Month: July 2017 | the Wakefield Doctrine

Wednexday -the Wakefield Doctrine- (‘…of old sayings and songs from the mid-seventies’)

July 19, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Funny, but I’ll still get to feeling like writing a post whenever a favorite song happens to coincide with my accomplishing something and, I’m relaxing with that odd, though undeniably right, feeling that I don’t have to run and/or hide. (see bottom of Post)

It’s been said that ‘Anyone who deliberately reads the Wakefield Doctrine blog more than three times, (or twice, provided the second time is by themselves) is a clark. Or they’re a roger or a scott with a significant secondary clarklike aspect’.

Why is that true? Because scotts and rogers as not in search of an alternative. There’s another old saying, ’round this Doctrine, goes, “If you have a large group of people in, like an auditorium or something, and need to identify the clarks real quick, just get on the intercom and say, “Anyone who would like to be someone else, please raise your hand.” Those readers who just smiled: clarks. Those readers who smile and wonder, ‘Why on earth does he think that?’ scotts and rogers.

The reason? clarks are those people who grew up (and developed social skills, coping mechanism and life strategies to contend with) (in) a world in which they are Outsiders. As a result, they are driven to learn what they think they missed growing up, all while trying to avoid being identified as Outsiders. Not an easy task. Like fricken prehistoric lemurs, we stay low, keep to the underbrush and avoid the T Rex and Sabre Tooth tigers, all while trying to survive on a diet deemed insufficient for the surrounding massively qualified-to-thrive population. We dash out to the watering holes when the predators are sleeping off a big kill and return to our hiding to dream about a day when we don’t have to look over our slightly rounded shoulders. And yet, despite being the totally least-qualified among the quick killer predators or the over-sized grazers of vegetation, we persist. At times it’s almost as if we believe we’re at least as qualified to live as our cold-blooded reptilian ‘friends’. And …and! we display a tenacity and persistence that has no correlates or supporting evidence whatsoever, at least to any casual observer. But we survive. By blending in…sorta.

The ‘sorta’ refers to the most jarring of contradictions that identifies clarks, best expressed in the saying, ‘clarks abhor being the center of attention, but will not tolerate being ignored’. (yeah, I know! what’s an Outsider to do?)

While clarks are driven to learn what everyone else, (in the surrounding world of ‘real’ people), apparently has known all along, we also have a deep abiding need to create. This, of course, is constantly negating our efforts to don protective coloration. Sure, we can be quiet and not talk a lot, but then we insist on dyeing something blue. We can find a spot in the crowd, (at work, at the PTA meeting or the classroom) that’s not in front, nor totally in back, only to be unable to resist the fun quip/aside or smart-ass observation which invariably causes heads to turn.

Time this morning is running out, here at Doctrine Central. Before I cue up the music, let me say this: when you’re out there today, in the world? Look around and try to see the clarks. Wait until you’re in the company of a number of people, otherwise they’re going to spot you looking and will be in the underbrush before you can say, “Hey wait! I won’t do anything mean, the Wakefield Doctrine said I had to find you and try to get you to not hide.” Won’t work, but you’ll stop and say, ‘holy smoke! they are there!’

One last old saying: ‘The Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them.” All of the effects and benefits, insights and self-improvements you experience from the use of the alternative perspective that this personality theory avails us of, is nothing that can change or alter or modify the other person. It will enhance your relationships, but it will not change anyone other than you.

music (warning! very hum-able song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWnBD6n9j74

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘of earth tones and primary colors’

July 15, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

‘The Stone and a Glass Bird’ A landscape view (wider than tall, 4 units wide by 3 units tall) out a window. The elements of this photo can be divided into two equal right triangles. From the lower left corner, to the upper right corner. The lower right triangle is indoors, the upper left, outdoors. Dominating the photo, (by size, bright colors and clearly a risky over-confidence in it’s attractiveness) is a cut-glass window ornament. The bird’s head is to the right, tail to the left. The head is blue glass with a round black eye and looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece. It’s lower body, from breast down under to tail is a somewhat predictable red (in the Age of Digital photography, everyone’s an art critic). The wings are folded, the tail extended and the figure hangs from a round shape in the middle of it’s back. The upper left right angle area is of the yard outside the window from which the stained glass bird appends. The foreground (including what can be seen around the bird) is grass-green lawn. The upper half of green is divided by brown earth, a single tree trunk and the Stone. The Stone shows as an oval but with a ridge, forming a slight flattening in the upper third, while it’s lower half is smooth, regular and dark grey that blends into the brown of the ground.

