Psychology | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 91 Psychology | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 91

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

August 11, 2023 By

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, it is governed by one and only one Rule, (the ‘hop, not the host): make that story exactly six sentences in length.

Full Disclosure: this is a ‘true Six’. At the start of writing yesterday’s Six, (having Lou as a character in it, what can we say, ‘easy-peasy’ am I right?). Trouble was, I got the beginning of a song in my head that insisted it should be included. Only the first ten notes. Turns out I guessed the group who did the song correctly, but the song itself, incorrectly. Today we have the correct song (by Cream).

… and a thoroughly weird-assed Six Sentence Story.

This week’s prompt word:

SEAL

“”Thank god, I know the name of the song!!”

The other Proprietors, (not counting jenne or Ford or Chris, who were on sabbatical, furlough and sick leave, respectively), were standing in a semi-circle at the edge of the small stage nearest to the bar; they were facing an object emitting a multi-colored light that: imparted a carnelian hue to the Gatekeeper‘s face, like a sunrise in the Carpathian mountains; sent a pale cast of celadon to the Barkeeper, making one think of nested porcelain dolls; Mimi, who stood between the bar and the small group, owing to her leaving her Off-White sneakers (with the lifts) at her stool, had to accept a pale blue halo; Tom just stepping out of the kitchen was hypnotized by a spare ray of gold, rendering him speechless, but he still managed to turn to shield his guest, Nancy, who, having been shanghaied by the short-order-chef of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro, had the protection of her white garb to reflect all spectra, save a spare rose beam.

The tall, thin man moved with surprising urgency from the entrance of the hallway that lead to the Managers office even as Hunga tilted his head in that uniquely-canine, non-verbal interrogative, which caused the Manger to cease his frantic progress to the empty-except-for-the-necessary-to-get-away-with-the-narrative, people, crouch to offer a Mini Milk Bone© to him; the dog accepted the gift but raised his ears at the repeating ten notes the well-dressed man was humming.

“Wait! I get the next choice of song… No, you had the turn before last… Yeah, but I have a cigar…. sure, but have you noticed I’m holding one of those little, curved knifes that heaven-only-knows is the preferred utencil for slicing lemons… well, (from back at the bar), I’ll see your lemon knife and raise you a…..a. colandar!!! (err,  I’m new here, but does that make any sense?)… Please, everyone will get a chance to pick a song from the new jukebox (the letters scrolled in an obviously-strained, yet ultimately patient manner across the computer display set on the small stage... I believe the man who established this patently-contrived, if-not-undeniably-good-natured-premise should have first pick...”

…the small crowd of virtual people became silent in their assent to the wisdom.

....but then, I’m next and I’m going with S7 Seal’s Kiss from a Rose!

The tall, thin manager stepped up to the glass of the jukebox, his reflection in the glass front a portrait of inexplicable relief and the hint of a smile that lingered like a memory fragment of a time too long ago.

*

*

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [an Ian Devereaux Six]

August 10, 2023 By

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

This is our contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, guided by the simplest of rules: use the prompt word and tell a story in exactly six sentenceseses.

[N.B. I’d almost forgotten the story thread involving Ian Devereaux being ‘requested’ by Lou to do some background research on Cyrus St. Loreto. This was at the outset of the merger proposal from the Bernebau Company to the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge. I’ll try to find the link back. First, I got, like, eighteen sentences to pare down. In my defense, our Mr. Ceasare simply writes himself and anyone else he cares to interact with, once he takes the floor.]

Prompt word:

SEAL

“Yeah, the deal is off,”  being a Friday, Lou was dressed in business casual, which in the world of crime, restaurants and other non-FTC regulated financial institutions, meant a white shirt half-buttoned like a badly stitched wound, two Cross pens keeping a cigarillo prisoner in the breast pocket, a pair of drugstore reading glasses hanging from a lanyard of pray-worn rosary beads; his face betrayed nothing that did not reinforce whatever message he was interested in conveying; he simply looked at me, the way a hawk on the top limb of a tree is just looking at the grassy meadow below.

Before I could respond, Diane Tierney walked up and spoke into Lou’s ear, the brown waves of her hair tugged by gravity into a profane sacramental seal as effective as any confessional’s latticed-wood screen; I knew better than to interrupt, fidget or do anything that made my presence in the other half of the booth more obvious than it was, not that it would matter; Lou ended whatever discussion he was having with a sotto voce PowerPoint consisting of a series of ‘fuck that’ bullet points.

