the Wakefield Doctrine

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

The Wakefield Doctrine provides those with the aptitude for and the interest in understanding the behavior of the people in their lives, a perspective that is unique, very useful and quite often amusing. Part inspired observation, part creative inference, this view of human personality, while not rigidly empirical (more flexibly anecdotal), can afford the dedicated people watcher, an insight that will be both refreshing and amusing. There is a catch.

We have found, in the course of writing some 783 Posts over the last 4 years, that even allowing for a certain element of rhetorical density in our efforts to explain the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, not everyone who reads this blog gets it. I know, how the hell can that be? Actually that was predicted by the Doctrine itself, that in order to clear the hurdles of the somewhat prosaic-ositousness of some Posts¹ the Readers would have to be clarks or (being scotts or rogers), have a strong secondary clarklike aspect.

But here you are, shaking your head as you read this, thinking ‘do I really have this much free time?!’

1)  like this one from December 2009:

‘…sun don’t shine, the gods look down in anger’

(Well, oh kay… interesting note to start a Post on… but stranger things have happened in and about the Wakefield Doctrine)

(…”this just in”…’clark…the seventies…were…thirty…plus…years ago’…stop…’please, stop’…)

Hey Reader! Yeah you!
Do you believe that your (personal) history defines and (pre)determines your future or what? Is there such a thing as the momentum of habit. (The ‘momentum of habit’  is the notion that what we are is simply a more elaborate form of what we have always been.) (Cheery thought, no?)

Well? Do you think it does?
Do me a favor, given that you know something about us here at the Doctrine…

Look back on your life. Try and recollect the things you have done, the places you have lived, the people you have known, since as far back as you can recall…
Now, erase the names of the people, delete the addresses of the locations and take off the labels of the things you have done (job title, education, religious designations). You can still remember your life, can’t you?
Even with names and labels removed/deleted/eliminated, you know that you have been alive, with a life that is yours and yours alone. You know, even without the names, you lived in one place (or many different places), you knew some people (or a lot of people) and you spent your waking time doing this (or doing that).
Your ‘life story’ runs from the first (and often sketchy) times you remember as a child through and right up to now.

Pretty goddamn ‘straight’ line isn’t it?
(Come on roger, stop protesting. You know what I mean. You are capable of this.)
Look at your life in terms of how many different interests and activities and ways of investing your time is evidenced. How different was your life when you were 7 years old compared to when you were 17 years old (…or 27 or 77…)?
(Yeah, yeah scott, I get the ‘I gots the girlfriends/boyfriends thing’ Does not matter. Lose the names, and they (still) are people you shared yourself and your time with, no different than a best friend in second grade or a spouse in middle age or the person in the bed next to yours in the nursing home.)
What I am trying to get across here is that the important thing  is not the names of the people, places and activities that comprise(s) your life.
Rather, I am asking you to consider the question, what did they (seem) to add to your life, why did you give them (these people and places and activities) your time!?

I want the Reader to consider their lives without the qualification/rationalization/justification that we all impose when we reflect on our lives.

… ‘he was a great friend, even though he was an asshole’… ‘I really liked spending time with her, but I had to because she was family’ … “of course we are happy together! We have beautiful children and a nice home’… ‘I know this is a boring job, but I will stick with it, because otherwise, what will I do?…’maybe I can still pray and maybe its not too late for me…”who will take care of me if I get sick?’…

(These little quotes barely  hint at the myriad of ways that we employ to make the fact that what constitutes ‘our lives’, the essential nature and character, if you will,  is the same today as it was on your very first day at school.)

So?
So what, what is wrong with that, at least I have a life that I can look at and say, ‘hey I’m not doing so bad’!

You are correct, scott.  roger?  you can come back in the room, we have stopped talking about life as if it were totally unpredictable and un-certain. We won’t talk about interchangeability any more.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?  (Yes, I am seriously getting ready to close out this Post for today.) (No, I actually don’t have a more satisfying denouement for todays Post)

(writer leaves, house lights stay off…)

Alright, alright. Seeing that we have some new visitors (from Italy and Sweden and Ghana to name a few) and, of course, Sloveniaaa  is in da house!! I will try to impart or at least ‘duct tape’ some kind of coherent point to this Post.

If pressed, I would have to say that the point of this (Post)  is that our essential natures (clarks, scotts and rogers) will determine how our lives are experienced.
Having said that, I will remind everyone that the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the idea that we all have the full range of potential, we are all (potentially) clarks and scotts and rogers.
And despite how this Post reads, we always have the potential to feel, act, or think in the manner of the other two personality types.
In fact, that really is the purpose of the WakefieldDoctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers), to offer a tool for self-improving ourselves by seeing the world from a different perspective.