TToT Time today! Thanks, as always to Josie Two Shoes for the care and effort and very hard work that goes into getting this here bloghop here out on the airwaves each and every weekend. It’s not a simple or easy thing, I suspect, to organize and provide a welcoming environment to a very diverse group of writers, bloggers and readers, as she does starting on Friday and running right through the weekend (and out the other side.) Thanks J!

I often joke about how eclectic the TToT posts often are, what with the themes and the stream-of-conscious approach to something that should be as simple as 1,2,3. But, despite this, (learning to express my Ten Things in a simple and direct and yet engaging manner, in the style of Pat or J’s Journal or Jo or Mimi or Kristi) goal, I most often find myself following breadcrumbs, rabbits-with-pocket-watches and tiny, little cakes with lettering on their tops.

So, the question for today (Friday) which path to take.

1) Una: She has been exceptionally well-behaved in and around the garden. She found the soft dirt irresistible only once, and fortunately we were there to remind her that the garden was for less mobile lifeforms. She is allowed a short cut (photo below)

Una’s shortcut from the shed to the deck… between the corn and the tomatoes. In this landscape orientation photo, the plants of the Una garden are in the center. The letters that make it ‘the Una garden’ are not discernible. Except where Una is walking. She is walking towards the camera and is crossing the right-lower ‘leg’ of the letter ‘U’. This small section is brown as there is nothing growing where the ‘U’ turns upwards. Una is a shiny black shape and it is only in the variations in the black are we able to recognize her as a dog. Her face is mostly black, but we see it as a face because the bridge of her nose is shiny. It’s a small pointed oblong, like one of those ‘planchettes’ that teenagers scare themselves with, when playing with a Ouija board. It points towards Una’s eyes which are two, very small parallel light(er) spots. We’re helped in the identification by her ears. Two black triangles, her ears stand out against the shiny black of her body that follows the face. Where there are ears, theres almost always a face.

2) Phyllis

The end of last week’s work on the Bridge. Phyllis is sitting on one of the two beams that cross the stream. The beams are, of course, the underlying structure of the once and future bridge. The beams are light, almost white, boards beginning in the center foreground and extending up the center of the photo. Phyllis is sitting on the left beam with her legs in the space between the two. She is wearing a white tee-shirt that, perhaps in rebellion against the overwhelmingly green scenery, seems to have taken a bluish tint, the pale color of sadness that comes with the perception of the futility of standing out against the crowd. The two beams are supposed to be parallel. However, in the photo they can be seen almost touching where they end on the far shore. That was the reason for stopping for the day. The right hand beam is curving inwards towards the left hand beam. Loneliness? Fear of heights? A determination to get closer to a mate that the world has otherwise determined will always be unreachable? Hopefully it’s just that the boards that were joined to create the beams were a little off when the bolts were put in. Only time will tell.

3) Digital photography (phones and otherwise). Seriously, the ability to take a high-resolution photo anywhere, anytime is one of the true benefits of making it to the 21st Century.

4) Una’s Garden. It is coming along. The plants are starting to get all territorial and whatnot, it’s like the squash plants are totally indifferent to the corn! While not always sharing a letter (in the case of the squash, that’d be the letter ‘n’)

A Landscape of Green and Glass. Had Escher spent more time outdoors as a child, as his mother urged, he might have painted this, rather than the self-portrait of ‘An-artist-trying-to-look-crazy (-and-succeeding)’ that you see in the thumbnail (if you go back out to the homepage). Famous drawing/painting/whatever. A source of inspiration for a generation of college-aged clarks who looked upon his wonderfully skewed, contradictory and otherwise warped vision of the world of the Outsider and felt a little less alone.