I looked up as Diane turned to walk back to her office, aka the hostess station at the front entrance, and was rewarded with a half-smile swinging from a raised eyebrow and the brush-bump of her left hip; my day’s ledger left the negative column and soared, discretely of course, into the positive.

I turned my attention back to Lou, as voluntary an action as a dinghy tethered to an oil tanker, in time to see him begin to address me, “Just outa curiosity, mind you, what didja learn about my guy down in Miami?”

Despite the name Emile Zola trying to crash the party, I leaned over the table as far as the force of Lou’s personality permitted, “If the key metric on this guy was deferential respect from his peer group and the desire to do business with him, Mr. St. Loreto makes Keyser Söze look like John Mayer; in one word: Be Careful.”

Lou’s outburst of laughter was as commanding as it was loud, like a pack of starving timber wolves avalanching into a pre-school playground, everything in the place stopped: Sal Divine ceased her slide down the brass pole, the table of college boys froze into sexual mimes and at least one of the power drinkers at the bar had what was clearly a Moment of Clarity; finally Lou stopped laughing, “I like you Devereaux, I know I shouldn’t, but what the hell.”

 

 

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Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “…Better Wait than Never (a) Back-to-School 1968-style”

August 9, 2023 By

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

As promised.

Damn!

First, a shout-out to Mimi* for reminding us of our promise to free-hand a post on the nature of this time of year.

The Wakefield Doctrine is gender, culture and age neutral. It doesn’t matter if’n you’re a seventy-one-year-old high school Freshman, a nineteen-year-old dropout starting her first day at the local supermarket bringing grocery orders out to the cars of people indulging their crowdaphobic tendencies or a recent immigrant from a country that does not appreciate them.

(What’s that? Yeah, the Doctrine maintains a standard that evolves and includes developments such as non-binary identity and the like. We have a work-friend, a scottian female, who was the first person we introduced to the Doctrine (in the workplace). Consistent with being a scott (with a strong secondary clarklike aspect) she got it immediately. And insisted we should change our nomenclature to distinguish between male and female clarks, scotts and rogers. Naturally, we listened to their impassioned thesis, nodding encouragement, our face that of a five-year-old watching a professional shoe salesperson tie the laces of their new footwear. And, after the presentation we smiled and said, ‘No.’

lol. Seriously, we did all of the above. But being a friend, we awaited the final quod erat demonstrandum. She was, (and remains), a friend. In any event, we explained that the Wakefield Doctrine, being grounded on the notion that it is the character of the person’s relationship to the world around them and the people who make it us that determines personality (type). That gender is, for our purposes, a manifestation of the being, not a distinction between types of beings. Society and cultures and even physiology all have an effect on the being, allowing for/encouraging to/preventing from all sorts or expressions, demonstrations and manner of interacting with the world. In fact, in the early days of this blog, we looked to the scottian man and woman as illustration of how these influences inform behavior and style of interpersonal relationships.

But that’s for another post.

This is supposed to be a ‘freehand written’ back-to-school post.

The First Day of School:

  • clarks (Outsider) everything bad and wonderful about the world combined with a hyper-awareness of the fact of not-being-a-part-of. Of course, clarks get through the first day of school, (which, as you’re thinking, applies to: all grade levels/ college (if so inclined)/employment/ professions/marriage and life-altering physical developments, somehow, for the most part, ok. Like Dante on Maundy Thursday thinking, ‘How hard can this be?”
  • scotts (Predator) you know how, you’ve not had a chance to eat in the course of a workday, nothing bad, in fact, you’ve been ‘too busy to eat’ and then, against all reason, you stop at the supermarket to get something for dinner? a scott stepping, (ok, bounding), up the steps into the school bus, a sense of excitement tempered only by the caution to not ‘tear off more than they can chew’
  • rogers (Herd Members) a cautious sense of satisfaction that the world beyond the family is what they thought it would be; sure larger and fuller of variables and unknowns, but even as they walk down the aisle of the bus they sense there is order, kids are sitting according to a Rule; the roger‘s that first schoolbus trip is everything the the bride and groom feel as their limo pulls away from their wedding church.

