Month: February 2012 | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 2 Month: February 2012 | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 2

St Valentine was he a roger or was he a clark, the Wakefield Doctrine deals with the important questions of the day

February 14, 2012 By

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

( psst!  yeah, you!  anyone looking?  I’m supposed to be working on the Wakefield Doctrine book… I promised that I would stop with the nearly every day Posts so that I could apply what little energy I have to putting content down on paper. Long story, that’s not important now… what is important is today is Valentine’s Day!  And there is not a single person out there who writes a blog that can resist the obvious appeal of such a… a contrived, culturally supported, private interest initiated “holiday” as Valentine’s Day.  So a quick, totally self-indulgent Post and then back to work… if Ms. AKH or Molly asks… tell them you haven’t seen me….)

 

St Valentines is the worst, most contrived and cynical, gyno-centric guy-bait(ing), toy-with-the-emotions-of-innocent-bystanders, holiday on the whole damn calendar.  Of course we are all familiar with the origin of the holiday and the internet is positively turgid with countless blogs, and stories and articles that tell us all about Hallmark and the candy industry and the rest of the sordid tale of this day in February. I will not try to compete with these other more skilled and capable Commentators ( and -torinis), as I do not have the time or the ‘writing chops’ to do such a ripe topic justice. Instead, let me tell you about my most lasting memory of Valentines Day.

Third grade, parochial school (St. Imelda*) and a classroom of 25 students. The boys were required to wear blue shirts and blue ties with OLM printed on the front, fortunately ‘clip-on ties’ had been invented by this time, so easy-peasy; the girls wore the catholic school uniform, i.e. plaid skirts white shirt, socks.  damn, little did I realize at that pre-pubescent time of my life how potent that little Roman Catholic Church fashion dictates would become for me and countless other men at a later stage of life.  (In fact, I am feeling the tug on the cynical side of my writing-self, there is something about the whole, church-sexual-abuse-dress-the-children in outfits destined to become so hawt… lol sorry, again I lack the time or the writing skill to do justice to a topic like this… back to the story.)
So with much fanfare, Valentine’s Day arrives and we  9  year old boys and girls are told that in the afternoon, before the end of the school day, we would have time to deliver our Valentine cards to each other. ( The day before we spent ‘Art Period’ making little baskets out of construction paper and taping them to the front of our desks. These would serve as ‘mailboxes’ for the cards we would receive the next day).
The thing was, the horrible twist to this introduction to the world of love, relationships and rejection was that, the time when class stopped and we were allowed to get up and deliver our little cards was not the end of the school day! It was right after lunch… and it lasted 15 or 20 minutes…as in ‘ now return to your desks and we will continue with the afternoon’ classes’. To sit for 90 minutes staring at the contents of the container on the front of my desk… I will leave it to the Reader to decide the emotional landscape of that afternoon on a February 14th.

Anyone out there not comfortable with finishing the story, or satisfied with their conclusion of this little tale, write us a Comment! Regular Readers know that the rogers gave the biggest cards, the scotts received the most cards and the clarks delivered the most cards….secretly without the recipient ever knowing who the really fun card came from…

Now I better get back to work, before I get in trouble.

 

*who totally twisted my life… don’t ask

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Sunday Morning, personality types, the Wakefield Doctrine…in search of the perfect ‘Post Title’

February 12, 2012 By

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

Lets first satisfy the demands ( of some DownSprings)  that these Posts become more relevant and search engine friendly. They say,  ‘put the  keywords, like personality theory, self-development and Wakefield Doctrine in the first paragraph’. (Oh yeah and make that bold  if possible!) ..lifehack and life coaching, too! The validity of this advice, whether it is sound and/or worthwhile will have to be deferred to better minds, right now, this is a Sunday Morning Post, so lets just go along with their suggestions. Speaking of life hacking, did you know that the Wakefield Doctrine will soon be coming out with a book and a whole new site that offers services and advice to Readers? And that these services, all focused on self-improvement and self-development will be founded on the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine?  Well it’s true.

 

Now that we are out of the ‘first paragraph’, considered to be the ‘prime real estate’ from an seo-point-of-view, lets get to the interesting stuff.

