Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Sure, you’re thinking, “alright, you can do the time travel premise for a blog Post and play with tenses and maybe throw in some light metaphysics to lend it a certain gravitas and all, but how do we really know that you’re writing this thing from the Past? huh? answer that!! cause if you’re in the Past, you won’t have yet have heard us pose this rhetorical question…will you!!! (err ..have… had heard)
Challenge accepted!!! and as proof here is a photo taken in the Past, way back on Thursday…. TWO DAYS BACK IN TIME
ha! not laughing so much now, are you?
so the List of Thankful!!
1) I am grateful for a solid belief in the possibility of the future. Before you laugh I would suggest that you think this statement through, sure, everyone believes in the future, but how many people actually take advantage of this vaunted possibility? Most of us (yes, I am including myself), may make great claims to ‘things are gonna change (in this ever-the-next-day future), just you wait and see!’ but after the initial excitement wears off, then we let the day fill up with our usual decisions and choices and alternatives, aka ‘same ole, same ole’. But!! (and we all have the right to a but!), knowing this is better than not knowing this (if you’re a clark, that is). So my gratitude is established.
2) I am grateful for learning to decrease my insistence on the ‘potential of the future’ (yeah, I know! it seems like a contradiction or at bare minimum a …a conflict!) though it will come as no surprise to 37% of you Readers that this difficulty is endemic among the clarks of the world… we have this problem with thinking that, the present is not totally important, that there will, in fact, a chance for a ‘make up/do over’ to compensate for our wasted half-hearted efforts. Arrgh!! Not a good quality! Castaneda talked about ‘living as if one were immortal’ and he didn’t mean it in a good way, you know, like you were Megan Fox or Jeff Beck or someone. He meant, in my opinion, that (a) belief in immortality resulted in not taking full responsibility for ones’ actions in the here and now.
3) …grateful for the works of Carlos Castaneda …not so much that he reveals any secrets of the universe that any of us clarks didn’t already know (or at minimum, suspect), ’cause we clarks are all about learning the un-learnable. No, I’m grateful for his making available such excellent word tools…
4) I am grateful for word-tools, which is my own, awkward made-up word for phrases, insights, remarks and suggestions that, in the right circumstances make a difference in the day… you know, like ‘stitch in time’, ‘measure twice cut once’ ‘waste not, want not’ yeah, I know those are just a buncha sayings, frickin aphorisms, but my point is, some of these sayings have the capacity of being imbued with more …energy than other (sayings) and hence the value of the saying… etc
5) running out of time (ha ha) but I am grateful for the chance to have some fun with this here TToT here, it remains to be seen if this Post, ‘reads stupid’ come Saturday morning when I sit down to finish it and hit publishimo.
6) I would be totally grateful if you would do me a small favor… and do something as a special effect at this point, you know, move your head forward and back while staring at your monitor so I can gets the flashback ends effect… thank you!
damn!…. it’s not the Past anymore! it’s the near term present holy shit! it’s 7:00 am …. wait a minute lets go find a news paper…. Saturday morning !!!
(lol yeah, I missed out on high school creative-writing class the first time around, I think I was in someones’ basement with musical instruments, girls and semi-illicit substances back at the time… ah! better to have the more …strenuous adventures back when I was more physically (and psychically) able to endure the after-effects you know what I mean?)
7) I am grateful to the TToT family of hostae and their seemingly never-ending capacity to tolerate my little forays off the trajet normal
8) but since I started this Post with a reference to time travel (and such) I would be totally grateful if I could complete today’s list with that in mind ( hey Christine, I promise to do a real…. normal list tomorrow…ok?)
9) I think I am grateful for not having time travel available … cause other than a light fantasy to pass the time sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, if you think it through, the adventure would not be a cool as most of the stories and movies we have seen on the topic make it out to be… you know, the old ‘I would go back to (fill in the blank time period, most of us go for the college and/or early 20s) with all the knowledge and experience I have now’… no! no you wouldn’t. I love my friends dearly, at least the ones I have that I met back in those days… but if I am honest in my recollections of them (and myself) in those years… lol and I (the me writing this) had to go back there and hang out? no frickin way! go ahead try that little thought experiment. You’ll never view the fantasy the same.
10) I am grateful to Lizzi for not being too impatient with me as I try to come up with a photo to meet my responsibilities as: the man of the house, the breadwinner, the clear and obvious Leader and Protector of the gathering of gentle, sensitive blogger womenfolk as they poise themselves prettily to celebrate the upcoming 25th Blogoversary of this here bloghop here. aka the only one of the ten who hasn’t seemed to have it together enough to send in a simple photo with the Letter H on it! lol
…where the hell is that time machine??!
