predicting human behavior | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 49 predicting human behavior | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 49

TToT(pre-Saturdee) -the Wakefield Doctrine- (the weekend, already?)

January 24, 2015 By

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

1) Today started very early. I am, apparently,  a ‘morning person’. Given a choice of getting up extra early or staying up extra late, I’ll pick the former every time. So, today,while not particularly unusual in (my) getting-up-time, saw me out on the road extra early… as the photos indicate, about sunrise.

20150123_071440_resized …20150123_071437_resized…20150123_071433_resized…I was driving –>  on my way in to my office. Good to have technology to be able to grab the photos as I drove.

2) (I’m really determined to write a normal, orderly TToT Post this week. Not that anyone is suggesting or otherwise attempting to compel me to do so, it’s just that for me it’s difficult and therefore accomplishing it would be a good thing. I am grateful to Christine and Dyanne and the other co-hostinae who are skilled grat list writers, for their encouragement and, in their own contributions here each week, demonstrate of ‘how to write a grat list… here and now style’!*

3) Phyllis had a birthday recently and, as a present, I thought….’hey! real people send flowers to loved ones at their place of work as a surprise‘. The pleasure of such gestures is, by all appearances, enhanced by the public-ness of the gift receiving process. I suspect that this is a X Chrome thing, as it seems to be all about… the ‘awwws’  Of course, I am a clark, which would have become totally obvious had you the opportunity to observe, as I went online to the FDA online florist site (FDA online florist site motto: ‘ You’re at home in your bathroom with a cup of coffee… you can afford to be extra romantic!‘). But, flowers are not really something I understand (other than their ‘aww’ producing qualities), so I thought, ‘a plant for Phyllis’s office would be nice… bonsai plants are pretty cool and slow-motion zen an shit… get her something Mr Miyagi would approve of!‘ and so I did and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.

4) I am grateful for the new plant I have on my desk at home:

20150123_185651_resized… if it weren’t for the fact that only girls and rogers name things like cars, and plants and such, I’d call it ‘george’ (or ‘ジョージ’)… but being neither, I guess I’ll just take a photo and maybe come back to it from time to time on these weekend posts. It’s not that Phyllis did not enjoy my gift, it’s just that she’s not a plant person… so we’ll see.

5) (I’m actually still within the last 7 day period with my post here!) Allow me to go a little generic, and say I’m very grateful for the non-snow infested winter season that we’ve been experiencing here in southern New England. Granted it’s been cold, but, (the lack of snow), is worth at least 10 degrees of outdoor temperature.  and…and! it’s like still light at 5:30!!

6) I spend a significant amount of time in my car everyday. The lack of snow has made this much more enjoyable. I’m more inclined to try and take photos as I drive:

20150120_103641_resized is it just me, or does this cloud formation seem a little odd. (That special kind of ‘everyday unusual’… like walking into kitchen and seeing a clean plate on the top of the stove, obviously the result of a major distraction…. nevertheless it can be a bit …un-nerving, teetering between funny and creepy… these clouds? They could go either way.)

7) As always, I’ll cite the Wakefield Doctrine as one of the most significant aspects of my life. No, seriously… were it not for this fun and unique and helpful theory of personality, I would not be here, writing this Post! 

8) You know Christine did something at ‘the coop’ this week that might serve a grat item prompt, if I may borrow (and mutate her idea)… i.e. to tell a story from the early days of my life in the ‘sphere. It ties into Item # 7, the role of the Wakefield Doctrine in my (online) life.   So anyway… a couple of years ago (stop me if you’ve already heard me tell this story!) I was doing a FTSF** and I came across this small blog, ‘Considerings‘. I liked it immediately… very intense, personal and rather well written  and clearly there was a clark on the other side of the computer screen. So I started ‘hanging around’, reading each week on Fridays and then other days and, finally, I started commenting. (This act of commenting is a testament  to the Doctrine, in that many of the Posts were dealing with difficult situations, (in the life of the author) and, although I didn’t know the author (our Ms. Rogers, of course), I did know that she was a clark and therefore I felt comfortable enough to respond as I would to a person I already knew. Because, in a sense I did.
Anyway….!!   so, I was writing comments at Considerings for, probably a month or two when, totally out of the blue, I get a Comment at the Doctrine from a woman living in the Midwest. It was an interesting Comment,  ‘I found your post interesting…. I’ve seen you at my friend Lizzi’s blog and I wanted to introduce myself’.  I sat back in my chair and smiled, as I immediately realized that a) the comment writer was a scott and 2) she was checking me out. her purpose was simply to make sure I wasn’t some kind of un-desirable, stalker kind of person, and so, I smiled. I smiled because of the value of the Wakefield Doctrine in understanding people (including total strangers), and I smiled because that is what a scott does when they have a clarklike friend… Christine did not need to ask Lizzi if she needed help, Christine did what a scottian friend would do.  Naturally we got along splendidly right from the start.
I am grateful for the Wakefield Doctrine.