Last night was Saturday Night and that meant there were people, Doctrines, German luxury cars, scotts and clarks on the air and in the car, all surrounded by Wakefield!  A very good time, ya shoulda been there. We had Ms. AKH and glenn in the car and Molly and DS#1 in the dashboard.
Topics discussed included:

  • new experimental writing (Molly),
  • watching tired old movies rented from the library and the permeability of timelines (DS#1),
  • the value of shouting and using words that will offend (and therefore attract Readers…) glenn ( great idea…dead horses belong underground, not paraded around like 65 year old rock stars trying to relive a past that is long gone),
  • the relative balance of energy in interactions with attention paid to the number of scotts to clarks ( AKH).

Your typical Saturday Night Drive.  Somewhere in the middle of the Drive, the question was posed to the group, “If you had the chance to change one thing about this Wakefield Doctrine blog, what would it be?”
Responses ranged from the predictable, “Say FUCK! …a lot! ( 3 guesses who that was, lol), to the useful,  “Reorganize the structure of the site itself and make it less confusing…. and paint it aqua!” ( Molly seconded by AKH )

Finally, in the last 20 minutes of the Drive, we discussed the differences between clarklike females and scottian females in situations involving  scottian males in the online environment. ( Hey, we said this was a fun Drive, didn’t we?) Actually this last discussion resulted in a provocative insight into the Doctrine and our understanding of the three personality types.  However, that is a topic that is best explored in another Post. Or!  …it can be explained by request!!  Anyone wishing to hear more about the stunning revelations about “How clarklike females are as powerful as scottian males in certain common social situations”  you need to write a Comment and we will provide you with the information. tre mercantile, non?

 

 

( God! Don’t you miss the 70s?  I mean  10…15 minute ‘solos’… whole album sides with one song. The only conclusion I find viable is that someone was messing with the rate of time-flow for most of the decade.  Seriously, nothing else makes sense… well yes, I suppose excessive drug use might be a reasonable inference.  You know how at live performances, the audience hoots and applauds when the band on stage plays one of their signature songs?  If you listen closely, the audience at the this concert are no different…they shout and applaud the song as soon as they recognize it…. 2:39  into the performance   lol)

 

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Video Friday Epistle 6 (wherein our persistent Narrator puzzles his-own-damnself over a question about the Doctrine) the Wakefield Doctrine, of course!

February 10, 2012 By

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

 

 

 

 

Not that we don’t like clarks… hell, we loves our clarks…they have been the core of the active new generation of the Doctrine. In point of fact, Molly and Claire and Nell represent the most significant step forward in this thing of ours since the first Post was published.

Funny story about that…I was talking to the Progenitor roger last night about writing Posts and such and he related how he recently completed a Post that he set aside for a day or two, fully intending to publish it on ‘the Rag. When he came back to it, intent upon bathing in the light and wisdom of the insight into the nature of reality that he had written had… somehow mutated into a screed that had ‘our Progenitor’ race around his house, checking the locks on all the doors and windows, because clearly someone had broken into his house and hit the “translate into unintelligible” key on his computer!
roger’s story made me recall the first Doctrine Post I  wrote, (which is also the first Post of any sort that I had written). After the normal experience of typing, re-typing and getting up and sitting down, I decided it was time to hit the ‘Publish’, so far, pretty typical for all of us who are willing to take the chance and put our thoughts in writing and send them into the world to stand on their own.
The fact that I am a clark, makes this story fairly impressive, as clarks tend toward the “hey I got it all in my head, maybe I don’t need to get all public and such’.  But the punchline of the story, and proof of my clarklike credentials, is that as soon as I hit the Publish key on the inaugural Wakefield Doctrine Post,  I immediately turned off the computer and quietly left the house …and drove around  in my car…just in case someone reading the Post would  try to track down the source of the Post.

As I was saying, one of the reasons we are so happy that we have new people reading and Commenting is that, with their feedback, we can guage how the Wakefield Doctrine is coming across to the Readers out there.
But we do what we can… every damn Friday  a video…a ‘topic’ and sometimes it is interesting.

And then there is today’s Video Post.

