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impromptu post* -the Wakefield Doctrine- *…done without being planned, organized, or rehearsed.

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

Of course, our Dickensian subtitle begs the question, ‘can a reprint truly be un-planned or un-organised or (especially) un-rehearsed?‘ I mean, serially, is it not the essence of rehearsal to present something that, while at one point was spontaneous, by definition is a repeat? I know that the clarks (and those rogers and scotts with significant secondary clarklike aspects) are thinking, ‘isn’t the bulk of my day in fact a ‘reprint’? if I’m remembering how I usually respond to people and situations in the past and am taking that habitual path today… am I giving up my opportunity for the sake of certainty. damn! best try not to do that!’

From 2012

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

The Wakefield Doctrine is a unique insight into the behavior of the people in our lives (and outside of our lives). The Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the fact that everyone lives  in what amounts to a ‘personal reality’ (aka a worldview).1 For the Reader willing to accept this premise, we offer three characteristic worldviews that account for:  you, me, the person who woke you up this morning, the Physician who will change your life in a single statement, the child you remember being on the perfect Halloween Evening, the woman who said she would love no other, the Teacher who you hated, the man who promised to return, the dreams of the future, the regrets of the past and your smile (to yourself) that you are still reading this thing.

The characteristic worldviews are (that of):

  1. the Outsider, you wake up each day knowing that the world is ‘out there’ and you are ‘here’, you are creative and funny and have an insatiable appetite to learn things, anything, for the joy of discovery and in the (secret) hope of learning the secret of how to be ‘a part of’ to not be the Outsider. This is the clark personality
  2. the Predator, you wake up each morning hungry…physically, spiritually, socially, sexually. A scott, (this is the personality type that naturally results from living in the worldview of the Predator), is always on the move, always alert, aggressive, fun to be with, mercurial, loud, un-shy and outlandish. It is said of the scottian individual, “I scream, therefore I am”
  3. the Member of the Herd, as a roger you are confident in the rightness of the world and constantly worried about sufficiently understanding the proper way to live, you are a social genius, you are a very encouraging listener and an inveterate gossip. You believe that Reality and the Universe is quantifiable and governed by Rules, your understanding of these Rules invests you with Power and Responsibility to everyone you encounter, rogers are responsible for Civilization and the Spanish Inquisition, the stability of  governance and the Salem Witch Trials

The theory (of the Wakefield Doctrine)  is that we are all born with the capability to live in one of these three worldviews and that at an early age (3-5), we all settle into what becomes our predominant worldview. Although this predominant worldview becomes our defining reality, we never lose the capacity to act as we would if we were in the ‘other two worldviews’. This is why many people, upon first trying out the Doctrine, write in and say, “Hey, I know my type, but there are times when I act like one of the other two! What the hell?” This is the example of what we call a secondary aspect, where a person ’employs’ a characteristic of the non-dominant worldviews to deal with a situation. It is usually a passing thing, nothing to be alarmed about.2
The Wakefield Doctrine is not only unique, it is easy to use! It does not ask questions, does not require the individual (you, the Reader, who else would we mean??!)  t0 complete a survey or describe their likes, dislikes and favorite colors.  There is no math to be performed, no charts or graphs (“…your personality type is somewhere on this scale that runs from 0 = Savior of Mankind to 10 = Geez, what a jerk!”)
The Wakefield Doctrine simply maintains that your personality is the natural result of your growing up, developing and living in one of the three worldviews.
The Wakefield Doctrine is not only unique and easy, it is fun! If you learn the characteristics of the three personality types, go out into your day today, you will see at least one clark and one scott (and by inference a bunch of rogers), and they will act just like we describe in these Pages. So go out, try it and come back and say “Hey Make it stop now!! Sure this is a valid insight, but my husband!!  he is such a roger! I can’t stop giggling when he tries to tell me how great a hobby that (genealogy, re-enacting, bicycling is). Make it stop!”

Thats it for today.

Thanks for behaving! We have a group of new people here today (yes, those odd locations in the feedjit, the whispering in the back of the classroom) not to worry! Most will leave as soon as the Tour bus gets here. Sure, why not? “Now,everone say hello to all them folks what came by from Bloppy Bloggers!

 

1)  nothing weird, really! We are not saying that reality is what you want it to be ( well, we actually do say that) and we are not proposing that the world at large is less real and concrete than your personal world,  (err..better hold that thought too) and we are so not saying that this is a personality theory that requires the user to have  a certain, special quality that combines intellectual confidence and a desire to imagine what if? (damn! 3 for 3…back up to the Post now, enough about you, this is about how the Wakefield Doctrine will make your today much more interesting).