5) The Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) While all bloghops have rules to give shape and consistency to the posts, written words and lists that are solicited, only the TToT has the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules). That is one of the totally fun and liberating things about this here bloghop here. While there are a few basic suggestions: a list of Ten Things, (more or less), about Gratitude (how you might perceive or experience it), everything else is kinda open ended. And that’s were the BoSR/SBoR comes in real handy, like. Lets say you have photos but are really tired. N.P! SR 9.328 (for example and for illustration purposes) says [in part] “It having been widely established and generally accepted that the rhetorical value of a photograph (or photographs) is put at 10,000 words, the implied equivalency extends to (the) application of a [p]hotos to any and all lists; In tempore illo (“have at it”)”

6) Simple, declarative Grat Item: I am off to work (as soon as I complete this Item). I am grateful for an occupation that allows me to have varied hours. Even at the cost of most of them occurring during the weekend. Control of time (and place (and circumstance (and, apparently, pretty much everything))) is big with clarks. Even when the control is mostly an illusion. (As long as we don’t tell ourselves.) Lets make that insight a tie in to Item 7

7) The Wakefield Doctrine. Among other things it’s good for, the Wakefield Doctrine is a tool that allows me to better understand myself and my current place in the world around me. (Serious students of the Doctrine are smiling and thinking, “yeah, that understanding jones that you people have, never ends does it? At least as a people, clarks rarely are bored. Unless forced into a place or activity or role that has less than the illusion of self-determination. Then it’s awful.) And the Doctrine, by reminding me of this aspect of how I relate myself to the world around me, makes things a little better.

8) A Bridge too Far Before and After today’s construction session:

9) A Yellow thing from the Una garden:

10) SR 1.3 Click on the icon and join us! (Tell ’em the Doctrine sent ya) (or not, you might want to walk around to the main entrance, nice people there….normal people. Quite friendly.)

Hey! Click here!

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

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘the Mystery of the Missing Starr’ (cont’d)

July 13, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Wednesday Warm-up, Stretch and Blank White Page Exercise.

I do this most every Wednesday, if for no other reason than it’s nice not to have to face that the horror of ‘the blank page’, (‘Apocalypse Now’ horror as opposed to ‘The Hindenburg’ horror). lol

Each and every week our host, zoe, says to us, “Excuse me? If you have a story that a) is of exactly six sentences in length and 2) involves and/or is related to the word ‘SCORE’, why don’cha link up this Thursday and we’ll have some fun with words and such.” And that’s the score with this Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Score

After two minutes of staring at the elegantly over-dressed woman trying to hide behind her self-assured beauty, I got up and watched her reflection in the rain-warped glass of the window as she shrugged off her coat and looked around my office like a person watching a documentary about life in an isolated culture that had one word for outsider and twenty-eight for spouse.

I decided I needed the money more than I needed to go home and, gauging how she sat in front of my desk with one leg crossed, like a railroad crossing barrier, halfway between ‘All Clear’ and ‘Stop! Danger’, I knew I better get her name written down on something before I forgot why I was in my office at 1:43 in the morning.

“Alright,” I walked around the front of my desk and sat on the edge, pushing her crossed legs to the side with my knee, “Five hundred a day, five days in advance and…”; she leaned forward without moving and un-crossed her legs.

“The money’s not an issue, my ex-husband believed that the lack of money was the root of all suffering, he was a very happy old man,” she said as she took an alligator leather checkbook holder from her bag, put it lengthwise on my right knee and, leaning her right elbow on my left thigh to steady her hand, wrote a check for twenty-five hundred dollars.

Slightly raised eyebrows put her smile in quotation marks as she tore the check free, slowly enough that the parting of each perforation could be heard. It sounded like a paper zipper; I was fairly certain she did it on purpose, score one for her.

