the Wakefield Doctrine

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

Surely there is an advanced and sophisticated perspective on the coming holiday season that would provide a platform of today’s discussion of the benefits of applying the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine to our everyday lives, no?

sure, of course there is! All that is required is that you trust yourself on knowing:

• the Wakefield Doctrine is all about a person’s relationship to the world around them
• there are three relationships (so, real easy to learn)
• Outsider(clark), Predator(scott) and Herd Member(roger) which are, as you guess: the people who feel apart from the basic assumptions of life in (a given) society; those who know that there is no life without risk and self-doubt is tantamount to defeat and finally, the majority who believe the universe is both quantifiable and governed by Rules
• to figure out who is which in your daily reality, throw out the ‘no fricken way’ predominant worldview and alternate between the remaining two, which is clearer?
• the Power to the Doctrine is that, by assuming the worldview of the other person, (no matter how superficially), we are in a position to appreciate the world as they are experiencing it
• …and if we do that last skillfully enough, we will know them better than they know themselves

So, get out there and try it! The beauty part is that even though you are ‘involving’ other people, no one has to know you’re just learning. There is no wrong way. The correct will identify itself because the people (in your world) will demonstrate their predominant worldview… even through they don’t know the Doctrine from donuts.

from the first Year

Full Disclosure: the post has been edited for ease of reading (I originally had all the ‘things people say’ in italics and bold.’ lost the bold. and threw in some commas and such… surely I am most advanced compared that eleven years younger clark.*

November 30 2009

(“…jeez he was being such a roger“)

(“we’re not being too scottian, are we?”)

(“…it really is a simple decision, how clarklike are you going to be about this?”)

You might be thinking out loud, or mis-overhearing a passing conversation, but it is hard to deny that the world we find ourselves in today, (and then again, maybe tomorrow), is so very easy to alter.  And when I say alter, I don’t mean it in the, ‘to try and make other people do things differently’ way, and I am not suggesting that we would instruct the people we work with and play with to behave in an unfamiliar manner and I most assuredly do not mean that we should take our friends aside and tell them that there are certain things we want them to do differently from now on…

(Secret-Sharing time now), everyone is trying to change the world. All the time and everywhere. People are inviting us to join them in decorating, (and re-decorating), the world according to their tastes. What is funny is that even though a statement like the one just made, if manifested in a different circumstance, say, for instance,  a shopper waiting in a checkout line, grabs the microphone and  announces to everyone in the local supermarket, that the world was changing, and they were the agency, now that that would be strange.  What really should be considered odd is how you can read this Post and be thinking. ‘OK, interesting idea, I wonder where they are going with this alter the world thing.’

(“the herd is restless, the gossip is rampant, how rogerian can an office break room be?”)

We are born and (most of us) raised by others, others who help us through the world until we are able to survive alone. No one would reject the notion that, as we are taught to live and act in the world, we are also taught what the world is like.  (Nothing  aluminum foil hat-wearing  crazy),  just:  “listen to your mother… when I was your age, I had to go without all the things you take for granted”; “no hold my hand when we cross the street, look both ways…if anyone stops the car and offers you a ride…”;          “if you are too sick to go to school, you are too sick to go out and play in the afternoon…study because to get into college you will need good grades…how can you expect to get a good job if you don’t have good education”

And it is not just telling us what the world is like, no, they are telling us what people are like: “never talk to strangers… the early immigrants worked really hard to establish themselves… what kind of accent is that?” “a nice girl simply does not act like that… first impressions are the most important thing…respect your elders…honor you father” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you…early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise…when a man loves a woman…”

Most importantly, those who teach us about the world tell us about ourselves: “don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it has been…you are so much like your father…don’t feel bad when people say you look like me”; “you will never amount to anything…how can you do that, after all we have done for you…if you don’t respect yourself  how do you expect others to respect you…a good wife’s first duty is to the family” “don’t be afraid…god loves you…you can’t believe everything you see and hear”

And so we practise living in the world and the more we practice, the more our beliefs are reinforced and the more ‘unchangeable’ everything becomes.