2)  actually this business of secondary aspects holds the key to the Wakefield Doctrine being used as the best of self-improvement, self-development tools! But that’s for later, this is an introduction to the Doctrine, yo.

 

 

* here’s the vid that took me back (almost) to the reprint post above.

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ἡμέρα Ἄρεως -the Wakefield Doctrine- (‘the day of the week most favored by clarks’)

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

So why is it that, of the three personality types, clarks look upon Tuesday as, perhaps, the best of all days of the week? Simple. The weekend-workweek transition day (Monday) has been survived, the focus on achieved (or not) progress day (Wednesday) has not yet occurred and the deceptively desirable end-of-workweek day (Friday) is still a distant dream.

Tuesday is all about optimism and promise. And clarks, well, clarks are nothing if not the embodiment of promise.* No, in our brief discussion this morning, ‘promise’ is decidedly a noun. And the context is social context-free! It is not about breaking a promise, making a promise, promising to better. It (the promise of a clark) is the potential… for (totally fill in the blank).

If anything, the promise inherent in the worldview of a clark is the event horizon of their existence. whoah! (whoah, indeed!) Damn, as often happens, I’ve stumbled into a topic that, like a quiet talk and a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter, the coming day still held back by the castellation in bleached oak of the cabinets bracketing the sink, the outside wall falls into the yard and the world yaws open, ever hungry for human time.

lol

Cliff Notes version of my tantalizing allusion: “…the promise inherent in the worldview of a clark is the event horizon of their existence.” clarks are always searching for something. Being of a rational bent (clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel), the sought-after thing manifests as knowledge/information. clarks are the insatiably curious of the three. The ‘something’ clarks seek is the thing that everyone around them appear to know already and, by tragic miscalculation, clarks assume is the knowledge that makes them, (scotts and rogers) real people. They must have been absent that day, when growing up and being taught about life, ya know. In any event, that is the singularity, the conviction that if they acquire more information, they might discover the secret and become a part of.** Like the nearly-all powerful black hole, we cannot see it directly and so are left with the edge of endless appetite, like golem with a question mark impressed upon our foreheads.

 

 

*  the natural tendency here is to interpret the word ‘promise’ as a verb, which totally changes the spin. That kind of promise is strictly of the domain of the real people, the scotts and the rogers. (“Hey, a promise is a promise, so get some clothes on an we’ll catch some breakfast”  “Yeah, but you promised. I heard you promise. Everyone heard you promise. How can you do such a thing?“)

 

** super-brief Doctrine for New Readers: unlike most of the other personality theories and schema, the Doctrine does not rely on quizzes and surveys, questions about favorite colours or food, likes and dislikes, in order to establish which category a person falls into. This is because, from our viewpoint, our personality ‘types’ are simply the characteristically distinct style of dealing with life, given the world we are experiencing. Ex: I grew up in the reality of the ‘the Outsider’ and I learned and developed the style of interacting that would best advantage me in that context. My tendency to mumble, have poor posture, make creatively eccentric fashion choices, be funny (provided you’re close enough to hear me) and exhibit a sporadic yet wildly original creativity is because that is what is successful when contending with the world as I experience it. For scotts and for rogers, the same applies. Start out as a little baby one in the world of the Predator and I betcha you develop a predilection for quick reflexes, act-before-being-acted-up real fast. It’s about what strategies are appropriate to the character of the world you grow up in, you know, what kind of likes and dislikes, favorite colours or food that increase the odds that you survive and thrive today.

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Wensdae -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘…of nonfictional fiction and learning from others’

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

Here at the Wakefield Doctrine we say the process of using the perspective (of the Doctrine) only begins when we accept ‘how we relate ourselves to the world around us’. (Without fail, an admonition is appended: ‘Be sure to notice the exact wording. We didn’t say, ‘… how we relate to the world around us’, we said, ‘… how we relate ourselves to the world around us.’ All the difference in the world.)

It’s an easy mistake to make. We’re all bombarded with advice on relating to situations, we’re asked if we can relate to this idea or that directive. Even (our) own best efforts to get along with the people in our world, the focus is entirely on the relationship, i.e. how we relate. The Wakefield Doctrine will, by necessity, nature and design, require those who would employ its principles to take themselves into account, (and thereby accounting for themselves) when assessing the relationship between themselves and the world (around them).