9) Hey! Always grateful for the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)… it represents the kind of attitude that makes this bloghop the excellent thing that it is… ‘rules without force’ the manifestation of the sense participating in this community, according to ‘where we are, on a given weekend’  Very cool

10) Lets close with the photo I took as I headed back to the office to finish my day today:

20150123_160859_resized…I was driving <—- and the sun was beginning to start to set.

 

Ten Things of Thankful

 

 Your hosts

Join the Ten Things of Thankful Facebook Group


* both Christine and Dyanne are scotts and that’s where they live, in the present, immediate and real world… ( as they might say, ‘hey! grab for the brass ring… you only have so much time here!!’)

** ‘Finish The Sentence Friday’ my first bloghop… and still a favorite, though I have not participated in a while, Kristi was one of the hostettes…

Share
Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: , , ,

re-print phriday -the Wakefield Doctrine- hey! it’s Friday! (Friday motto: everything that that fricken Monday …isn’t!)

January 23, 2015 By

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

Early day today… want to put some content up, thought that, other than ivy (tbfkaz)* who arguably is the Margaret Meade of the Wakefield Doctrine sub-culture-to-be, most people have not read the following Post. I’ve been writing this blog for nearly 5 years or so, and when I came across the Post that is today’s content,  as I read it yesterday, (admittedly with a little ‘oh-shit-!-a-Post-from-the-first-year!’, I was relieved to find that it’s a surprisingly fun and minimally embarrassing example of early Doctrine Post. (To put it in a historical context, today’s reprint-Post was written at a time when the only comments on a Post came from a person I knew in real life.) My driving ambition was to present the principles and convey the simple fun of our little personality theory.  (Seeing how old most Readers these days are not… the woman on the lower left is Diane Keaton, from her Annie Hall days (she was nothing less than the Patron Saintessa of all clarklike female women… ), I often use clips from that particular movie because she is such a clark.

Enjoy yourselfs.

Wakefield Doctrine Field Guide

October 27, 2010 By  2 Comments
( …”so if we establish the outward more obvious characteristics”… )Oh, hello!  Did not see you come on line…be right with you  ( …but the “fun factor” got to find a way to present the damn fun of this thing… ) just one more aside and we can get today’s Post started ( …good frickin job there, you just telegraphed your last remaining hook… goddamn it… ) Let me just try and put this little journal down. There.Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)!. This week we are starting to present the whole Doctrine in a simple, logical and easy to understand manner.  ( …sure keep up with the asides…is there nothing you won’t resort to in order to get through one of these Posts?…they know what you are doing, they ‘get’ it, dude…this is so over done…)  Yesterday we started with a clark, as subject of discussion. But let’s keep with the topic a little longer… ( … ’cause clarks are sooo interesting. ) clarks are the creative ones and as such…( …Hola Miguel, ¿qué pasa con el director Clark? No se ve tan bien, y creo que él está hablando a sí mismo … vamos que el hallazgo señorita Sullivan y Britney… )  ( …man! are you so totally shameless!   roll out the ‘Spanish exchange students’,  just to keep this Post limping alone?)I believe I was suggesting that we continue to look at the personality of clarks. Hell, since this Post insists on slouching towards ( …Yeates, I can’t frickin believe that you are so desperate to get done that you will pad this thing with a literary allusion that a sophomore high school student would be too embarrassed to use… but hey, who am I to criticize… ) Well, let’s get the words on the page, put in some pictures and get the hell out. ( …the way this thing is going you are likely to pander to the scotts and put some frickin childishly exuberant music just to draw a reaction. )

