relationships | the Wakefield Doctrine

L -the Wakefield Doctrine- Lock-in age

April 14, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

So one day, a number of years ago, I happened to be walking along the sidewalk in a typical small New England town. It was typical in that the ‘downtown’ area was one street lined with plate glass storefronts that invited customers to learn to dance, save their money, pick up their prescriptions and have the soles of their shoes repaired. There was a large greco-romanesque library at one end of Main Street (overlooking the Park) and on the other end, (just before the Flying Horses merry-go-round), there was an ice cream parlor. The cars were required to park at an angle to the sidewalk and all the parking meters were double-headed. (5, 10 and 25 cent coins only). The day of my insight into temporary immortality, (or maybe it’s better to say suspension of aging), it was an early cloudless morning, around 10:30. As I walked down the sidewalk, (mindful of avoiding inflicting spinal damage on my Mom), I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a figure walking on the opposite side of the street. Curious who the only other person out walking down the sidewalks of Main Street might be, I turned my head a tiny little bit to increase my powers of recognition. (He was), male, with a similar color sports coat, walking in the same direction and, oddly, he was slowing down and turning his head. (Gestalts, being the incubi of the intellect that they are, quit being coy, and recognizability was restored), it was me.
To be precise, I was seeing myself reflected in the plate glass window on the opposite side of Main Street, at approximately 10:32 on a weekday morning. Naturally, I laughed out loud, although there was no one around (I’m a clark, you see, so that was totally a normal and appropriate reaction to the world that I live in).

…as I continued along the sidewalk, no longer alone, the question formed in my mind, in the split second when I recognized the figure as a reflection and, yet, did not recognize the person, ‘who was I expecting to see’?

I was expecting to see me, at the age of about 27 or 28.

We’re all aware of the concept of body image, (the) persistent standard of physical characteristics that we all maintain of ourselves. It only makes sense that we might hold a version of our appearance in our minds, not on a level of constant comparison or (conflict) with our actual appearance, but simply ‘picture of ourselfs’… the person we should see in the mirror. (the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that there are everyday concepts and ideas that are a part of our lives and the world around us that are not so ‘ objective reality’ based. Like the notion of personal reality, (aka worldviews), real as we experience them, and yet are not shared by others. Not exactly hammer-solid objective, the-apple-always-falls-to-the-ground reality, but our capacity to accept these ideas and notions opens up a whole world of understanding not available any other way.)

Back to our ‘lock-in age’.
I found people who would listen to my story without laughing or (getting mad) and it seems that we all have a lock-in age. Provided, of course, we have the imagination to sneak a peek at our semi-subconscious mind. Fortunately, having that kind of curiosity and imagination and love of new ideas is a prerequisite for understanding the Wakefield Doctrine. I’ve had no problem finding people to talk to about this idea of ‘stopping the passing of time’.
Everyone that I’ve talked to so far has been able to determine when their core-self-image (of what they look like) stopped changing, stopped ‘keeping up with the passage of time, if you will. Now, here’s where it getting difficult to describe! (lol, yeah I know…. all I had to do was pay attention in English class in High School and no of us would be struggling with this little story)….

“…we stop getting old when we reach the point when we have everything that we expected from life.”

(yeah, that’s it for now. One little clue/qualification… this ‘what we expect‘ thing? don’t limit it to what you consciously think you know about yourself…. I’m talking about what we learn about life when we were young…. 2 or 3 or 7 years old…stuff that you may never have realized that you ‘believe’ (about life). That kind of thing. We grow up thinking we know what life is about and we grow up believing what life is about…)

* un-attached Asterix there is a Special Case, allowable when there is massive life trauma (physical, emotional, whatever)…that can be the trigger point of a lock-in.

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

K -the Wakefield Doctrine- Kýrie, eléison (…the blues, through the ages)

April 13, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

Kýrie, eléison is what I have for the Letter ‘K’ and a reasonable person might ask, “why clark? lord have mercy, that’s an odd choice.” I searched for words that began with ‘K’ and, if the truth be known, a good supply of cool words that begin with the letter ‘K’, among which are kelvin, Knesset and kumquat. Unfortunately they all felt… contrived. Sure, the Wakefield Doctrine has no limits in application, it is, after all, simply a perspective on the world around us. The Wakefield Doctrine, for all it’s claims to efficacy of predicting behavior and choices and it’s, at times frightening internal consistency (e.g. that scotts have short attention spans, that clarks tend to mumble and …and! that rogers make up the majority of those bicycle herds that will be seen increasingly as the winter melts into Spring, all riding along the road in overly-expensive bicycles, wearing spandex covered in corporate logos with a ridiculous amount of equipment, including but not limited to: water bottles (yeah, plural more than one…what, are they planning on riding across a desert?? there’s a at least 2 Cumberland Farms and 1 McDonalds along their route!)…that and a silly mirror attached to their aerodynamic helmets (“g forces encountered!! we’re approaching 23 miles per hour…hang on!!) and lastly, they wear what can only be described as…. (whats the name of certain type of lingerie… chamosille? negligé ?) they will have those fanny packs on their belt, around the small of the back…. god! who other than a male roger would wear such a thing??)

