Psychology | the Wakefield Doctrine

RePrint Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- Summer School begins

July 3, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

treehouse construction

Summer School?!!

Wait just a darn minute.

You can’t do that!!

(Fortunately for us, the closest we’ve come to experiencing the dreaded summer school (this was the ’60s remember. there wasn’t the slightest sense of, “I can take courses and be ready, if not ahead of my classmates, never too soon to start applying to college!’ This was: no school for two-and-a-half months! Bring it on.)

so, being a responsible adult, we’ll just have to search the archives for ‘Summer School’. (Yes? Mimi? What are you doing sitting in the back row? No, there won’t be a book report due next September).

Monday the Wakefield Doctrine ‘the tool for self-improving oneself, nothing more and nothing less’

January 13, 2014

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

“As an unmuddied lake…. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer.”

For those of us fortunate enough to have a weekend, by which I mean, one or two days of self-scheduling, it is now time to re-set. (As recently stated), the workweek days are different. They pretty much belong to another. Another, less light-hearted way to express that is, a large majority of us are owned by something other than ourselves for the period of our lives designated: Monday through Friday. In most cases it is servitude by choice and there is a benefit to be enjoyed. So, as we begin our Monday, lets just remember:

clarks: relax, all that you feel improved for you in the previous two days is not negated, does not go away and you are still the person that you saw (and, between you and me, actually thought you might not mind being) doing things Friday night through Sunday night, though you may feel the outsiderness come over you as you put on the protective coloration, the better to deal with bosses, superiors, unfriendly teachers, difficult administrators, unruly pre-schoolers and clients who don’t seem to appreciate how much a well-liked and respected person you seem to recall being for parts of the last 2.5 days

scotts: focus, it is not about how much you can do, it is not about proving that you are able to get along with your co-workers, the librarian who sent you a friendly reminder for the DVDs that you borrowed, the teachers who don’t seem to get that you are not always causing trouble, the manager who seems to think that all you want to do is screw around even though he does not have a quota or a peer review in the next 2 weeks

rogers: get over yourselves, sure… you love getting back to work and you know that even though there are people who screw up, seemingly on purpose, they do not need you to tell them how much they could improve, or how great your weekend was, or how if they were to try a little harder they might get asked out more, or how their children really need a little extra attention

The Wakefield Doctrine is a tool. It is, in fact, simply a perspective on behavior and the people in our our lives. It does not say what to do (for a better life). It does not say what to think. It does not even tell you how to make the other person: stop picking on you, leave you alone, be more reasonable, appreciate all you do for the family, understand that you really are trying, get it into their heads that you’re not interested in them that way, shut the fuck up, learn from their mistakes, stop self-sabotaging themselves, keep their holier-than-thou opinions to themselves. It does none of these things.

The Wakefield Doctrine is a way to understand the behavior of the people in our lives. It helps us to see the world as the other person is experiencing it. It allows us to infer how the people in our lives are relating themselves to the world around them. (By doing so), it allows us to know more about them than they know about themselves. And it, the Doctrine, not the people, allows us to change our behavior in ways that will enhance and improve our lives.

come on! just because all the dinosaur-rock stations play it every year at this time, does not make it bad!

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

One-K Friday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 3, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Serious about improving my chops in the world of stories and imagination and, did we say ‘a Story involving a prompt word that is Two Hundred and Fifty words (or less) in length?’ (But then again, had I been realistic about my math ability, I might’ve saved a half of semester in college.)

Wellll… in that case, we best stop in at jenne and ceayr’s weakly ‘hop, the Unicorn Challenge.

“It’s nearly midnight, Seth.”

The woman stood in the gazebo and looked down from the small, memorial park above on the village circle. Despite growing up in the peculiarly tribal culture found on islands, when the choice was presented to her as an adult to spend the War Years there with her children, she did not hesitate.

Walking down the path, the woman chose an arc that would be the shortest relative to the boy on his circular journey. The boy’s course was marked by the near-actinic glare of his cellphone light as he followed the outer arc of the sidewalk; past shops and stores, crossing the alleys and lanes that divided the circular town.

The boy, in the way as familiar as her hand, began to speak without the slightest preamble, “This GPT-4 app, if allowed access to sufficient similar material will create a virtual extension of any story.”

The boy began walking again, following the light of his video app. In his left hand, the handle of a vintage Radio Flyer, in the wagon a very old dog.

“Seth, the vet said Nema was healthy but old. Nothing can be done.”

The boy resumed his counter-clockwise journey, “But thats what the app is for! If I could let it see everything Nema has seen, then, even if only virtual…?”

The mother nodded, fell into step with the boy and the dog as they sought to gather the past to create a future.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, personality types, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 1, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop

To be more precise, this is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop

Being a bloghop, this current edition of this weekly ‘hop, puts us about halfway through the annual cycle.