Ahem! as we have said before, the clarklike females are fairly easy to identify. Outlandishly dressed, creative with the make-up (with special attention to the face/eyes) and, to a woman,  something fairly strange on their feet. If you are trying to identify which of the three types a person is and you are thinking, possible clark, then concentrate on their eyes.  (The eyes) of the female clarks are quite distinctive, mostly in an un-mistakeable ’not-of-this-world’ intensity. Often (and unfairly) characterized as either the ‘ditsy broad’ or  ‘snooty/aloof/what-does-she-think-she-is-too-good-for-us?’, the clarklike female projects this image simply because they are distracted. A state common to all clarks, there is simply so much going on inside their heads that they barely have time to keep track of what is going on in front of their noses. If you find yourself  talking to a clark, watch their eyes. If you pay attention, you will see as (mentally) they go from topic to idea to implication to ramification (back to the conversation taking place) to how to conclude the interaction to implication…etc

In the spirit of turning this trainwreck into a valid Post about identifying clarks, let’s cut and paste some of the characteristics (found on the clarks page) and get some music and get out… after all there is a real world out there and it is totally full of clarks, scotts and rogers. And there is nothing more fun than going out there and seeing the Wakefield Doctrine “demonstrate itself”.
New Readers? It might seem difficult to figure who is which today, but take our word for it, this Doctrinething is a lot of fun.

 

Just to get you started, here are some photos of known clarks  

or  or maybe       …ok, we’re sure you get the idea, now get out there and find ‘em!

(DS#1 says we should stick with the ‘topic’ of female clarks) because they are out there in the everyday world and you can spot them with only a little practice. And who are we to disagree with the DownSprings? (the DownSprings are the life of this Doctrine, whatever they want they will always get), so let’s try to come up with a “Field Guide”:

Wakefield Doctrine Field Guide

scott(male):   picture that Tasmanian devil on the cartoons……or Joe Pesci in all of his movies
roger(male):  they’re frickin everywhere, watercooler? check…Fireman? check…look for the easy-going comfortable smile, inviting conversation…
scott(female): Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, the green chick on Star Trek (the 60′s version)
clark(female): read the damn Post! you can find the clarklike females
clark(male):  the office geek except without the marketable technical skills, probably under-employed, very funny, usually interesting, (in small doses), cannot do enough for any person who merely recognises their existence, never mind actually be nice to them
roger(female): tough call under the best of circumstances, examples Kathy Bates, most wholesomely attractive women (with an agenda), think Carrie Nation in SUV…

There you  have it, the Wakefield Doctrine  Field Guide (to spotting) clarks, scotts and rogers..

.

Share
Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: , , ,

Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘Lady Godiva, her scottian husband and….a clark’

January 21, 2015 By

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

220px-Lady_Godiva_by_John_Collier

Seeing how, of late,  we’ve been all studious and learning the use of the Wakefield Doctrine to self-improve our own selfs, lets kick back and have a mid-week break! You all deserve it*.

Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband’s oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word and, after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in one of the most famous instances of voyeurism. In the story, Tom bores a hole in his shutters so that he might see Godiva pass, and is struck blind. In the end, Godiva’s husband keeps his word and abolishes the onerous taxes.

Most of you will not need me to tell you whats going on with this most…. civic of fairy tales (cautionary tale?… fable? morality play?… whatever). I will, however, address the New Reader.

New Reader? The fun (and real value) to be found in the Wakefield Doctrine lies not in being able to immediately identify Lady Godvia as a roger, her, kind-of-a-jerk, husband as a scott and …and poor Tom as a clark. It does not. The real fun (and value to ourselves, as people trying to better understand the people in our lives), lies in accepting that we have the qualities of all three of the characters in this story. ( One would represent our predominant worldview, and ‘the other two’ as our secondary and tertiary aspects, which, of course, our potential to be better (or worse) people.)