 

* the hardest working woman in the blogosphere**

** we’re sure James wouldn’t mind, us borrowing/adapting his moniker and such for Friend of the Doctrine, Mimi***

*** hey the caesium fountain atomic clock ain’t got nothin on her, you could start a Rush song to the downbeat of her content being posted

 

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2sDhae -the Wakefield Doctrine-

August 8, 2023 By

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

As promised, a RePrint post on the topic of ‘Back-to-School’

(Quick reminder for New Readers: the Wakefield Doctrine proposes three different ways of relating oneself to the world around them and the people who make it up, i.e. three ‘personality types’; referred to as one’s predominant worldview. We grow and mature and develop in personal realities characterized by these relationships. In doing so, our social strategies, negotiating styles and ways to ‘go along to get along’ are geared to our respective worlds. (That of): the Outsider (clarks) living in the shadows, searching for answers in the form of information, the Predator (scott) ranging over the (social) savannah, chasing and being chased and the Herd Members (rogers) identifying as one, striving for the center of the Herd and the power of the Right Way of life. No one predominant worldview is superior, (or, for that matter, inferior), to the other. An argument can be made that the three together, in dynamic balance, might approach the ideal personality. Physiology not withstanding, that as exhibited by our canine friends. There is nothing of one type that is exclusive to one and not the other. This is the basis of ‘the Everything Rule’, which states, economically and elegantly: ‘Everyone does everything at one time or another.’ As is the case of today’s topic. A clark and a scott and a roger will experience ‘school starting again’* The actual experience will be different for each. It will manifest in accordance with the relationship of one or the other (or the other).)

Let us read

scotts move around, rogers form the center and clarks look on… the Wakefield Doctrine

September 18, 2011

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

I went to the Crossroads but I did not ‘claim it’. We all know that the Rite of Hat, (with it’s documented record of the power established with the Treaty of Tordesillas), empowered me to claim the Crossroads of Rosedale,  Mississippi as my personal property.  I was there, I have a video record to prove it, (it can be viewed on the last Video Friday Post). I also have still photos and maps and notes and (I may not have thrown aways the bottle of water that I bought at the Double Quik Lunch right there on Mississippi Rt 1 less than 100 yards from the intersection of Rt 8 and Rt 1). …and, and I had the hat on my damn head and my video camera in my hand and

…I could not do it.
I could not claim the Crossroads as my own.

Don’t get me wrong, it was not that I looked around and saw the people standing on the corner  or (that) I could see the movement of a teacher at the blackboard in the little elementary school on the north side of the intersection or (on the south side of Rt 8) the supermarket where shoppers were busy buying groceries and such…it is not because I was given a look of disapproval of anyone of these people,  but I could not say the words: “I claim this Crossroads, by Rite of Hat for my own…so get your damn things and move it on out“!

Interesting.   I was not afraid to claim it, I was not embarrassed to claim it, I was not too busy to claim it, I did not feel pity for the (former) owners of the place, I did not think that someone would disapprove of my actions, I was not in fear for my life, on the run from the law, or even going to see my baby… I simply had a feeling of respect for that place.

Interesting.  And what does the Doctrine tell us about the significance of a reaction like this?

  • clarks think  …therefore  it was not an emotional attachment to the place affecting my decision
  • rogers feel  …but it was not a roger who travelled to this area, dressed in a business suit with a Wakefield Doctrine hat on …so it cannot be a weakness of character
  • scotts act …but there was plenty of activity and people were moving about in plain view and there was no instinct driving me to give chase, so it could not be that I viewed the people there as prey

So what the hell?

We all know that clarks are the outsider(s). Justified from your point of view or not, that is the basic worldview of a clark.
We are and everything else, the world and peoples and places are all  ‘out there’. Even when a clark knows better, realizes that everyone else has the same fears and dreams,insecurities and confidence we cannot escape the feeling that we are different.  Not (even) necessarily different/deficient or different/more than or different/you-will-disapprove…just different.  Just as a scott knows without thinking about it, that the world is a hostile place and that only by staying on the alert can they survive and (as) the rogers feel the certainty that the herd is proof of a world where the rules are there to be understood and shared and maintained and preserved, clarks know they are different.

So maybe it was this, this sense of seeing Rosedale without pre-conception, as an un-abashed outsider, maybe that is what kept me from claiming the place.

Damn.  Is this a Doctrine or what?