About clarkscottroger
My post is also if possible a time machine, because I jot things down as they come to me all week long and then put it together to post up on Saturday morning!! Seriously you always make me smile and I thank you for that. Happy Weekend and hope you have a great one now. And somehow I am the first comment here today, yay!! :)
Janine
When it come to ‘standards’ for commenting, you are my role model! hey, yesterday on the blogtalkradio I introduced J9 Designs as a ‘new sponsor’ but I forgot to tell people to ‘tell ’em the Doctrine sent ya’ (first show in a while… a little rough in spots..lol)
anyway, have a good weekend your own self!
*falls about laughing at #10*
I have to say I do enjoy, appreciate and otherwise welcome the trajet abnormale you bring each week – it makes me think/made me think/will make me think in ways I may not otherwise.
VERY cool what you did/are doing/are going to do with the time travel. I have looked/am looking/will look forward to what comes next/now/before.
Lizzi
I knew you would say that! (hope I didn’t spoil anyone’s fantasy about going back to an earlier age with life experiences and such) (hey, there’s a thought… gender and time travel is there a difference in the fantasy?)
more to follow!
I knew you would prompt some twist in my thoughts…
I’m game to find out if you are…
Clark, I love your forays into… well… hmmmm…. intellectualism… Shamanism (Castaneda)…time…hmmmm? I don’t remember the exact quote of #3, and although at the time he used it I don’t think he meant it positively but rest assured I do… because I think you do an amazing job of “using science to justify sorcery.” Or to at the very least challenge people to think in more expansive ways (without the use of aforementioned mind altering substances.) I also would NEVER tolerate my old friends as who they were when I met them if I chose to go back with this mindset… I would probably have to kill someone. Love the list today… obviously you didn’t find it too stupid to hit publisimo after all! =) very happy you didn’t .
zoe
no, I agree! when don Juan would chide Carlos for acting ‘as if he were immortal’ he (don Juan) was not saying it was a good thing he was… lol (you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to not get pissed off at Carlos for being such a dense roger…) (“..characters in a book, clark!! characters in a book, lighten up!” lol) and while there are libraries of books and works and such exploring this aspect of the reality thing, for whatever reason, I really found the lessons and viewpoints that Castaneda had his characters hold forth on, have lasted as the aforementioned world tools.
yeah… you can imagine the letdown when (in the course of thinking I could write a story/book/novel based entirely on a dream fragment) I ‘thought through’ the fantasy and realized that I wouldn’t find them all that interesting (and the Progenitor scott and roger were very much there at that time period in my life) and then… I realized ‘it’s 1972 I don’t have a dime to my name… not a credit card, what the hell was I going to do for capital? of course, then I also realized that my ‘first time through’ I didn’t pay a lot of attention to things beyond my course work, girls and guitars!! lol (luckily I had a ridiculously clever plot device…)
any way am running on…
I get what your saying about the first don juan quote but the other was also meant as a compliment to you… maybe Carlos didn’t say it … the one about “using science to justify scorcery…” I cant recall what it was pertaining to but he didn’t mean it in a flattering way but I think you may have come close to mastering such a thing. ie I mean it as a compliment! lol. The original context I think was someone asking him something about his writing or himself and he said trying to quantify or qualify what they were asking would be like using science to justify scorcery…. so in an effort to OVER explain…
zoe
over explain? lol no such thing (to a clark)… good point on that, though. That is a perfect example of what the Doctrine Rule (of) ‘everyone does everything at one time or another’! It is possible to infer a person’s worldview simply by listening to them provide an explanation! To the un-trained ear both rogers and clarks would seem to provide rather lengthy explanations (to whatever, provided it is somewhat involved, in time or in space)… scotts are pretty easy (see the Eureka moment of the Doctrine), but as you listen to clarks and rogers the very fundamental principles of our worldview becomes apparent, clark believe that it is better to know more than to know less, further complicated by the primal belief that we ‘missed’ one critical lesson on ‘how to be like everyone else’… we are possessed with what might best me termed an appetite for information. So while you will hear people criticize clarks for not getting to the point (usually a roger!) we are getting to the point, but we want to do whatever we can to provide as much information as possible, we often include inferences (of the desired information) and additional information that is related but not necessarily … you get what I mean. rogers, on the other hand, will tend to go on at length and seem to be roundabout, but if you follow the thoughts (underlying the explanation) they will always come back to the speaker… re-asserting the central position of the speaker and therefore enhancing their position in the herd.
have I just demonstrated the point while trying to make the point?
lol
thank you, zoe I missed the reference in your first Comment to my second reference… or something like that.