Kinda unavoidable, when you think about it. The Doctrine is about nothing if it’s not about the proposition that we all live and interact with the world and the people around us from within our own personal realities. The immediate benefit of this view is that it tends to eliminate the stress of cognitive dissonance that inevitably occurs when a person (in our world) acts in a manner inconsistent with what we believe is obviously true. We all have at least one friend, relative, or co-worker who we know to be mature, intelligent and good-natured people. Yet they exhibit, maintain and otherwise seem to find compatible one attitude/strongly-held belief/persistent-despite-overwhelming-evidence-to-the-contrary opinion. This is where the stress begins. ‘How,’ we ask ourselves (or anyone nearby), ‘can they believe that/maintain that position?’ It makes no sense. And yet there it is. Once we can bring ourselves to accept that, within this other person’s reality, the unreasonable is not as unreasonable, in fact, the unreasonable may make perfect sense, in their experience, we are able to stop twisting ourselves up trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. (Note to new Readers: temper this example. If you have a voice that is interrupting the sense of understanding that is growing within, that is only your ego, the part of your world that insists that there is only one world, one reality, or, at least, only one real reality. Read on and ask questions.)

Of course, the instant we concede the validity of this viewpoint, we’re forced to accept the (relative) truth about ourselves, the ‘ourselves’ in ‘how we relate ourselves to the world around us’. It is way hard, but totally worth the effort. To know the world can be a path to knowing ourselves, provided we have the stomach for it. We say that for the obvious (or not so obvious reason): if it is true, in our example above, that the personal characteristics of one’s reality allows a person to know, for a fact, a thing is correct despite the evidence to the contrary, what does that imply about our own world? (Yeah, I know! But this part is only as upside-down as you would let it be. Remember, there’s a part of all of us that will maintain, at all costs, that the world we know is the way it is, no matter what anyone else says.)

Good news! Even as you tackle the effort of a lifetime, the Wakefield Doctrine makes the better understanding the people in our lives, way fun. And, when it comes to actually self-improving ourselves? It’s as easy as circular dessert pastry! You have within, the capacity to experience the world from the perspective of all three personality types, which means the strengths of each are available to develop and express. très cool.

Speaking of cool, Friend of the Doctrine, Cynthia is on her own path to discover and self-develop herself, recently wrote of her adventures along the path,

“The comfort zone is an illusion, y’all. It’s the ego talking to keep us from reaching our full potential in the name of relative safety” (from ‘The Benefits of a Personal Retreat’ ) Get on over to Intuitive and Spiritual, tell her the Doctrine sent ya.

 

Don’t forget to get out your short pencil and scrap paper! Tomorrow is Thursday and that means one thing, Six Sentence Story! zoe (and her able assistant Joules) will have a prompt word and you are invited to find the best six sentences you can and put it in story form. It’s fun.

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- STAND

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

peabody

Wednesday morning warm-up for Thursday’s Six Sentence Story with clever graphic effects.

Zoe encourages, harangues and coaxes those of us with a jones for new arrangements of words to get our weekly fix with the Six Sentence Story. The prompt word is our starting point, where we end up… that’s the fun part.

This week thought I’d try something different. (lol when zoe stops laughing we’ll continue.) Old Egg often writes ‘Sixes’ that I read as remembrances of events from youth; they are both poignant and very engaging. So, this week I thought I’d try to write a ‘remembrance Six’ in the style of our friend from Down Under .

(Hey Old Egg! Dude! Not as easy as it you make it look.)

Stand

Through the endless last week of high school, the hallways echoed with the dissipation of stress, as exams were over, nothing left but to hand in textbooks and wait to be released into Summer; even the teachers were different, losing the rigid posture of authority, and a handful of the newer teachers even acted like regular people.

“Hey, could you give me a hand with this,” the boy looked up and down empty corridor, certain the girl was talking to someone else, “I need help to take this banner down.” The very pretty brunette, (the young man knew her name was Cindy, but then again, he also knew the names of all the Greek goddesses and the maiden names of most of the younger, attractive film stars), who stood in the doorway of an empty classroom inspired surprise, if for no other reason than the fact that she was: pretty, a senior, very popular and talking to him by choice.

With the boundless capacity of the adolescent mind to extrapolate, project, and imagine, all with total disregard for reason and reality, the boy watched a future life unfold involving love, sex (as much detail as his limited experience allowed) and most of all, acceptance by those around him…all in the time it took to walk five steps to the open classroom door.

He immediately noticed the record player on the desk at the front of the room and with an uncharacteristic disregard for consequences, lifted the tone arm over the rotating black disk and put the needle down at the very first track; Sly and the Family Stone, closer friends to the boy who spent his life in the social shadows and alleyways, began to sing, ‘…and in the end you’ll still be you.’

He looked up and the girl was still there and she was smiling…at him.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Yakl_xIkc

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

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

factorsbehin

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

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