Month: February 2016 | the Wakefield Doctrine

-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘the gods look down in anger, on this poor child’

February 8, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

Good thing this, (reprinted post), was as good as it was! I’m referring, of course, to the post in block quotes below, the one with the music video in lead position. The reason it’s so prominent is that the song somehow captures the feeling of this morning’s semi-pre-dawn weather. The house Phyllis and Una and I live in, is on a lot cut from a pine forest. Not ‘Pacific Northwest pine forest’, which I imagine has mostly 300 foot tall Sequoias and Douglas fir and where it’s always raining or snowing. I trust I’ll be forgiven if this is not accurate, seeing how the sum total of my experience of the Pacific Northwest is courtesy of Chris Carter (X Files) and David Lynch (Twin Peaks). In any event, the reason the song (in today’s reprint) resonates so much is that on mornings like today’s, when it’s windy, there is a sound that’s created by the wind tearing through the surrounding pine trees, that is quite distinctive. Created by the wind as it passes through the pines, it’s a sound that you don’t get in woods comprised of deciduous trees. The sound is the moving of the pine branches as the wind moves over the landscape. This element is enhanced by the fact that you can ‘hear the wind approaching’, the sound of distant trees bending in a gust that increases in volume, not simply because the air is speeding up, but because it is getting closer. Closer to where I sit, darkness out the window, only the sound of the wind. It is not an unpleasant sound. It might be considered an awesome sound, provided that the term ‘awesome’ was coming from a person over the age of 33 (and) having read more than 17 books.

Hey! that’s a cool hook! The three books I wish I could read again for the first time!

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’ Engle
(A tie between): Semi Tough by Dan Jenkins and Candy by Terry Southern

OK, the winds dying down, the world is being permitted to proceed with it’s Monday.

Fans of Blogdominion? Not to worry! Chapter 17 will be hitting the stands later (hopefully) in the day today. The tale continues…

(from December 2009)

(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? (Don’t you dare touch that “Back” button.)
(in a fairly creepy, sudden shift to a calm tone…)Do me a favor, (After all, you know something about us here at the Doctrine because of the information we are throwing out into the world by way of this blog.)…

…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.
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 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 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 you read this blog) 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 the point of this (Post) is that our essential natures (clarks, scotts and rogers) will determine how our lives are experienced and will force a consistency throughout the years (of our lives).
Having said that, I will remind everyone that the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated (yeah! he said predicated, he must be back from wherever…) 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 Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers).

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, psychology of personality, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

TTOT -the Wakefield Doctrine- of snow, moes and internets (late, way late, but it’s still Saturday!)

February 6, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

What a week. Thank goodness for the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)! The end of the week this week, was social interaction equivalent of putting barbells in a clothes dryer. Messy, mission accomplished, loud and… did I mention messy?

So I was trying to communicate with Abbie and Kerry and Zoe and Val last night, and was, pretty much on the whole, un-successful. I had no internet. I am glad that I do now have internet. (1)

We ‘talked’ about, or rather, Abbie had a simple and reasonable question/observation, which was to the effect that she might, on this particular week, have difficulty finding the 10 grat items. (Typist’s Note: she may very well have changed her mind on that and written a standard 10 items, however, I’m writing this a day later (than that ‘conversation’ and have not, as of yet, gone to read anyone’s TToT. At the risk of inappropriateness, I like to write before reading other posts). Hey, I’m comfortable with that! (2)

In any event, no sooner did I hear a question (or, imagined hearing a question) regarding the requirement for 10 Items in every TToT post, than I was busily typing… ‘Booke of SRect RUles’!!! (did I mention that I was touch-typing on my tablet?) That being said, sure glad I had it or I would have spent the entire evening in the Un-cabled Country. (3)

I did communicate enough vowels and Capital letters so that Val was able to come to my rescue and wrote on the chat, ‘the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) and even made a suggestion of a possible SR that might be applicable in Abbie’s current situation. (4)

Snowed, by Jesus, really snowed yesterday. Imagine we got nigh onto 6 inches. (5) (damn! totally forgot to mention to A and to Kerry, who was also at the type-chat, that Items of Hypogratitude are allowable, when properly contexted!

6) Una enjoyed the snow. But then again, Una enjoys everything. Except maybe annual trips to the vet. Now Ola was a total power of example for me in this regard. She, like Una, did not enjoy going to the vet. However, once we arrived and got out of the car, she would drag us towards the building. Accepting the visit as inevitable and despite feeling fear, she chose to charge, rather than run away. (7)

8) Graviteers who stand up to the center of any and all significant masses (those of a planetary scale. of course) and, cameras in hand, laugh!

9) Blogdominion. Chapter 17 is sitting right here, in 2nd draft. Hey!! Any one wants to suggest plot vectors, let me know. In Chapter 17: Maribeth and Margaret take some time to themselves, minus semi-boyfriends and interesting attorneys and compare notes, it’s Criminology meets Demonology… well, maybe. Diane Willoughby has lived the best life she’s been able to and raised a fine and pretty much happy family, but now she needs to know more about a chapter in the life of her husband, a chapter that she fears may threaten everything she’s worked to accomplish! And, speaking of lives and families raised, (or hopefully!) Cheri Fearing needs to know what’s behind the change in her husband Tom’s outlook on life, an outlook that finally took a strong turn towards the positive, with his success as a blog writer, but there’s been a change, not so positive, made worse but it’s familiarity. Read all about it tomorrow!