Here at the Wakefield Doctrine we say: “hey you know how rogerian the spirit of organised religion is?… be careful young lady, you know howscottscan be, he is after only one thing…hey, if you have insomnia, you can always hang out with thatclarklikefriend of yours…thatroger is such a girl”

Altering the world is not really such a radical concept. Simply a matter of adding to your description of the world. A language, a way of seeing what is already there in a new and better way… that is what the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers really is, a view of the world that we can benefit from. (Sure thing,    clark).

* Who said that?!!  Was that you, Denise…. Cynthia, Valerie…Pat…Lisa? (its always the quiet ones when we’re focused outside the immediate concern), Paul at least we know you’ll tolerate this increasingly strained classroom metaphor….wait a minute! Where’s Dyanne!? Dollars to donuts, Mimi has convinced our young transfer pupil to sneak out of class, she is such a caution**!

** olden days expression

#theWakefieldDoctrine

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

Friday: clarks hope, scotts can barely wait and rogers enter a state that is like, or similar to, or… you know, how back in the day and you were finishing your cereal, dutifully spooning out the last inch of milk, dotted with seven or eight Rice Krispies. While dredging the bottom of the bowl for the last of the granulated sugar that you so lavishly spread over the cereal, and (what made it a special breakfast) the sliced banana, you feel a slight resistance… throttling your growing hope, and with the expertise acquired through the course of your childhood years, you catch a slightly softened edge of something, still invisible at the bottom of the opaque white milk

…the surprise last slice of banana! No Necco wafer was ever so tender, no Vanilla Wafer quite so sweet. If there were moments of such unalloyed joy in childhood, how strained would Life be to surpass this. You could hardly wait.

… that’s rogers on a Friday morning, the weekend in sight.

…ok! Looks like’n we had an extra Bag of Ornate hidden behind that brown-cardboard box with the black stenciled ‘Purple Prose’  Caution!’ up on that closet shelf.

It is Friday. I am a clark. I shall exhibit un-warranted confidence.

Let’s look at our subtitle and see if we can’t get a short post with a catchy music video out of it. Without, that is, undoing too much of the probative good will I acquired after yesterday’s Six Sentence Story.

‘why most of us are more, like, ‘autocorrect’ than, say, ‘spellcheck’, came to me as I started to write this post because I start every post, (here at the Wakefield Doctrine), the same way: ‘Welcome to the….’

Thing is, after 2,193 posts, the WordPress app will complete the word as soon as I type the first letter. That, (for the purposes of this amusing insight). is autocorrect.

Not that autocorrect is, in of itself, a bad thing! It keeps us in our lane when we need to change the radio station or turn to glare a conversational emphasis at the person in the passenger seat. ‘AUtcroecft’, at its most benign is how we can play tennis, walk while engaged in lively conversation and remember where we left our car keys.

Castaneda wrote about routines. They are ways to organize our reality. Sometimes they are the result of being lazy, sometimes they are a manifestation of strength. Depends.

Speaking of god and car keys, let’s listen to Jules Winfield speak to the importance of how we relate ourselves to the world around us.

(Language Advisory) 

so lets wrap this up

The Wakefield Doctrine offers three perspectives on the world and the people who make it up. We are, all of us, living and acting in a style, a manner, and otherwise exhibiting a personality appropriate to the reality of:

• the Outsider(clarks) where one cloaks themselves in social obscurity, preferring the straightjacket of introversion over the shackles of imagined demands and expectations of the world, we mumble our words to allow the other person the freedom to misunderstand in a constructive way, our gift to the ‘real’ people who populate our world is to provide numerous ‘fill in the blank’ moments in our ongoing interactions
• the Predator(scotts) where you’d better pay attention to the immediate and the present or something, (or someone), is gonna get the drop on you. And though you don’t bind your own feet with fear, running at full speed all the time cuts down on the chances of going around the broken glass and other nature obstacles. All you ask is to be allowed to follow your instincts and act on your impulses. Though you don’t insist on being given a pass when you exceed the bounds of civilized behavior, you will sometimes, ask for ‘three steps;
• the Herd Member(rogers) the world is a provable equation and a quantifiable set of variables… hello, autocorrect, my old friend, let’s listen to that again!”

#theWakefieldDoctrine