humor | the Wakefield Doctrine

sine qua non

August 2, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) a unique, productive and totally fun way to understand the behavior of those around us, at home and at work and at play…

Regular Readers will recall several Posts in which we talk about how, according to the history of the Wakefield Doctrine it (the Doctrine, not the history), is the result of three people becoming friends and the interactions and dynamics of said three eventually coalesced in what we now know as the theory of clark, scotts and rogers. Well that is true, sort of. the Progenitor roger wrote a decent piece in an early Post called “A Pre-history” in which he tells the story of the “origins” of the friendships of the people who have lent their names to the “theory” behind the Doctrine. At the time that Post was written, it was still believed that the Doctrine would be the expression of three minds, the clark, the scott and the roger. But that never really happened.
For reasons not yet clear, having these Posts (and this blog) be written from three perspectives (clark, scott and roger) never came to pass.
This is a fact that I am only now coming to accept. (Guess which of the three I am, lol). But it is not really critical nor are there likely to be any earth-shaking changes to the blog or the Posts or the Wakefield Doctrine…just a change as I try to write something that allows Readers to see not only the ‘fun’ of the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers but also the value of the Doctrine, for those interested in using it.

You may or may not detect more of a direct “voice” in Posts going forward. Not that the collaborative approach is being abandoned, just that I will not be trying to to be write as if there were three personalities sitting at this keyboard here. (why, yes you are correct! how very astute!).

So, enough of the ‘behind the scenes’ crap.
Still the same topic, you betcha.
Still the same people, from dem rascally DownSprings and maybe even a Progenitor or two and of course, the kids of Mill Fill High.

What is best for the Doctrine is and always will be the guiding principle. To sell the idea more, rather than just put up what sometimes amounts to a facebook page with music. Until today, the underlying thought regarding presenting the Doctrine to the world as a blog, was that all efforts should be directed towards attracting readers, rather than simply promoting the site. The “build it and they will come” principle. It can be seen now that there is no small amount of conceit underlying that approach. Not that conceit is a bad thing, we have not totally abandoned that philosophy. DownSpring glenn once asked, “what was the greater purpose of the Wakefield Doctrine’. Many of us took that (question) to mean, what did we think was the greatest utility of the Doctrine to those who come into contact with it’?
I am thinking that maybe a little less greater purpose and a lot more fun might be the correct path for us. As we are using it, ‘fun’ as in a “hey we got this thing, like a game that you might play with your friends when you were a kid or with when you used to hang out in high school or even college and talk about everything and anything” that kind of fun. Nothing life changing, but definitely something that you and your friends had and hardly no one else did.

You know, something like that.

Just thought I would mention that today. (You know this is not the last you will hear of that, lol)

Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day? This thing has a use for them whats wants to use it. This thing is fun for you people who want to take advantage of it. It is easy to learn, simple to use and hardly anyone knows about it. There are probably 95 people in the world today who know about clarks, scotts and rogers (meaning the visitors who come here, by accident and otherwise, and become Readers and/or remember shit real good). They are out there. Kind of an inside joke but defined by a group that is not really definable.

We have Mel in “Michigan”, who, if you go to the St Joseph Marathon in September, you might see him in the race with a Wakefield Doctrine hat (on his damn head)
There is Jason out on the West Coast of the United States of America who wears the hat on his travels and is not afraid to answer the question, “Hey what is it with that hat, and why do you keep saying ‘damn’? Huh? Why?”…and he will answer you…
Pixieblonde (…long, long story) lives somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, has a hat and has young humans who, I am lead to believe have taken to wearing the hat, which means there will always be an incoming freshman class at Mill Fill High School (school motto: “we are young, you are not…eat your hearts out!”)
DownSpring#1 is to be found in the sub-tropical state of Florida, which will forever be associated with Lou Reed (…came in from Miami, FLA, thought she was James Dean for a day…”) but Lou is not such a hit I suspect down in that part of the werld. She wears her hat (on her damn head) and looks for the path (said the Joker to the Thief)
MJM wants a hat but has not written a Comment requesting one…
glenn has one… but has still to contend with an overly developed scottian nature and so would only use the hat as bait (picture one of those fucked up, totally depths of the ocean, angler fish with the thing dangling from it’s (damn) head in front of a mouth full of teeth…like how stupid does a lifeform have to be to fall for that one?)
the Progenitors are, at present hat-less, hat-deprived lifeforms…
and there are Slovenians, due back for the Fall semester who will, no doubt be clamoring (“hrum”) for hats (I can hear them now,”nam klobuki (za lastne prekleto glave), prosim!)