(While the more experienced Readers giggle in the back of the class and compose their smart-assed, but nevertheless perceptive interpretations of this Tale, lets review the three personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine):

  • clarks are the ‘personality type’ that results from growing up as ‘the Outsider’. Through no fault of their own (though, they will go through life suspecting that there was something that was their fault…but that’s a whole ‘nother Post), clarks seek to learn how to live the best life possible, they place their stock in understanding the world, and believe that what they think is missing (in their lives) is knowable and rational. They are very creative, funny and (they) see the rules of social order as just another interesting thing about all the real people around them
  • scotts are identified by the coping strategies that have allowed wolves, lions, dogs and other predators to thrive through history.  scotts are impulsive and decisive, mercurial and sentimental, for them the world is very simple: wake up… eat, protect the pack, be alert to threats and opportunity in the day, reproduce (of course! metaphorically as well as literal! knucklehead!) and sleep. scotts are the first pick for captain …of the other team (lol…. no, think about it a little….) (if you’re reading this you were in the other team… not the first team)  they are great best friends and scary adversaries
  • rogers are the people who grow up and develop their coping skills knowing that they are ‘a part of’, they belong. rogers live (and thrive) in a world that is quantifiable, understandable, predictable ( in an unpredictable way) and above all has Rules…. rogers live searching for the Right Way (to do things) and will go all out to help others engaged in this task… the Yearbook Committee?  pretty much all rogers (with one clark or so to do the stupid work)

ok.

You now know what is necessary in order to understand why we are identifying our three main characters as we are….lets open the Post for Comments.

(New Readers?  the real fun lies in what is really required to successfully  identify another’s worldview, i.e. you need to see the world as the other person is experiencing it.  So…. Lady Godiva’s husband?  so he says, ‘sure, I’ll lower taxes if you ride naked through the streets of town’…. bet that guy had a supply of banana peels, seltzer bottles and whoopee cushions around the palace and, that naked part?  And Godiva?  issue a proclamation (aka a Law)… that she would ride naked (implying that she would be exposed to all) but then say…. ‘you can’t look’  god! how many times in high school did we have to deal with that kind of behavior!  … Tom?  clark…clark…clark  oh man, dude! you don’t have to make things so difficult for yourself… she doesn’t care!)

 

* did we mention how the Doctrine is predicated on reality being personal?  that last sentence is the perfect example of what we mean by personal reality.

Share
Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

mondae -the Wakefield Doctrine- (to continue with our lesson… ‘what good does it do to know this stuff?’)

January 19, 2015 By

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

Friend of the Doctrine 'Mel' with a hat in 'Michigan' (from our series: 'Didn't I see the Doctrine in…')

Friend of the Doctrine Mel, with a hat in ‘Michigan’
(from our series: ‘Didn’t I see the Doctrine in…’)

(Towards the end of last week’s Posts, we began to look at a ‘problem’ reported by our friend, Cynthia:

“Outsider. This could be my motto for life. I’m surrounded by rogers and um…ya know…have figured out that the office environment…well…let’s just hope the rogers don’t gang up on me and kick my ass.”

this ‘problem’ serves us well, both as an illustration of the Doctrine as a tool of understanding and as a tool for self-helping ourselfs. By this I mean, (that) when we feel uncomfortable in a social context, the source (of the feeling) is ‘without’. We are charged by the Doctrine* to never forget that the responsibility (for the feeling) is ‘within’.

… the answer to the question posed in our subtitle?

( Here’s a funny thing. In answer to my rhetorical question,  I started to write: ‘it depends on a person’s predominant worldview..’  Which, of course, would have been a followed by an explanation of how, of the three personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine, clarks are the only ones who need the insight that is available.  But then, I stopped. And I thought to myself, I thought, “Wait a minute!! You’re about to be wrong!! The benefits of the use of the Wakefield Doctrine, as a perspective on the behavior of those around us, is not limited, constrained, defined or otherwise affected by a person’s worldview! It’s the same for scotts and rogers as it is for clarks.)

the Wakefield Doctrine is one more way to perceive the world we live in. It is not the Answer. It is not (even) an Answer. It is way that allows a person to come closer to seeing the world as the other person is experiencing it.

If you are inclined to feel apart from the world, wonder if there is something that everyone knows that you do not, then the you might be living in the personal reality of the Outsider (clarks);
If you are impulsive and emotional (without taking people….personally) and yet are surprised (but not overly concerned) when people get exasperated with your suggestions to ‘do something/anything’, then you might be living in the personal reality of the Predator (scotts) and
If you are living and, the odd thing is that you’re curious about this Doctrine thing, in a world that, while challenging is and can be quite satisfying, even with the seeming reluctance (and, at times it seems, stubbornness ) of those around you to do it the Right Way, then you may very well be in the worldview of the Herd Member (rogers)…

all three of these perspectives are the ways that people relate themselves to the world around them. Consider that, ‘the other person’, today is dealing with the same situation (as you are), however, they are experiencing it from one of these three perspectives. But remember, although knowing this does not change them, knowing this might change you.