Illustrating all the more my Clark tendencies with a Rogerian twist!
zoe
hold that thought, you’re actually in a position to make a significant contribution to this here Doctrine here! as I’m sure you’re aware, most of the clarks ’round here have secondary scottian aspects! secondary rogerian aspect much less common! (and, as we know, it is with the secondary and tertiary aspects that we are able go from a gross context of…er contexts (lol) to a much better view to the individual person!
and I am resolved to put off efforts to understand the effects of the tertiary aspect until we have a better understanding of the workings of the secondary and…and! a better vocabulary*
*the vocabulary is proving to be as essential as the core principles ’round here, it is slow going but we are making progress**
** speaking of rogers, while we have a validation from predominant rogers, try this out (from your secondary aspect’s perspective): an over-arching relationship/principle that shapes (a) rogers interactions with the world is what we have termed ‘referential authority’ the idea that something must be done because “they say so, it is the right thing to do, it is in the rules, it’s the right thing to do”! this referential authority shows well when a roger ‘manifests’ lets call it, ‘other-worldliness’ ( clarks are spiritual, rogers are religious, that sort of thing)…a roger is totally at home helping people to understand the will of god or the right way to live, not because they as an individual says so, but because god says so… status within an ultimate herd…
more to follow lol
re your last footnote… I have a painful sense of right and wrong as it applies to myself only…although oddly enough religion is probably one of the few places that is not true in my life…my Clark takes over there. I suppose it was all those years living with a Tibetan Buddhist. But I am continually feeling badly because I haven’t necessarily acted as I ‘should’ (per herd expectations) vs as I thought was right…
zoe
that’s the kind of thing that the ‘everyone does everything at one time or another’ rule is meant for…all (or most) people have exposure to religion (in it’s countless iterations) and most have, as a result developed a sensitivity to rules and right behavior, but for a clark, (even after being indoctrinated as a child… you will see, (in clarks), the conviction that the only valid moral authority is that which comes from somewhere within, while a roger not only ascribes the advice of right action to an external source (the referential authority) but to them, this externality enhances the power of the Rules (which should be no surprise, given the rogerian worldview being centered on the herd).
good morning , Clark… could you please list or post or send me an email or comment on my blog or send an interstellar messenger or psychic-gram with all the cool things you do adjunct to this here blog here? ie the brunch and the call in and the drives… I don’t seem to ever catch anything except that one time I was on the run and afraid must have come off as fairly psycho! Thanks loads! Z/L
zoe
in about an hour we will be doing the video brunch … I think you have joined us once, albeit briefly (Readers: this is using google hangouts app (found on google+) and we hangout on Sunday mornings from 9:15 – 9:30 to around noon… fun and informative suggest you open Facebook too, as the invite function on hangout is not so good… best to ope google+ first
on Saturday Nights it’s the Saturday Night Drive a call-in thing 1-218-339-0422 (access code: 512103#)
and lately I’ve re-started the Wakefield Doctrine 30 Minute Radio Hour on blogtalkradio…
Oh yeah, #10… get your ass in gear and stop trying to protect the honor of we (obviously sensitive and demure) females! HA! Just riding ya!
Clark, your new phone might help with that picture.
I would like a time machine not so much so I could communicate with people from the past, but so I could simply watch. History fascinates me (now that I’m not in school having to take tests on it) and I’d love to go back and see things firsthand. Think of the history lessons teachers could have! Of course, I would want to go back and interact with my grandparents.
As for normal lists, for you, this is a normal list. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
As for your letter, honestly, did Kristi beat you?!? (pretend I am giving you the universal (I have no idea if it universal or local to my school growing up.) shame on you sign)
christine
uh… no? it’s right here… just have to send (believe it or not, it only dawned on me last night as a result of a wall post of Lizzi’s that everyone else had handed in their letters…. jeez somethings never change!! you people are such girls lol)
(“Miss Considerer? I worked all night on my letter and it’s on your desk but I heard that clark saying something on the bus about how he hoped that we maybe you would be sick or absent today…I don’t think he has his ready yet!”)
lol
HA!
I’ve given you a great big ‘F’ for LANDSCAPE on your homework, boyo!
Just you wait and see how gentle and sensitive I can be! WTactualF!
Did he actually send it? Please tell me he’s not naked.
I meant to time travel this week, too, but alas, ended up writing my post today.
Word-tools can be useful. Or cliche–it just depends on how well they are used.
Kristi
the idea of word-tools hopefully conveys the idea that the words themselves are (at times) merely the vehicles for something that is so much more. But that in and of itself does not make a word-tool anything less, it/they serve as ways for us to carry around a thing/spirit/otherness that most of us don’t get to hold in the pure form.
Love the word tools, Clark. If I could time-travel, I would be one seriously organized and with-it girl.
Lisa
it *so* would offer that potential…to go back and not fall for the kinds of thing we fell far, mostly because of our youth, aka lack of experience!
What am I missing? How is this abnormal? I have only been joining the fray for a few weeks but have come to expect exactly this type of post from you and would be disappointed otherwise.
As tempting as it may be, no time travel for me. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, good or bad or please hand me a Xanax, so I will stay planted firmly in the here and now, which today has been a please hand me a Xanax :)
On a side note, I have been wandering around your site a little more today than usual simply to get a better glimpse. This gets more interesting as I go! Back to it, just wanted to leave this little blurb!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Sandy
that is nice to hear… as to idea of time travel… in a sense, I think I am reflecting a part (or an inference of…implied) when I say, you can’t really go back. Not that we’re concerned with the possibility of going back to a previous time in our lives, but the fact that we (the results of things happening for a reason) are not the people who we were back then, so we would have no place… interesting way to look at it.
yeah, the Doctrine is one of those things where…while it could be better organized in the blog, it has become sort of selective, i.e. the people who ‘get it’ are pretty exceptional… mostly we see people with a very strong curiosity and the intellectual confidence to try out new (and strange) ideas, just for the fun of it.
I should warn you (as I did in another comment, to Cyndi I think, if you get to the point of seeing the clarks and scotts and rogers in your life, you may find yourself unable to not see them lol but it’s fun and it can be very helpful in understanding the people in our lives.
Funnily enough I have also been working my post for the hop on and off during the week. Seems to be a theme.
Lots of very interesting points here, particularly about the future and how we trust it will happen. It’s a tricky balance in a way I guess, and somewhere I saw a quote, possibly from Martin Luther King: “Even if I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant that apple seed.” At first, I just didn’t get that quote at all, thought no you wouldn’t plant the seed, and yet I began to see it’s true. We do go on trusting in a future.
Yvonne
yeah… (for me) I get the idea of ‘by holding true to our values, in the here and now, despite what may or may not happen in the future’ and now that you bring that up, it isn’t just the objective ‘hey, the world is going to end tomorrow’, this view seems to be pertinent to our own efforts to ‘predict the future’… “why bother, she’s only going to say no” “I can’t get that job, I’ll freeze up in the interview” ya know?
great comment
Ohhh, the time machine.. I want it to be next Sunday, so our family photo shoot is over and I will have found and bought the perfect outfits for the girls. I want it to be mid-December, so I’m (hopefully) done with the holiday shopping. I want it to be 12 months from now.. Just because.. But it’s right now, and I’m thankful for it, because I wouldn’t want to miss a single day with those sometimes hilarious girls, and I wouldn’t want to miss a single night cuddling with this guy in my bed ;-)
You writing a “normal” TToT post is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Measure twice, cut once. Isn’t that a Norm quote?
Dyanne
norm is such a clark! if you watch the show, no wait, it hasn’t been on the air for 20 years… well re runs then… watch Norm and listen to the number of first person pro-nouns he uses… total indicator of a clark. his last co-host was a roger… lots of first person pronoun!
hey thanks for the photo of the docTee! very cool… remind me when I do the next printing run and I will send you a scott docTee… I might even work on have more size options available maybe a heavier/better quality of fabric
I’m writing thus from the *wavy lines* FUTURE. Future you says “Hi, please floss more.”
Hopefully you know what that means.
Present Joy knows what Past Clark is talking about. I’m always thinking ahead, sometimes I need to be reminded to stop and enjoy this moment. Ahhhh, sorry just enjoying the moment. Talk among yourselves past and future….
Joy
I knew you’d say that… lol
I think I’m with you re: keeping time travel in the fictional where it seems to have a lot of Bill and Ted kinda fun. I figure if I could, I’d end up more on the Being Erica kind of track – where I’d try to make different choices, but not a whole lot would change. And agreed – re: not wanting to hang out as me now with the me and company of yesteryear. A nice thought in theory. I went to grad school and re-joined the varsity swim team at 26 so spent a year with 18-19 year olds and remember asking many a time if I’d really been “like that”. The answer was yes – and it was awesome. Just not at 26 :)
Louise
yeah… what the hell kind a buzzkill am I? but that thing about the people we were not being the people we would want to hang out with, unfortunately is only the beginning of the problems with time travel! As I thought/wrote this story in my head last year, when I got to the part about how being from the future with future knowledge would allow me to make easy money, I had to confront the fact that not only did I not have any money (my time travel took me back to college c 1972) I had no credit and worse… I never paid attention to the ins and outs of the stock market or the sporting events back then (being busy trying to make in a rock and roll band) that I would not have been able to ‘remember’ who won the World Series or what stock… lol my time traveling self had nothing in the way of any future knowledge to capitalize on… lol the only things I had (in my story) was the Wakefield Doctrine so at there was something!!
Apparently we should all take better notes NOW in the event we can come back in the future. But there are bits you never really forget. For instance, I’d have cashed in my American mutual funds late September 2008, if I could go back to THAT time. ;) As for betting on sports though? I too would be pretty useless.