I think you get the pitcha…

So write a Comment, tell me that everything needs to go back to the way that we think it was or not was…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxF-M2erx8

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, the Wakefield Doctrine

I’ve got nothing to say but it’s O.K. Good Morning, Good Morning.

July 24, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Weekend. Work or not-Work…still Weekend! Let’s take advantage of this little quirk and take the Wakefield Doctrine out of the workplace/school and see what it can do for us on the weekend, in “the land of different time schedules” that is the Weekend. Come on Readers! We are taking a leap, arbitrarily establishing the premise that for the next two days, your (day’s) schedule is more flexible, variable and most importantly, less employment-centric. (You may still go to work, but there is a different tone, feel, mood to the place, be it a factory or retail outlet or office building.)

(…”hey, you got to go in to work today? that sucks, dude”…”listen we really need some help Saturday, just in the morning…” “I want you to know we really appreciate your coming in today, I know you had plans…”) You know, that Weekend.

OK, Weekend milieu established. What now? How is the Doctrine, it’s use or application different just ’cause it’s the Weekend? Mostly it is different because during the Weekend you are dealing more with family and friends, than co-workers.

Oh… Oh… indeed!! You sense the minefield that we encounter when the Wakefield Doctrine as applied directly to family and friends.

This is a rather intricate, subtle and difficult aspect of the application of the Wakefield Doctrine to our lives and will need quite some time to do properly, for today however, it’s the Weekend! So let’s go easy on our own damn selfs. (An “Overview and Out Early” class, as the kids at Mill Fill would say.)

the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) is a unique, useful and fun way to understand the behavior of those in our lives, at home, at work/school and at play. With the perspective of the Wakefield Doctrine, not only can we understand why they do the things that they do, we can predict how the people of our lives will act and/or react in any situation.
So the Weekends can be a very educational and instructive times for those of us interesting in seeing how (the principles of) the Doctrine are expressed by our family and friends. Some are too easy, your husband shows up head to toe in spandex plastered with corporate logos (the worse thing about this is that they are such common, ordinary corporate logos; Cox, Sprint, Staples. (Staples?!! Staples??!!! eiiee!! who the hell would want to be a fricken human sandwich board* for Staples?!) (Oh, I’m sorry I know the answer to that…rogers would want to be fricken sandwich boards for Staples…”How big is your herd?”)

Anyway. You now can correctly identify the rogerian family members…easy one.
Scotts?….sorry, they have so already left the house or wherever they pretended to sleep…Never slow down. Or your scottian daughter/wife/girlfriend/sister? See the crowd gathering at the beach/lake/mall/backyard barbecue…all the guys facing the same direction…with the logos on their backs? just above the little fannypack thing?…there she is…lol What? where are the girls and women?…find your scottian son/husband/boyfriend/brother? that’s where everyone else at the beach/lake/barbecue/campsite/backyard is…

…clarks? you want to find your clarklike daughter/son, wife/husband, girlfriend/boyfriend, brother/sister? jeez I don’t know… (not!). Hear that weird music with the clicking of a computer keyboard?…off in some corner…probably writing a blog or someth….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH37iMVfaVQ

* sandwich board, an outdated form of advertising…a person who was paid to wear a sign on their front and back, connected by a suspender sort of thing and they would walk up and down the sidewalk a pedestrian area…very low level marketing, not exactly high level employment

the Doctrine is nothing, if not diverse…lol

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

now this should be an easy one, just introduce the new feature…how hard can that be?…ok there’s 15 words already!

July 13, 2010 By clarkscottroger

As you might have impugned (thanks, roger) from the sub-title, today’s Post will serve to introduce a new feature here at the Doctrine.

Now, I know what you clarklike Readers out there are thinking, “Dude, you are demonstrating your limitations by trying to stay up with the whole new Post everyday thing, what the hell are you doing introducing another feature?” and the scottian Readers, they’re all, “Hell yeah!! now I can say FUCK twice as often in Comments and he’ll get tired and resort to postin pitchas of nekkid people….FUCK”, and our rogerian Reader will be overheard to say, “well, I’m sure you can try and when I feel motivated I will show you the right way to do an extra feature, maybe” Calm down everyone.

First of all, it will be a once a week feature, not every day. Second of all, it will be presented as a Feature in the Wakefield Doctrine site, in the middle column of the Home Page to the left of that little globe thingie.
At present the ‘Working Title’ of the column is: Let’s decide what is Good and what is Bad, right now! See it? Back on the homepage? (No, glenn you have to go back to the home page…the page you came to when you clicked in…clicked in is when you used your mouse…mouse! the thing you are using to navigate through the site…navigate, that means go from one place to another on the internet…yeah I know you are too active and non-clarklike to be bothered with learning crazy, high tech stuff…just keep reading…well have her read it to you then). Where was I? Oh yeah, the Feature will be in that location so you will have to click on it to read it.
Yeah, roger I am copying Mel, thank you for reminding me… Mel, for you new Readers, is Mel Thompsom who is the Man as far as topical themes/cooking blogs go. He does the Spatula in the Wilderness blog which is totally a must read. He does some cooking things, but a lot of topical Posts and while ‘we are not worthy’, we gonna give it shot writing this type of Post. Once a week. With a Wakefield Doctrine spin, of course.

We will announce the first installment of “Let’s Decide what is Good and what is Bad, Right Now!” in the next day or so, which brings us to our Lesson of the Day! Not much of surprising or startling revelation-type Lesson, just a quick look at “how do each of three types react to change”.

According to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) clarks are nothing but change, rogers are totally against change and scotts…scotts don’t really give a shit. No, really!
The first two are obvious, almost too simple for you Readers.
First the clarks, one of the unmistakable hallmarks of clarks is their conversational style. When you are speaking to a clark, their side of the conversation does not even approach the ‘direct answer’ style of verbal interaction. Ask a clark something as tabletop simple as “hey, clark how are you today” then its, pull-up-a-chair,-put-your-feet-up, would-you-care-for-a-beverage? time. But if you listen to the ‘answer’ you get back, it will be the most honest, comprehensive answer that your respondent is capable of, up to and including the reasons why they may or may not be “OK, thanks for asking”.
Now, rogers are also inclined to ascribe to the conversational “more is more” style. But the content (of their respective responses) is where the difference lies, the answer of a roger to the question, “hey, roger how are you today” is more likely to be, “I was doing ok until you asked me that question and now you are coming to me and I am being forced to interupt my totally important activities and have to answer you and you won’t understand anyway, why do you keep doing this to me?”
As to our scottian friends, you go ask them! I’ll just wait back here, with a nice door to my left and a handful of kibble. “hey scott, how are you today?” The response is most likely, “great!! who the fuck wants to know? I know you…(the next few seconds will consist of ranking the scott pushes you to see if you push back or not…depending on your response the rest of the answer will be: a) “great, do you think I could do something for you that will make you feel greater, huh? do ya? or b) great, now here is what you can do for me that will make me feel greater…”

So there you have the Lesson of the Day. Sorry I got off the topic of The New Feature! Maybe I will spend a little more time talking about it before we do the first one. The reason for this is that I am hoping to get some of the Progenitors and Downsprings to participate. (Hey Readers, you are welcome to participate too!) (lol, sorry just had to throw that in…)

So let’s get outa here, I’ve got to get to work and try to earn enough money to hire someone to show me how to get mad hits. (I mean jeez, I went to a couple of “I’m a lonely girl in the big City, listen to Me” blogs and looked at the Comments. Jesus Christ! One Post: “Should I be extra nice to my Boss“…534 Comments! 534!! and before that there was a “Why does everyone not understand Me” 432! Comments!! Comments, not Visits, frickin Comments! Really gettin sick of that.

Mr. B get yer fiddle-playin ass up here! We need something in a cooking and/or new feature referencing music vid, stat y’all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJhb7pcGWg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT-UudncdEU

(I know, not food/new feature related vid, I have a reason for it. There is a line Hendrix has in this clip, “yeah, I know I missed a verse, don’t worry about it”…putting this in ’cause when I did the re-read I realised that I got way off-topic on the Lesson of the Day…”don’t worry about it”)

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

here we come, walkin down the street, get the funniest looks from

July 12, 2010 By clarkscottroger

meme (mēm)
n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved (by way of yourdictionary.com ) (who we figure have some rights to the damn words or they wouldn’t bother with all this attribution shit).

The rest of this thing should be normal looking

…screw this…let’s go with the original premise from last night, the “hey I’m so sleepy and don’t want to write this Post, but another ‘person’ insists that I do and I maintain an implied dialogue with this ‘other person’ which is indicated by “dialogue in parentheses”. Sure why the hell not?