 

 

* the Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them

Share
Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: , , , ,

TToFreeze -the Wakefield Doctrine- (ok! ok!!! here’s number 8…don’t tempt me into re-posting this on the theme of 8s!)

January 10, 2015 By

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

20150106_100838_resized

you might have to click on the photo to enlarge it enough to see the temperature on the dashboard…14F

…you want to hear something weird? As I sat down and started writing this Post, I had a flashback to when I was a kid in the 1960s when the Catholic Church introduced Saturday evening Mass. There was a movement in the Roman Catholic church to liberalize the faith, (perhaps better to say, ‘liberalize the practice of the faith’,  and please now don’t hold me to the chronology …it was the 1960s), but I think the progression was: changing from all Latin Mass, removing the prohibition against eating meat on Fridays, and then having a Mass on Saturday evening that ‘counted as going to Sunday Mass’. Now, I’m not saying that Posting on Friday evening is the same as going to Saturday Mass, instead of Sunday morning Mass, but….   you know I was very much a clark, even back then, at age…say 5 or 6… I seem to recall reacting to (these) changes with thoughts along the lines of concern.  It’s interesting, this sensitivity to change in a clark, something you would associate with rogers.  (I recall taking piano lesson when I was about 12. Being a clark, naturally, I was semi-precocious, and I took to the lessons pretty easily. The drawback was that even then, as a clark, I thought of learning to play the piano as a ticket (or at very least, a socially-negotiable skill) to acceptance. I would daydream about playing and impressing people. (clarks reading this will recognize the poignantly incorrect use of the term ‘impress people’… that it was not to make them feel envious of my skill, rather it was to trade my efforts (to acquire it) for their acceptance of me as a real person.)

Anyway….here we are Friday night. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing a TToT Post on a Friday Night!! It just so happens that I have amore (no!! no!!! a more than busy day…. a more! that’s what I meant!!)  so it’s good that I can get this post out of the way early.

1) the photo up at the top? that is, I believe, Monday morning in my car, on my way back from Hell Hollow Rd (Voluntown CT). It was very cold. But there was no snow on the ground and so my opening Grat Item is: no snow….at least up until today.

2) hey! Una and I went for a walk today!  (I managed to get home before dark and thought, well, why the hell not?) Here is the vid:

3) as I mentioned in the video, I feel like doing some video Items, so lets start out with one of the first TToT video Posts…last Summer (or maybe that was the Summer before)

4) I am grateful for ‘the youtube’ for the car videos… now just so Christine doesn’t feel that it’s just me …what with the driving and filming and such, following is a video from a couple of years ago, on a Saturday Night Drive… there were two real people in the car with me and 2 people, ‘in the dashboard’…

5) [This place reserved for a photo taken while on the road tomorrow…. requests are being accepted….only requirements: unlikely place, found in New England, interesting, but not too girlish…]

6) Working with a young, new agent at the office. (By ‘new’ I mean, in ‘the business’ about a year or so… by ‘young’ I mean 24 years old…by ‘working with’ I mean the kid’s a clark… aiyee! I’m learning (against my will and otherwise) a lot about myself…lol  but, that’s what this personality theory of ours is for, right?

7) Some might call this too inconsequential to be on a grat list, but:  I’m grateful for knowing people like Lizzi, (though any number of you out there might have come up with something as fun as the expression), ‘Thursday’s kind of the Tuesday of the end of the week.’  (…from ‘the Facebook’ this week).

8)

imagejpeg_alex   20150110_113454_resized

9) (Hey! that second video? In it, I believe I stated that #9 was ‘sense of direction’ as in being grateful for the clark’s natural sense of direction…

10) Got to say I’m so grateful for the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)… as the old saying goes,  “If it’s not in ‘the Book’ then you must be mistaken!!”   lol… yeah, getting kind of late, will have to get up early tomorrow and finish this here Post here.

 

Ten Things of Thankful

 

 Your hosts

Join the Ten Things of Thankful Facebook Group


Share
Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »