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

Yeah, we clarks are like that…. all the time. Even when no one is looking, we’re trying to figure this, world and reality, people and relationships, thing out.

You know how cool this Wakefield Doctrine is, as a tool for better understanding the people in our lifes? Consider the last part of the last (complete) sentence. Where I say, ‘we’re trying to figure this thing out’. The Doctrine tells us that if you’re a clark, encountering that implication will increase your interest; if you’re a scott, and have nothing better to do at the moment, your curiosity is piqued, ( the essential difference: the amusement value a ball  or a ball with a little bell in its hollow center); and if you’re a roger, you’ll start to get annoyed. You know for a fact that, if the writer doesn’t want to (and can’t) express a complete thought, there are serious implications to how worthwhile any further investment of time might be and will look around (wherever you might be) and see how you’re feeling.

Anyway.

Today’s subtitle: ‘severing the ties of desire while still caring (enough to continue the implied effort) about the outcome’, is one of those goulash insights that we like people are totally prone to, as we go through our day, absorbing knowledge and information (mostly information and of that, the bulk of which might, on first blush, seem to be useless information). Every now and then, a set of stray words clump together in a new and interesting way. (Sort like, on the science channel, when they illustrate the galaxy and the solar system formed…. only way speeded up.)

So we’re all familiar with the famous observation/ lesson/ inference/ hey!-check-this-out-about-existance that asserts: ‘Desire is the root of all suffering’. Clearly this is an accurate assessment. But the question that popped into my head, (while playing solitaire, my preferred form of sitting zazen), was, so how then are we to self-improve ourselves, if we don’t care whether we succeed or not. (Imo) (the) desire is not, in and of itself, destructive; the relationship created (between us and the desired), is the culprit. To desire something (someone, whatever) is to identify outside of the self. And, as any good salesman will tell you, you not only want what you can’t have, you want what you can’t have more than is supported by the benefits inherent in the desired.

whoa, is it me or is this getting a little dense for a Tooesday post?

…fortunately, the Wakefield Doctrine has an answer. Well, not quite an answer, more of an illustration of how to not get trapped by the me/not-me conundrum so often waiting for those of us who try to be better lifeforms. The approach taken by the Doctrine to self-improvement can provide(an) additional perspective. And if there’s one thing we like, here at the Doctrine, it is to have additional perspectives.

Pick a quality, a personal characteristic that you believe would make you a better you. Chances are it’ll be something like, ‘I want to be more confident at work.’ or ‘I really would be happy if I didn’t lose my temper so quickly.‘ or even, ‘If I could stop being such a perfectionist, that’d be great!‘

The Wakefield Doctrine maintains that what others refer to as one’s personality type is simply a reflection of the character of our ‘predominant worldview’. Example: I live in the worldview of the Outsider. What accounts for those personality traits and characteristics that identify me as a clark is the fact that I grew up and encountered the world of the Outsider and so my social strategies, coping mechanisms, all the things that I say and do in the course of interacting with the world are those of a clark. This worldview can also be thought of as our personal reality, that part of life that is a melding of the subjective and the objective world. In a way, the Doctrine’s view of personality types is that each of us are demonstrating the best coping strategies we could develop, in response to the reality we grew up in.

Lucky for us, the Wakefield Doctrine allows that, though we live our lives in one predominant worldview (the Outsider, the Predator, the Herd Members), we never lost the potential to experience the world as do ‘the other two). As a result, when we talk about self-improvement, we’re actually focusing our efforts on discovering qualities that we already possess, albeit as a potential. But the important thing about this approach is that we’re not trying to learn something totally new. We self-improve by discovering and accepting and practicing those traits and characteristics that we would be exhibiting (as our personality type) had we grown up in one of ‘the other two worldviews’.

Well, that’s all the time we have today. Be sure to follow along in Part 2 as we continue the exploration of ‘The Passion of Mindfulness’

Hey!  You want to do me a favor?  Go to ‘Almira’ and read the latest, Chapter 37 and click on the ‘vote’ at the bottom of the chapter. It will help me with my standings on the site. And as we all know, we never really left high school and so the appearance of popularity is pretty much all thats necessary to succeed.