(…Hey!, anyone around to help me with this?…Britney? you back yet?….(I know Janie is still on ‘Grand Tour’) (hey! watch that parenthesis within parenthesis…dude, you gonna fall into your monitor, this is now an aside to yourself, while pretending to be speaking to someone ‘off stage’ while doing a setup for a Post) (rats! lost track of the parenthesis) (((( you know you’ve done this trick before))))….italics!!! god! I’ll never get out of this!!!Cut it out!
(Who is that?…oh you Mr. B….fuck….yeah, why the hell not add a reference to personal emotional/psychological car wreck to the mix?….lol…sure I remember that time…alright ready?…)

What time is it? (…Oh I didn’t hear you come in….morning? already? damn!!…) (…No, you don’t get any lines…dude, you got the girl! are you rogers never fuckin satisfied?…shhh…)

Good Morning (…no, they can’t see you…) Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) Monday Morning Marathon! (…hey sometimes a little alliteration helps…) Glad you could make it. Yes, there is a lot of grammatical junk in this Post (…shh, they’re on to the device…) please disregard the implied character in parenthesis. I assure you there is a reason for it and that it will all make sense before you finish reading this Post. (…yeah, they’re buying it…)

The subtitle? No, there is no point to a contest; here can’t be anyone who does not recognise the work of the Monkees. (…no, they don’t care who the real writers were, “no quotation marks” “What?” damn you’re right! no, no time for that let’s just hope they go along with it…no, not another level of implied conversation…you speak to me and I’ll answer…). (… you’re sure? they wrote that too?…)(Sure lets use ellipseseses to imply the dialogue)(…oops…. forgot…)

As most of our Readers will recognise, today’s subtitle is a lyric frame from theme song to the 60’s show ‘The Monkees’. What I did not know, until just recently was that the theme was written by Boyce & Hart, as was apparently everything else (musical) on the show. I knew that Boyce & Hart wrote most of the songs used on the show and were huge in the pop music scene. By the way, you should go to the wikipedia page for Boyce & Hart, take a look at the picture (of them). Tell me that they are not a roger/clark team. (…What? hey I’m on a roll, should give glenn something to react to, you know how he likes the discography…no! really? shit I bet I don’t know much of anything…well, now that I know, I gotta…)

And while Boyce & Hart wrote most of the songs, did you know that Neil Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer”?
Yes, yes he did. That boy did get around, talk about ‘range’ in talent. For that matter, Paul Anka also was no slouch. The work that he accounts for creates a lot of the musical landscape in the 1950s and 1960s. But, that is a Post in and of itself, for today it is enough to use a line from a pop song to get the Post started.
Yes, it is time for the Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day. Monday edition.

The Lesson is this. We know that clarks are the creative ones. (Continuing the music metaphor), that would make scotts the ‘front man’ and rogers the producers/arrangers/rhythm section. In theory, all musical groups are comprised of all three types, but most songwriting teams consist of two people, usually a clark and a roger but nearly as often a scott and a roger. I suppose a roger/roger is possible, but does anyone out there believe it is possible for a scott/scott or a clark/clark team to exist? (…what? out of time? shit….gots to find a hook…get some music ready…)
Here is an odd thought (… lol, I agree, that is a relative term…) Can anyone out there think of a song/music writing team that is female based, i.e. excepting individual female song writers, ala Carole King, Alannis etc, does anyone know of a counterpart to Boyce & Hart, Lennon & McCartney of the female persuasion?

(…Alright, while the Readers are scratching their heads, let’s put up a vid or two and get the hell out….oh, thanks for the “help”…no…no I mean it! we always did work together well…clark/roger before there were the terms…lol no this is no denouement…we don’t need no steekin denouement….promotion?…hey I’ll think about it… yeah maybe after a while…she’s a student for god’s sake!…you rogers…yeah I know…but there is a chance this thing will dry up and blow away before then…yes I have two lines written in the screenplay…not sure where…sure it was a significant episode in the story of the Doctrine, but I don’t know that anyone will get anything from it…yeah, it is late)

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

the things we’ll do!!

June 29, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Thought I would start on an enthusiastic note. While it might not read as well as it sounds…the subtitle is meant to convey the level of excitment usually reserved for children anticipating an adventure that is still slightly off in the future… a Trip to a major theme park or a week at the beach for the first time. There is a unalloyed sense of confidence in the future (and being a child maybe that is the only time that is possible), anyway that is what today’s Post is about…the things that we* will do this year on these Pages and by extension in the real world.**

The strength of the Wakefield Doctrine lies in the fact that it accounts for the reality as it is experienced by all people. (Put a little less grandiostic) the Doctrine proposes that everyone of us experiences the world with one of three basic viewpoints. Unlike all the other ‘theories of personality’, the Doctrine says: understand the viewpoint*** (of an individual) is to understand their personality, not the other way around. (Better stop here and talk about ‘viewpoint of reality’. Here at the WD we use the term ‘viewpoint of reality’ to describe how an individual perceives their relationship with the world. Not only what they think they are, but what they think the nature of the world is, to a clark the world is a hostile world and they are the outsider; to a scott the world is one of predator and prey and to a roger the world is a world of emotional connection, a social and therefore non-hostile world). So where is the excited anticipation going to come from?