… sorry. So, back to the dearth of ‘K’s. (I did find a last minute reference to ‘ki’ which is a variation of ‘chi’ which is something that those of us who have delved into the world of martial arts find totally interesting. But, alas, too late.)

Why Kýrie, eléison? Well, the odd thing was that this was not a word from a look-up list. It’s a memory fragment of growing up catholic, back in the day of Latin Masses. And, of all the non-understood phrases, refrains and liturgical responses, that made up a mass, Kyrie remains my memory. Today was the first time I went to the trouble to look it up. From our friends at ‘the wikipedia’:

Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek Κύριε (Kyrie), vocative case of Κύριος (Kyrios), on whose meaning see Kyrios (biblical term), is a common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, also called the Kyrie eleison /ˈ k ɪər i .eɪ ɨ ˈ l eɪ .ɨ s ɒ n / (Greek: Κύριε, ἐλέησον, Kýrie eléison, “Lord, have mercy”)

… ‘Lord have mercy‘ got the Delta blues intonation immediately.

The theme of my ‘A-to-what?! April Blog Challenge’ is the Wakefield Doctrine, so I better say a word about the Doctrine, no? religion: clarks are spiritual, rogers are religious and scotts are the reason we say, ‘Lord have mercy!’

* ever notice that you never see a herd of bicyclists stopped at a, like, Cumberland Farms or 7 11?

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

‘J’ -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘jokes are the billboards on the road through our worldviews‘ and now with cows!!

April 11, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

You want to hear something funny? (How many times have we all heard that threat?) There is much to be aware of when it comes to jokes and the three worldviews that will serve us well in our efforts to better understand the people in the world around us. Mostly that we can laugh. That, as the old saying reminds us, ‘…the capacity to make jokes is what separates man from ….women’ (bar ump bump!! ) no! wait! I kid women, but this is no laughing matter.

This is abundantly clear in the case of scotts. scottian men are the best of joke tellers. (for them), jokes are the condiments, the way to spice up the prey. (no!, seriously! hear me out!) Go to a party (or any other social gathering), see that group of people laughing? at the center will be your scott and he will be telling jokes. not just any jokes! funny jokes. jokes that are nearly as funny in the ‘set up’, as they are in the punchline. And, if you stay long enough, you will see a curious thing happen. (Appropriate to the demographic of the people gathered around), the jokes of the scott will not only become funnier, they will become more… more outrageous, more scatological, more risqué (to borrow a word that will eliminate any doubts as to my own worldview). And, as we watch this group, you’ll see some people leave, offended by the jokes. and it matters not at all to our scottian joke teller. In fact, that’s kinda what he’s after. This telling of jokes to an audience at a social gathering illustrates a number of things about scotts: a) they are all about ‘being paid attention to’, 2) they are confident and c) they are looking to dominate their prey. And so the joke escalation continues until there is only a handful of clarks and maybe 2 rogers left.

(scottian females? oh, they’re funny too, but on a much more retail basis. they don’t need to attract their prey by telling jokes, their prey walks up to them, (if they’re rogers, and they mostly will be, they’ll have a salt shaker in one hand and a bottle of A1 sauce in the other…lol), and hopes to be selected. You’ve heard the expression: ‘like horseshoes and hand grenades? that’s jokes telling as exhibited by scottian women and scottian men.)

Won’t even try to provide a video sample of a scottian joke teller.

I will, however, provide examples of rogerian and clarklike joke tellers:

roger:

clark:

Watch this space for this Week’s TToT…later today. (Preview: one of the Items of Thankful will not be the ‘Anti-Meridian April Blog Challenge’)

(damn my over-exaggerated sense of playing by ‘the Rule’…even secret Rules I can’t add the link unless I at very least start the TToT List)

1) hypo-grateful for the Zhhee-heee-hee April BlogChallenge, getting less and less fun with each passing letter.

2) grateful that I have only 15 more letters to go!

3) grateful for Hospital exits. I visited someone who was in the hospital this week. Even as a clark, not known for feeling grateful and such, my gratitude was palpable as I walked out of the room and down the corridor and out of the building….

