comments found in these pages. While encouraging in many aspects and a total disappointment in others, the very nature/tone/content of the Comments found in these pages, bear witness to the validity of the Wakefield Doctrine’s claim to enable understanding (even prediction) of the behavior of others. Since no one involved has experience in the production of a blog, it is hoped that with time, skills will emerge that allow the message to be presented in an increasingly efficacious manner.
While not as pedantic as may sound, we are constantly trying to find a blog-based, a “written out” representation for the (verbal) conversations that have gone on for a number of years. Such conversations that usually began, “did you hear what so-and-so said to what’s his name at work? what a fuckin roger” or “you know, you are a very intelligent person and have a lot of good ideas, but if only you would try and not be so strange people might listen to you more”, or “I can’t believe they said that! it really was embarrassing, but even though everyone else felt the same they kept it up…like they were enjoying the discomfit of everyone, how scottian“.

That’s what we are trying for here. Recent efforts at pointing to examples in the “real world” of clarks, scotts and rogers is promising, but we expect that it will take some time to get comfortable with, in terms of explaining/communicating/or otherwise getting the Wakefield Doctrine across to Readers. To hear the expression, ” what a roger“…don’t be such a clark” or ” heel!, your scottian side is getting the upper hand”, coming from sources that have not had direct contact with the Progenitors or DownSprings, when that happens, we will know our job is done.

So, to follow our own advice (Doctrine-wise). Here is what we are saying: ” hey Readers! during the course of your day today, find a clark or a scott or a roger and point them out to a friend and say, “damn, what a (fill in the blank).” When your friend then asks what the hell you are talking about, tell them, “go to www.wakefielddoctrine.com and find out for your own damnself”.

Go out and do this thing.

Now.

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

no, there is nothing wrong with going through here!, I go this way all the time

July 22, 2010 By clarkscottroger

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

You know, in two conversations yesterday we were offered the following advice: be more specific in the examples of the interactions characteristic of the three types (clarks, scotts and rogers); and there should be no limits on what we say in the Comments section, whatever the writer feels is appropriate should be presented, un-edited or otherwise verbatim. Both (ideas) have fatal flaws. But we applaud the effort to express their thoughts and certainly they should keep trying.

Also, yesterday was Wednesday, the Good…the Bad…Decide Right Now!! day which means a fair amount of the Comments were directed to the subject of this week’s Feature ( Animal Shows). And there were some who thought…blah…blah…blah

(…..damn did not have a single number in the frickin’ lottery…now I got totally nothing for this Post…) (…oh well…too late to back out now…)

Sorry for the interruption, be sure to let us know (here at the Doctrine) when you get tired of that ‘device’. Don’t know what it is usually called when you write something and at the same time (in parenthesis) you write something as if it were a separate voice or monologue or whatever. You hope that it reads like there is more than one person speaking or more than one train of thought; surely there is some kind of literary term, like SRC (self reference criterion)? nah, thats a marketing thing…sort of like in the car industry. The apocryhal story holds that the reason quality sucked so much in the American auto industry before the 1980s was that all the executives had company cars with constant (company) maintenance. They never had a problem with their cars, so why were the consumers whining? Or the other story cited to illustrate SRC is about when McDonalds decide it was time to take Ronald to India (the dining demographic being totally high percentage vegetarians).

(Seeing how the two referenced but not identified people I mentioned in the beginning of the Post went to the trouble to make a suggestion, lets let them contribute.)

…But we are not talking about SRC.
          (…”HEY! I got yer SRC right here and I will point to my crotch and jut out my face to bring the point home!”…)
          (…”Well, considering your starting Point in this Post maybe there is something about this SRC that should not be ignored, specifically is the person involved a clark
              or a scott or a roger…that would be helpful to know”…)

The term we want is probably:

Autopoiesis literally means “auto (self)-creation” (from the Greek: auto – αυτό for self- and poiesis – ποίησις for creation or production), and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis)

That is more along the lines of where we were headed in terms of self-referential writing, but now that train of thought is gone. I guess I better finish up with the “two other contributors schtick” so we can pull the plug on this Post.
          (…”No, there is a case to be made here but if you would simply provide a recognizable context, then everyone could apply it to their own particular situation which
           would give them more confidence and make it more likely that they will write and submit a Comment!…”)(…”Really, they would!”…) (I just know they would). (!)
          (…”Greek huh? you know all dem Greeks are homos right? you knew that but its funny when I type it , I can make you read it HEY HEY HEY…alright I get it…you
           making fun of me…so what HEY”…)

Sorry I had to resort to the obvious LHF (Low Hanging Fruit) of doing the “off stage” dialogue thing. Hey, sometimes no matter how much effort goes into a Post, nothing is there. Experienced Readers will be at the bottom of the Post by now, hoping that there is some enjoyable video to make the 5 minutes of their lives that this page has taken, make it worthwhile. (lol good luck with that)

Lets get to the Lesson of the Day and hope tomorrow brings an interesting Post. The guys in the auto industry were, for the most part, rogers. Pretty obvious, as rogers not only are the engineers of the world but also the marketing guys of the world (I mean marketing, not sales. Sales is the domain of the scotts, but thats for a different Lesson of the Day). The rogerian nature thrives in the environment of the herd. If everyone around you is the same as you, then the world is perfect. The auto rogers created a situation where their experience with the product they were marketing was un-realistic. But as long as no one among them (in the herd) said, “Hey guys! Does the average Consumer have an in-house mechanic with limitless resources keeping the vehicle in perfect running condition”? there was no problem with there product…

Hey! This is boring me. Lets try the other ‘suggestion’. So, when you go to work today, ask your boss to answer the following question: “If everyone of your friends said that there was a new club that was accepting new members, but only if referred by a current (Member) would you respond: a) “who to I give my check to”? b) “refer me or you’re fired!” or c) “do you think you could ask someone if it is alright for me to try and join”?
How they answer will tell you which of the three types your boss is. Pretty helpful, huh?

Jesus Christ…got to be one of the worst Posts this Doctrine has seen, yet!! lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz1cfwFmv1w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWjNlBko70

Hey, hey now. Forgot one, no?