From the fact that if we understand that a scott is perceiving the world as one in which the most basic relationship is one of predator or prey then we know how they will act in any situation. If we know how they will act in any situation then we can choose how we act so as to influence the outcome (of our interaction)…

Did I mention that we are excited about the coming year? Did I fail to mention that the interesting people (here at the Doctrine) are, kind of, off on summer vacation?
I didn’t? Sure I really and distinctly recall reading a Postcard (in a Post) (ha) (ha)…not that funny? Ohkay….well Janie is off to Europe this Summer on a Wunderchilde Excursion of the Crowned Head of Europe…(her parents are rather well-to-do) But Jimmy is still here, summer school you know…something about a Substitute Teacher…the name escapes me…did a lecture at Mill Fill they hit it off right from the first meeting…well at least his grades suffered…(LTS) and Britney is on one of those outreach camps/enviro-eco-save-the-backward-child at the local university…no, she is in fact quite intelligent…our fault entirely not rising above cultural biases.

And the other ‘voices’ found here? Well… (the) roger has his own blog now…camptown rag…no…capetown breakdown…wait secessionist rag! yeah that’s it! some totally rogerian thing…blog with a a thing where you contribute to writing a novel…set number of words in joint effort…a compensatory project to use a rogerian expression. So his time is being spent over there…yeah he does have a certain gift at comfortable friendly words…after words…followed by…anyway not seeing too much of him here at the Doctrine, at least until he gets it out of his system…what? Diana Ross?…lol not such a good analogy, lol… but his link is here: the roger

DownSpring glenn? yeah, you’re right, he is coming along…much less of the “look at me”!! “I can shock you”!! showing evidence of producing some actually interesting observation and Comment…yeah we have high hopes that this Summer he will step up… I think that (his contributions to the Doctrine) is where the concept of director/producer/editor came from…some people can only send out…limited in the ability to reflect back from the audience, to modify their message accordingly…but I really believe that he will show us a side that is worth the effort to bring out…yeah once you get past the scottian HEY! HEY! HEY! that is lol…good idea I should do a Post on “what’s up with those scotts” (as seen in DownSpring glenns “style”)…Hey why wait? Here it is in a nutshell: scotts live in a reality best defined as predator/prey, their (social) organisation is that of the pack, dogs and wolfs serve as the best example of the scottian society. They must always test their environment to determine who is a threat (dominant) and who is not (submissive). The thing we learned years ago about scotts is that this “ranking” among pack members is the most important thing to a scott. They must know, at all times, where they stand relative to others in their situation. The interesting thing, from a clark’s point of view, is that to be submissive to a dominant member of the pack has no negative connotation (for a scott). This is not how a clark or a even a roger would react, we would think, “submissive = less than, therefore undesirable”. Not so for scotts, it simply means, “this one dominant, this one submissive”. The important thing is to know where you stand in the pack.
And that brings us to the obnoxious behavior…it is simply a way to challenge the other members of the pack to see who is dominant and who is submissive…very simple, almost elegant…but has no place in these pages…other than to serve as a vehicle to understanding the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers.

DownSpring#1? now there will be an opportunity to see if this Doctrine has any…efficacy, any use any real…”hey I got to alter what type I am…right now…and while we are at it…how do I interact with these scotts and rogers so that I come out of it where I really want to be”?…you know clark stuff…
Ms AKH she be in da house!, she will never let us down…taking a little rest but when you look back at the year…she had the stuff…a pleasing/exciting combination of wildwoman scottian enthusiasms tempered (yeah, right! tempered…ya want to try for ‘barely restrained’ lol) with a thoughtful effort to reach out to the Readers, the spirit of trying out the unknown, the scottian equivalent of “hey fresh kill, lets just freeze some of that for next winter“, sure…unlike certain other scottian Downsprings
Not to forget Joanne…who will surely bail us out this Summer with a questionaire that will have you muttering to yourself, “Oh man! they’re right! I am a clark and my spouse! jeez how could they have known?…where are those cameras, nobody knows that when they do that thing, I almost always came back with…no way they could know…I better buy a hat!”