Hey, great Saturday Night Drive last night. Nearly full house  as we had DS#1 and Ms AKH(in the dashboard) and DownSpring glenn (aka Lunchbox Lennie) riding shotgun. Even better,  we were joined by Molly!  Located in one of the big, regular-shaped States that use longitude and latitude for house numbers, Molly is providing us with a perspective on the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers , in addition her feedback on  the writing of this blog,  will surely result in an acceleration of the growth of the Wakefield Doctrine. So don’t get left behind, call or write us here at this here blog here and tell us which of three (nearly) identical Wakefield Doctrine hats (for your damn head) we should be sending y’all. Don’t delay, supplies are limited.

 

* ok. Not quite as much the ‘Back to school RePrint post’ as we’d hoped. In the world of the Wakefield Doctrine that means I’ll just have to write one. Let’s save it for tomorrow, shall we? Serially. As a sign of our sincerity, we will start a draft post with the subtitle: Better Wait than Never Back-to-School 1968**

** or something***

*** ok, ok! that exactly…. sheesh

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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… of tissue paper and hidden pins.”

August 7, 2023 By

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

‘Regular’ Readers will be rolling the subtitle to today’s post around in their (metaphorical) mouths by now. Some will concentrate on any random word that appears, others will, remembering an admonition* from the earl(iest) of days here at the blog, simply wait. Knowing, as do we all, the Answer is never simple, (but) always accessible.

Speaking of Answers. That’s easy. It’s not the answer that provides the benefit, it’s accepting the question.

ok, ok, will stop with the opaque “oooh! I divine the the secret of the universe’. (Clearly there are some times we appreciate the mechanism of the ‘RePrint’ post more than others. After all, there is only so much to say about the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine. Of course, about the relationship between us and the world around us and the people who make it up. That’s the near infinite part.

Ya know?

So, let’s stay with the method and print an old Doctrine post.

As to the (near) infinite supply of blogpost topics, themes and inspiration? Consider:

  • There will be a clark in your day ahead. You will see them best by not looking (or throwing something weird into the room first, the clark will respond with… enthusiasm).
  • witnessing a scott (in any multi-person social context) is like being with friends, watching an old TV series, (one of your total favorites), and realizing you had, somehow, not yet seen the episode. Don’t shout, “I’ve never seen this one, but you should…” (As a matter of fact, remain quiet. No sudden moves.) There will be interaction between the scott and… well, whoever she/he decides. Enjoy the show. Save the critique/appreciation until you’re alone.
  • bumping into a roger. sure, kinda hard not to, the Herd Member comprising easily 66% of the population. Like that movie ‘A Quiet Place’. Stay calm to the point of serene, don’t contribute to the conversation … blend into the Herd. You can remark later. When you’re safe from scrutiny

Well, that was pretty interesting. (Remind us tomorrow to reprint a …err RePrint. lol)

The thing about relationships being endless? In number, not (necessarily) tenure. The Wakefield Doctrine describes three relationships with the surrounding world to which we, as humans, are heir to from the day we are born.

  1. clarks (the Outsider) real simple: It’s not merely that we don’t seem to belong here, it’s that we seem to be missing a key bit of understanding. Whether that understanding is (of) ourselfs or the people around us is not important. What is important is our belief that we must learn the reason before we are discovered (by nearly everyone else). The hope lies in the ‘nearly’ of the preceding sentence. There are other Outsiders. We can learn from their mistakes. We can benefit from their successes when we share with them. (At least to the edge of their comfort zone.)
  2. scotts (the Predator) the coffee of the human experience. lol. No, not merely the caffeine, the coffee. They aren’t overcoming a weakness, roger. The Tasmanian devil (of Warner Brothers cartoon fame) is not seeking to demonstrate his/her view of the world. They simply exist in the here-and-now, knowing that there is only one real place, one genuine time. Now.
  3. rogers (the Herd Member) there is, for this predominant worldview a Right Way to live/act/respond. Nothing more is needed. And, oddly, (for rogers being the essence of society/culture), they will seize the intended meaning of the David Oglivy quote at the beginning of this post. Well, to be absolutely accurate, the quote is down below, the reference is above. Details are important. (To paraphrase: The Details will set you free.)

enough.

time to get out there and see what the day holds.

The Wakefield Doctrine.

 

 

*there are no stupid questions, just your questions. That ‘joke’ (bon mot when we’re feeling clever**) is borrowed, or maybe better to say ‘inspired’ by a famous adman in the 1950s, David Ogilvy who said, “The customer is not a moron, she’s your wife.”

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