Previous installments in ‘The Mystery of the Missing Starr’ is here and then here (the second ‘here’ brings you back to here).

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 11, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

The choice* I was confronting this morning was: a) work on ‘Home and Heart’ 2) write a ‘Doctrine post’ or c) play solitaire**

The choice was difficult. I apparently did make a choice or you are a figment of my imagination, reading a post that exists (however briefly) only in my mind. Lets assume this makes it out to the internet.

The topic of this Tuesday post? The Wakefield Doctrine, what it is and how to discover your predominant worldview.

The Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) is a perspective on personality, people, the world and life. Not necessarily in that order. The Wakefield Doctrine (‘the Doctrine’) proposes that all of us are born with a potential to experience life in one of three characteristically-distinct realities. The Doctrine maintains that reality is, to a certain extent, personal. Nothing weird or outlandish, like flying or walking through walls or enjoying ‘reality shows’ on TV, simply that the world within a zone that extends from inside our dreams to just before a stranger might notice, is of our own devise. Thats all. (Hold that thought, it will be important to the rest of this). At a very early age and for reasons not yet understood, we settle into one (and only one) of these three worldviews (‘personal realities’). We grow up and develop (physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually) in the context of:

the world of the Outsider (clarks)
the world of the Predator (scotts)
the world of the Herd Member (rogers)

The Doctrine defines personality types as: the best we can do, given the world we find ourselves in. Where most other personality type theories talk about inclination, likes, dislikes, favorite colors, aptitude for, types and axises, the Doctrine says, your ‘personality’ is (your own) best effort to develop strategies and ways of coping with life in the reality of the Outsider, the life of the Predator or the world of the Herd Member. I’m a clark (my predominant worldview, the personal reality that I grew up in was that of Outsider) and so I am inclined to mumble and avoid eye contact, I enjoy a wildly active subjective life, am creative and self-destructively shy. If you are a scott then, provided you’ve managed to stay in front of these words this long, recognize yourself as aggressively confident, mercurial in temperament, impulsive to a fault and a natural leader. The rogers out there, sensing a connection to be made between themselves and the world around them, either already know most of this (without the labels) or have left the room.

We grow up and learn to interact with the world (and the people) who surround us.

That is the second key aspect of the Wakefield Doctrine. The Doctrine does not spend time with surveys and lists, tests and assessments as a way to help others identify their ‘personality type’. We put it all in one statement/question: ‘How do you relate yourself to the world around you? As (would) an Outsider, a Predator or a Herd Member?’ All ya gots to do is learn the characteristics of these three worldviews, which is totally fun. Look at your world through the perspective of each and the one that is ‘clearest’ is your predominant worldview.

Note: the wording here is critical. I did not say, ‘How do you relate to the world around you?’ I said, “How do your relate yourself to the world around you?’ That one word makes a world of difference.

Note: You know how I said, “…are born with a potential to experience life in one of three characteristically-distinct realities“? Yeah, well while we all settle on, (and learn to deal with), one (and only one of these three), we never lose the capacity to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. This accounts for the fact that there are times when we would appear to be one of the other personality types. We express these (secondary and tertiary aspects) from time to time, usually at times of duress. Not to worry. Perfectly normal. Beyond the scope of this Post. If you really need to know, ask in a comment.

For now, learn the characteristics of the three. Look at yourself, (and your life), then throw out the one that’s just plain ‘no way’. That leaves you with two worldviews (most likely scott/roger or clark/scott). Hold the perspective, i.e. look at the world through one and then the other. Clear? Clearer? Clearest? That’s your predominant worldview.

Gotta run. Ask questions.

*Students of the Doctrine smile at this word. It is a smile of sad disdain because we recognize that the illusion of choice is manufactured according to the standards of reality consistent with our predominant worldview. I will leave the implications of the use of the word ‘manufactured’ to another post or as starter fluid to anyone’s desire to write a comment.

** Don’t laugh! Solitaire is one of the greatest under-appreciated insights into the variability of personal reality. Serially! Just ask

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 8, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Item 8. Phyllis and Una sittin in a tree(house). This photo is taller than wide. The left half is clearly in the foreground and it is half of a bird house made in the shape of a man with a large nose. (Think: Grumpy of Seven Dwarves of Snow White fame) The bird house is stuck to the tree that rises above (and behind) the two downward angles of the roof of the bird house). The bark of the tree is very visible. Like peanut brittle or trying to smooth out corduroy pants that you found at the bottom of a suitcase that didn’t get un-packed. The texture of the trunk is primarily vertical ridges and un-even valleys. The right half of this (taller than wide) photo is of the door to Phyllis’s treehouse. The opening that shows has a dog at the edge of the door and Phyllis in the background sitting in a beach chair. (You know it’s a beach chair because: it’s low to the floor, the legs are thin and chrome-shiny and the back of the chair shows has horizontal stripes of greens-trying-to-escape-into being blue. There is pea-soup green, aqua-marine-ish blue and real blue. You know they’re strips ’cause there are white dividers between them. Sort of a prism of light from the Planet Beach.) Una appears to be glancing around the left edge of the doorway at the bird house. Half her face and most of her tongue shows. Tongue is pink with its central groove (just like humans) lined with a row of white teeth (like some humans). Her right eye shows enough to be able to see the small beige marking in her otherwise black fur. Think: apostrophe mark at the start of her eyebrow.

Lots to cover, it having been a fairly busy week. As I was mentioning to Kerry (in a reply to her comment) this week: The Rock, The Bridge, The Garden and Visitors from another dimension (it’s virtual but only sometimes scary).

First things first. This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. (New Readers: a bloghop is a type of blog that is centered on interaction among the participants. Now, that last part is not as awkwardly-half-redundant as it might read. What our Host, Josie Two Shoes, does is host (ok, that might be a touch redundant), an exchange of things that we (collectively) have experienced (individually) during that past week (month/year/lifetime) that inspires us to say, “I’m grateful that happened’, or ‘They add a certain thing to life that I would be loath to be without’. The exchange part is where Josie provides an invaluable service. Go to her site, (through the link in the icon at the bottom of this post or HERE), and you will be able to read any number of reflections/recounting of/ recollection/remembering of things that made the writer include them on their list, and, ...and! you get to link your own post and be included in the ‘hop, which makes for easy commentationing and such. So come on down. If you’re concerned with following a format that a part of your mind might be whispering to you, at this very moment, ‘Yeah, sounds like fun but suppose you don’t have enough things to list or, worse, suppose you don’t follow some protocol and they laugh. Although, this Doctrine guy seems to be pretty comfortable writing what charitably can be called stream-of-caffiene-metaphysics in his post.’ That’s the spirit! This week only, the Wakefield Doctrine is offering a newcomer special offer! ‘Write 8 (or less) Items and Get One Free! Just let us know that you might be coming up short and we’ll dig through our archives and send you a Grat Item!’ (Offer subject to restrictions and limited to one or three or whatever per participants. Participant accepts full responsibility for dealing with the “what the heck?!!” comments that a ‘Wakefield Doctrine Write 8 (or less) Items and Get One Free!’ Grat Item might generate or instigate.)

1) A Bridge Too Far

The Bridge Before. Photo is taller than wide. The surrounding woods are shades of green ranging from pale to dark, with tree trunks showing as black. The water that divides the scene’s top of green and bottom of browns and pale (and which is is the raison d’être for the bridge) is reflective black. You know it’s water because all you see are the trees reflected. Although, ironically, the only blue is the sky reflected in the black-appearing water. The color of the bridge is browns into nearly white beige. There are two parallel wood beams running from the immediate foreground up the middle of the scene to a patch of light brown (where the vegetation has been cleared on the far shore) for the other end of the bridge to rest. There are rectangular planks that are attached across the two beams. Originally there was a complete walkway of these planks. The majority have been removed. Now its two adjacent planks-space-then two planks, then space. Like a film strip. This bridge, including the two carrying beams, will be taken apart and removed as the new beams (and eventually, planks for the walkway are built in it’s place)

Construction of the new bridge. Regular landscape orientation photo. Top half is of the deck off the back of our house where Phyllis and Denise assemble the beams. The lower half is Una keeping watch over their work. The beam is quite long, twenty-eight feet to be precise. It is made up of two fourteen foot lengths end-to-end. They are (both) secured to a second fourteen foot board which is runs seven feet along both of them. Sistering, I believe is the carpentatory term for joining boards, side-by-each (which, I believe, is a local Franco-Canadian expression). Denise is standing at the left end of the beam, which is long enough to overhang the deck to both sides. Phyllis is to the right at the far end. Denise is drilling holes for the bolts that attach the boards together. Phyllis is hammering the bolts in and securing them with nuts which must be quite tight. Una is keeping an eye out for job site safety. I’m taking the photo…. lol (I know, work, work, work)

Phase One Complete! The scene (another photo, taller than wide, due to the subject matter) from the opposite shore shows two parallel beams resting on top of the old bridge, spanning the stream. The new beams are a very light brown almost cream-colored. Being spruce, the dark brown, circular knots show at seemingly random points along the length of the beams. The beams are closer together, starting in the lower foreground (where you can see the square cement pad that supports the beams), over to the other side. Phyllis and Denise stand at the far end of the bridge, on the opposite shore, justifiably proud of our accomplishment. (The house and deck where we assembled the beams are about five hundred feet away. The beams had to be carried, one at a time, out of the backyard, past the Rock-at-the-Edge-of-the-Forest, down a hill through pines and ferns and thorns (oh my) to the site.) This photo would not have existed had they not been there.

2) A Rock at the Edge of the Forest

The Rock at the edge of the woods. Tough to make out much about the rock in this photo, due to the lighting. It is generally ovoid in shape, rough-smooth granite of a size that if you interlaced your fingers and held the rock it would touch the insides of your arm at least to the elbows. (It would then touch your toes, ’cause its got to weigh 150 pounds) The rock sits on a low tree stump that is not visible due to the shadow cast by the rock, towards the camera. The ground around the rock is low green growth, mostly vines and low bushes. In the foreground left there is a good-sized tree trunk (branches too high to see). The trunk is sorts smooth, being a white pine. There are small, vertical streaks of very light green which is moss. Oh, yeah, that structure in the background, above to the left of the rock, is the remains of a wood swing. Two triangles joined at the top by a single pole. There used to be a swing suspended from the horizontal piece. Now there are bird feeders that Phyllis adds food to. (lol… I included that last to remind myself to write about what is in the photo for real, as opposed to… never mind)

3) A Dog at a Window (to follow on Sunday be sure to stop back!)

4) Friends from the Virtual World, in Three D! (accompanied by canine companion)

Visitors! (Landscape orientation photo) Cynthia and John and Vinny say goodbye to Denise as they continue on their Summer Journey. (I just laughed because I saw something in the photo that I hadn’t seen before, and even then I would only see it, remembering that it was raining at the moment.) Anyway Cynthia and John are standing and looking down at their Labrador (with a white chest) and Vinny is looking back at them, his tail caught in mid-wag. Denise is bent at the waist over Vinny patting him. She is holding an umbrella. This is where I just lol’ed. The only umbrella is over Vinny who is the center of attention of the three humans. I personally agree with those priorities.

5) The Wakefield Doctrine simply one of the coolest, most entertaining and useful perspectives on the world and reality and such.

6) Una’s Garden

7) Home and Heart ( ‘a Sister Margaret Ryan novel’)

8) Phyllis and Una (here in Number 8 but photo at the top of Post)

9) Sunday feature

10) SR 1.3 (Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules) First discovered Rule which states, in part, “…approaching completion of a List of Ten Things, is, of and unto itself, something to be grateful for; [therefore] as an Item (precedentus repeatus pro quo: try to make this discovery at or near Item 9 or so) therefore may serve as the 10th and/or concluding Item in said List…. er, factorum yo.”