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“Did you have to treat me oh so bad, all I do is hang my head and moan…tell me why” the Wakefield Doctrine and the workplace

February 9, 2012 By

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

So I was talking to a clark the other day, and the topic of rogers in the workplace came up. ( Regular Readers can jump down to the music video, as you know what is coming next. But when you are are through listening to the Beatles? be sure to come back here and leave a Comment ).  In any event, the situation we discussed was a fairly common one, i.e. the problems encountered when there is a rogerian manager in an office with clarks doing the support/administrative/clerical work. Nothing unusual there, rogers are people persons and clarks love to administrate1 The trouble was, (in the situation we were discussing) was that the rogerian manager was being replaced by another rogerian manager. ( Did I mention that there were a lot of rogers in the workplace in question, other than these managers?  there were…) The clark I was talking to was excited and optimistic about the new manager coming into the office, mostly because (the clark) was being constantly harassed by the rogers that worked in the office.

Doctrine Note: In the workplace, rogers are most likely to be found as mid-level managers, they are the people who are there everyday to ensure the smooth-functioning of the organization whatever it might be. They, (the rogers), take their orders from someone else, usually a person not located in the immediate environment. rogers are found in these types of positions because they are the most socially adept of the three ( clarks, scotts and rogers ) and (they) have an innate gift of communication. rogers are naturals to an organized workplace, the more bureaucratic the better…they thrive in a setting in which there are rules and procedures and processes. And, if you did your research, you would find that the person who invented ‘the Memo’ was totally a roger!  I will even go so far as to say that an organized workplace, of virtually any size greater than three people, simply has to have a roger to run the system. We said run the system, we did not say to make the system or workplace run efficiently or productively.

While the rogers are at the heart of most organized workplaces, the scotts are usually ‘in the field’ or ‘on the road’ or somewhere that they don’t feel penned in…scotts as a rule are often great leaders and (are always) terrible managers, so you might find the CEO or President or Founder to be a scott, but never the Vice President-in-Charge-of-Ensuring-that-a-lot-pointless-rules-are-implemented-and-ignored. That is where rogers shine.  …and the clarks?  they are there, doing the actual work. clarks are the enablers and the facilitators and the people who will remind the rogers about the next visit from their scottian boss. Which brings us to the topic of this Post…the problems that clarks invariably encounter when working for and otherwise answering to a roger..so lets get back to the Post.

The problem (that we were discussing) was that our clark was being constantly told that she was making mistakes, and despite all efforts to correct the matter or even when there were no errors, the roger would find fault. As students of the Doctrine will be thinking at this point is, of course, ‘the only mistake that the clark made was to believe that the fault lay with her’.  Further compounding the problem was that  being a clark, our friend would spend most of the time after criticism trying to understand what she did wrong. This, of course made the likelihood of a genuine mistake almost inevitable.
From the Doctrine perspective, the primary advice was that, as a roger, the manager was simply lashing out2…being a bully. And that the ‘strategy’ that most rogers like to employ is to get everyone that they are supposed to be managing to be constantly ‘off balance’. As a result of being off balance and trying to understand why they seem unable to meet the expectation of their boss, most people, especially clarks will make more errors, which allows additional criticism etc. The more the people the roger is managing make mistakes, the better the roger  is made to look good in contrast.3 Or so is the worldview of the rogerian manager.

So my advice was: take some time to find the strength in knowing that she did, in fact know how to do her job. Then keep in mind that any interaction with a roger has the possibility of an attack (on her competency) and finally, when an interaction was unavoidable to remember the old adage, ‘the person who asks the questions, controls the conversation’.

Readers!!  You back yet?  Lets open the floor for Comments and Discussion.

 

 

1) because it lets us tell people what to do and it lets us organize things the way we want, without having to be directly and personally involved.

2)  lashing out – a term to denote the tendency of a roger, while seemingly engaged in a pleasant interaction (with a clark) to suddenly get nasty. almost always caught off-guard, clarks will tend to be thrown off-balance…which is, of course, the intention of the roger

3)  the rogerian principle is that if everyone under a rogerian manager is fucking up, then it does not matter what the roger is expected to do in his own job, he is constantly busy pointing out how much everyone is screwing up…most of rogerian managers’ time is spent pointing out the shortcomings of the people he/she is supposed to be managing

 

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DHS Statistics: incidence of non-consensual sex more than doubled during time period corresponding to the Super Bowl on Sunday

February 7, 2012 By

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

Today we will ‘talk’ a little about how you can use the Wakefield Doctrine to improve your day today! Yes, you read that correctly! We did just make the claim that what you read here today will allow you to do things differently, react in a way other than how you normally react and learn more about the people in your life….today!