(Pro-Tip: If I were a counting-Narrator, I’d be smilin’ all, “Damn. This intro’s like four Grats already. How hard can this be?”)

(Hey, Readers! Do a hypo-youthful blogger a solid? Somewheres in the list below is an item (suitably expressed in the lingua gratiarum of a weekly grat exercise) will be a description of a scene: ‘A young man, a slightly older girl and a dog walk down to the merry-go-round in their seaside community around midnight and…’ anything about these three you might want to say? I would be very… well, you know.)

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop

5( so, we participate in a bloghop, the Unicorn Challenge (created by SSC&B alum jenne and one-half-Tasmanian-devil-one-third-human-whoopee-cushion, ceayr) and, even though this is one of those Doctrine, following the Doctrine conferred advice: ‘You can only improve by interacting with your betters (story-telling-wise, of course!). But, as a clark we’re are nothing if not possessed of a subversive streak a college-protest-wide, so why not ask Readers for help?

Readers? We’d be, like two Grat Items grateful if’n you’d write whatever came to mind when you read the story-question posed in the intro to this post (you know, the one about ‘a young man, a slightly older girl and a dog walk into a scene…’)

6) Update: Weird-assed door flower:

7) (this space deliberately left blank) so we can cover ourselfs if any Reader takes us up on the request for plot ideas for the ‘corn Challenge:

8) Hey! You’ve all heard of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro, right? (early post: here) Well, Tom (the short-order cook and all-around chaos-sower) was pretty active this week. Check it out. (Want an invite? I’d say Nick or Chris or Mimi would be your best shot at gettin’ one.) (But you didn’t hear it from us, capisché?)

9) something, something

10) Secret Rule 1.3

music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, personality types, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Parchman Farm Six]

June 29, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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 sentenae

Here, this week, in this particular Six Sentence Story, we return to an old ‘story-world’, that of Parchman Farm. For reasons unknown, this horrific episode in the never-ending story of man’s inhumanity to man, offers a imagination-conducive canvas. Here are links to a few previous Parchman Farm Sixes: ‘Release’ ‘Shake’ ‘Polish’

Prompt word:

SECURITY

“Theys been some talk, of late, about security here at the Farm.”

Still seated on Enola, the Appaloosa that, at least in the company of the Warden, Boss Roscoe was fond of saying, ‘reminded him of who he was and who his charges were’; the man who mattered more than god to most of the men of Camp 8, didn’t bother to take off his hat.

The day in the fields of Sunflower County had been typical of June: angry-red sunrise followed by such spiteful heat that the bent-shadows of the convicts seemed to dig into the soil between the rows of cotton as the men dragged their chains across the open fields.

That the camp boss left his hat on meant one of two things but probably both: he was gonna keep it short and someone was going to regret anew the crime that brought them to Parchman Farm.

As any man still talking after five years at the Farm, might whisper, ‘When a lesson was to be made, the words they flowed like Spring flood waters scouring the lowlands’.

The man on horseback, inclined as he was to mostly do, instead of say, preferred to coat words like ‘prisoner’, ‘discipline’ and ‘security’ in honey, choosing to believe that poison can be made to taste sweet; but the men now standing in front of him looked only at the ground, as fealty to whatever god ruled below came quickly to those long enough at ‘the Farm to forget what freedom felt like.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

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

June 29, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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 sentenae

Prompt word:

SECURITY

There was something wrong about the deadbolt on the front entrance of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro.

Even allowing for the pre-dawn hour, the tall, thin man felt the mental-emotional dissonance that was often (‘…but not always’, the logical voice, every bit the five-year-old boy seeking security in repetition), a harbinger of a spontaneous view of the abyss; he laughed into the dark, the ultimate αποτρέπειν of the natural introvert.

The interior of the empty Café offered, to those so-inclined, a church-vibe: the reddish glow of the neon signs behind the bar suggested either a secret aquarium, all noisily innocuous or, closer to home, the church when he was in elementary school, specifically the incense and brass-smelling alcove where the votive candles were kept.

Long accustomed to letting random memory claim the attention of his conscious and otherwise reasonable mind, the Proprietor heard Sister Catherine admonish his sixth grade class in religion, “I won’t describe Hell to you, that is more properly the purview of the clergy;” the fleeting certainty that the Sister of Mercy was addressing him ignited a glow of pride that he imagined he could still feel, “However, if you are determined to try, let me suggest you add: you are the architect of the hell in which you will be punished.”

The smell of alcohol, ice and cigarettes embraced him like a drunken lover, the residual sensory input of a High Mass for those who believe they are alone in the world.

There was a sound from the one direction he was not looking and the tall, thin man felt a chill, like a herd of spiders wearing golf shoes running up the back of his neck and over his scalp.