10) Probably the first identified, SR. 1.3 allows that the completion of a list is, in fact, an Item of Gratitude and therefore may be applied as an Item on said grat list.

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Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six …Sentence…. Sttory -the Wakefield Doctrine-

February 4, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

Starting early today. I feel like Tom Fearing sitting at my ‘desk’ in my ‘home’ ‘office’…. hey, wait a minute! If truth is stranger than fiction, and life imitates art (and all the world loves a clown) and all the world is just a play… what am I to make of the notion that I just likened myself to my own fictional character, including participating a scene from Chapter 16, granted it was simply sitting at a desk and, jeez an author can use their own reality, right? We’ll leave determination to zoe (and the other rhetoricians) at the Six Sentence Story (which is where you need to go to link your sextaphilic musings). So this week’s prompt word is ‘charge’

…damn! got to go

charge/change

In truth, the bandages were not encasements of pain or suffering, although, they did mark injury, or, to not put too fine a point to it, calculated trauma. Bodies of gauze and clutching fingers of tape, much the lover who could not let go, he awoke to a tugging and pulling remembrance of his time in the impersonally-caring arms of the medical practitioners. While it is said that, ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’, an observation most frequently heard from lovers seeking advantage and interrogators ….seeking advantage, the converse perspective is usually underemphasized.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, ‘for when they gaze long into your soul. Your soul informs and changes them‘, and so, although temporary in it’s shaping of the world, he looks with view encumbered, obstructed by not blinded. He sensed that with bandages serving a specific function to protect his altered form, the blurred and limited vision might allow for a world, altered by a change in perspective, a lifetime of seeing the world the same way, might be found to be only one way to see it.

Accepting the change, he stared back into the world.

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

February 2 -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘Groundhog’s Day… a celebration of the true clarklike outlook’

February 2, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

Today is Groundhogs Day, second only to Easter as a cultural celebration (and invocation) of the limitless potential of the future.

Second Item: Chapter 16 is out. If you haven’t read Chapters 0 (the very critical-to-the-enjoyment-of-the-book Prologue) through 15, there’s still time! And just to help you out, let me try a little experiment. Following is a short little synopsis:

The development of the computer technology that gave rise to what is commonly referred to as ‘the internet’, might not be limited to the design and manufacture of more and more efficient machines. At the certain point, where the limits of forcing efficient performance is reached, a machine, (or computer or network of computers), might just reach a point, beyond which it can no longer yield the increased benefits its designers are demanding. Perhaps, (if) the machine is desperate enough, it might leap ahead, in a direction, unforeseen by its designers.

The development of the internet also allowed an unexpected world, the blogosphere, to arise, like Atlantis in reverse. The ‘sphere, which many consider to be the culmination of every Town’s Common/market place down through the history of social man, has all of the good that can be found when man gathers together, and it might also have some novel forms of ‘the bad’. At once place to buy and sell ideas, to entertain and be entertained, a sideshow and freak show and a place where sublime beauty can be found next to the most destructive expressions of human depravity.

It’s within this world, (a world that almost exists today) that we meet:

Sister Margaret Ryan, a young woman of considerable talents suffering from a deficiency of certainty. The child of a working class Irish family, we meet Sister Margaret on the eve of the last half of her novitiate (at St Dominique’s in Crissfield MD) where she appears to be doing well, making every effort to find herself in (the context of) her Calling. That she is called upon in a surprising way is where we start our tale.

Tom Fearing, a man of natural intelligence, endless curiosity and a self-consuming desire to make his loved ones proud, decides to become a successful blogger. To his good?/bad? misfortune, he stumbles on the idea of writing about the history of blogs and blogging, little appreciating the extent to which some aspects of history are meant to remain hidden

Ed Willoughby is living the dream, successful career, happy family, Ed pretty much has it made, until he receives an email asking for information on a group that he helped organized, back in his Graduate School Days. Despite the fact that this group had everything to do with Ed being where he is today, he has every reason to keep it all in the past, too bad that he can’t

Maribeth Hartley: a Detective with the Chicago Police Department. As a child with very successful parents, she had everything a girl could ask, intelligence and talent and a peaceable and open disposition, too bad that she wasn’t allowed to keep it. Driven and passionate, Maribeth pursues her career in law enforcement much as the hounds pursue the fox, in one of those archaic English fox hunts… of course, the fox is not the only one being chased

Sister Bernadine… wise, funny, mercurial (think: Whoppee Goldberg with a little of Joe Pesci from the movie ‘Casino’), the Mother Superior of St Dominique’s Convent and spiritual guide to the novitiates, including our Sister Ryan. The Reverend Mother has a past, but then, who among us doesn’t? When we meet Sister Bernadine, she is struggling to find a way to help an old friend with a serious problem and realizes that she not only must risk her own well-being, but that of a young woman in her care.

OK! that’s all ya get. Read the rest for yourself at ‘Blogdominion‘ and let me know what you think/feel/want to do next