 

First off:  you are either a clark or a scott or a roger. (No, you don’t have to read the “about Page’ or stop what you are doing, just stay with us… you can do this, we have yet to hear from anyone who said, “Hey I couldn’t understand this, it didn’t work’)
Which of the following statements sound most right:

  1. “…screw this…other than the Title and maybe the pictures, this is too boring!”
  2. “…no, I won’t answer your question, you have no right to ask questions like that, if I want you to know what I think maybe I would tell you but only if you tell me more about someone else that we both know.”
  3. “interesting…this all sounds somehow  familiar, but lets see how you get away with the claim of us knowing which of the 3 we are…”

Good work!

Group 1  you’re scotts and you should feel proud of yourself for making it this far, stay with us just a little longer and we will show how you can get way more out of the day today, and have a lot more fun doing it

Group 2  hello roger  (yes, this applies to men and woman and boys and girls) and yes there are, in fact, more of you people in the world than the other two and no, you’re absolutely correct, we don’t really know your inner most thoughts and we obviously totally under-estimate your subtle intelligence…but… you know how a good Ken Burns movie includes like the actual letters and things that people said, how it paints the complete picture of the life of the dead people that he is spending 120 minutes of black and white film on?  You can know that much about the people that you meet today. Guaranteed. Just stay with us and we’ll show you how.

Group 3 clarks…yo  hang back  watch what we do with the other two, you be alright on your own….one thing though…don’t worry about ‘getting this exactly right’ and don’t worry about maybe making a mistake….all the others reading this? they’re frickin scotts and rogers!! Like it’ll be a major miracle if they even know you write a Comment…lol

 

Attention Please!!

rogers: for today? today you need to be aware of the clarks in your life. They are the ones that are not taking things from you or otherwise making you feel good cause they’re telling everyone a joke and it seems to involve you (but you didn’t quite get the ‘set-up’). Anyway, when you see a clark…and they will be the ones who seem to enjoy talking to you and are offering to help you do your work, give them cover when your friends show up…the herd of other rogers…you know the people you are comfortable with but don’t really know and (for some reason you have never figured out) and don’t care to know, do something to get the clark to get away from the herd. You know that nothing good (for the clark) is gonna happen…

scotts: relax a little, when you get the small group gathered and you feel the need to crank up the volume (you know, when you tell a slightly off-color  joke and how when you see that everyone is laughing you know that you have to tell a dirty joke and if too many people are still laughing you have to tell a really dirty joke?) today…stop and ask the person in the group that is around you if they had one wish, what would it be? When you get the person who clearly is taking the question seriously….leave them alone for the rest of the day

clarks: stop thinking and do one thing that you know will make everyone think you are a jerk…do it seriously, no ‘set-up’ no mumbling just answer someone rudely or compliment a member of the opposite sex, or ask your boss for a raise (and don’t help him say no, ask and shut up)  do this once today and your life will not be the same again. We are certain of this.

 

OK everyone! Do this thing. You do the task we suggest and your life will improve because you will have the proof that what the Wakefield Doctrine has to offer will be useful and valuable in your own lives.
Hey!
Some of you will get yourselfs confused, either on purpose (I’m looking at you, clark) or cause you don’t really believe this (roger) or you were in too much of hurry…( lol  scott!)  But here’s the thing:

We all have the qualities of all three, just one of the three is the pre-dominant, main one.
The Doctrine is all about the world that you experience, not something you need to think about, just remember what we tell you and everyone, we mean everyone you encounter will play their parts.
Have fun…you can’t get this thing wrong….you can fuck up the instructions and trip yourself up, but the main thing is that if you are a scott then the world will be a place of challenge and conflict, if you are a roger then you think you have it down and the group will back you up and  clark?  welcome you’re home.

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