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

August 1, 2017 By

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’

July 26, 2017 By

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

July 20, 2017 By

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’)

July 19, 2017 By

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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Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 11, 2017 By

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

CSR copy

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

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