4) the work I do that is increasingly difficult (yeah, I’m sure there’s a Grat Item in that, saving it for later…)

5) SBoR/BoSR (chapter 4 sub section n.3) If the promise to return to complete the List is made prior to completing [said List] at least half of the list needs to be like written out and, …and! the numbers typed out so we don’t. like. forget or anything

6) (4:53)… brief interlude… went to a memorial service (which I tend to like the idea of, as opposed to the more traditional Wake-Funeral-Graveyard…. more for the living the departed, but then, what is the reality for everyone, (other than the deceased)…It (the service) was for someone who was a member of circle of friends that dates back to the early 80’s. Amazing how much there is between today and 1980! Probably the closest I’ll every get to a High School Reunion…

7) not snowing and half comfortable air temperature… totally grateful for that

8) grateful for my co-hostinae and their support for my valiant effort at the A-B-Me April blog Challenge, the part that is giving most of the difficulty is not the writing (of a Post), it coming up with a word with the correct letter. (Don’t tell anyone. But this morning? I wrote about 450 words on the topic ‘Infer’…. yeah, I know)

9) hey!! hey! Lizzi!!! (you want to see a GV get totally swept off her ethereal feet, by a gesture of daring and affection? I took a video and, as Tony Montana said, “this is my gift to you” (to that new GV, ya know?)

10) 1.3!!

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Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

I -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘Intellect’ ( yeah, no! really….)

April 10, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

intellect
[in-tl-ekt]

noun

1. the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge (from dictionary.com)

(Am I the only one who reads this actual dictionary definition and thinks, “holy shit! clarks, rogers and scotts! Who told them about the Doctrine?!”

Christine mentioned earlier in the week that she had exhausted her supply of pre-written Posts and wondered, “…I have now come to the end of my pre-written posts. It’s gonna get rocky up at the coop!” Later in the week, in an IM exchange, she mentioned that, “I actually have the dictionary out (paper kind, because tech version isn’t helpful in this case) trying to find some inspiration.” Naturally, I saw what a great idea this was and replied, ‘what a great idea! flip the pages and point to a word at random… Topics based on this method are surely just as valid as are found in some of the Posts in the A-2-Knee April Blog Challenge! (titles such as, ‘Kittens and Cats…the Untold Story‘ or ‘Movies and Motion Pictures….is Hollywood trying to trick us?’)
In any event, I took my own advice last night and went looking for a hardcopy dictionary…. and looked and looked. The best I could come up with was an old German to English Dictionary. It had those little tab things, for each letter? (These were clearly the pre-google ‘search box’ of the hardcopy era). I found the ‘I’ tab, and flipping through the pages without looking, stuck my finger on the page at random and got…. intellect.

Once again, the world writes my Post.

btw: I saw someone on ‘the Facebook’ write on ‘invisibility’ and I thought, ‘damn! I wish I had thought of that first.’ Invisibility is a quality that clarks possess and there are times when it is such a heightened state that you would swear that we are, in fact, invisible. Ask any clark. We are always half in the social underbrush in terms of presence, but there are days when we wake up and we are surprised at how un-noticeable a person can be in ‘real’ life.

I laughed*. Because, as a people, we are accustomed to the synchronistic and the odd, random coincidence.

*clarks tend to laugh too much. Not so much inappropriately, rather we laugh instead of accepting the emotional gravity of a situation. We laugh to show that we are not too…. involved, invested, that we’re ok if it turns out badly, hedging our bets, emotionalistically speaking and we laugh because…”hey we’re laughing so how can this be?…and besides, how can you not accept a person who laughs?

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

H -the Wakefield Doctrine- Herd Member

April 9, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

‘Herd Member’ is, of course, the behavioral paradigm of our rogerian friends.

The ‘Herd’ is not simply a figurative reference to others of like mind or interests, it is (also) a reference to the quantifiable/knowable nature of the world (as experienced by those growing up and developing in the rogerian worldview. When a roger says something about how, ‘that’s simply the way it’s done‘ or ‘it’s always been that way‘ or ‘you can’t fight City Hall‘, he/she is not referring to a specific group of people, but to the force of tradition, the power of inertia.

As we all know, part of the mission, the true ambition, of the Wakefield Doctrine is to understand/appreciate, to genuinely know the reality of ‘the other two’ worldviews. The amazing thing about the Wakefield Doctrine is the efficacy of (it’s) description of how a clark or a scott or a roger experiences the world:

how clarks are optimistic and yet fear hope…
how scotts love the attention of the people around them, yet fear their own appetite (for this attention), and
the way rogers, always searching for the Perfect Way/the Right Way, while still having to contend with their own drive to simply imitate what they see others before them have done… safe, but un-satisfying.

Impressive insight, I know!* However there is much more to be discovered, far inside the reality of the three personality types. The challenge lies in the fact that there are things, ideas, concepts that exist in the reality of rogers (and scotts) that simply do not exist in my Outsider worldview, so how do I see what does not exist for me?

A couple of years ago, I tried writing ‘real life’ scenaria, in order to illustrate the kinds of (different) choices clarks and scotts and rogers make when confronting everyday situations. I wrote one about waiting to interview for a job in a restaurant. (In this scenario), our character (Emma…or maybe it was Emily) arrived on time for her interview, but the place was very busy. The owner/cook was in the kitchen, barely keeping up with the orders and the only waitress was running around like crazy and our Emily was told to have a seat (at the only empty table in the place) and wait. I then proposed how our heroine might act. Actually, I proposed three different course of actions (three worldviews, right?). One of the options for Emily: to get up and start ‘bussing’ tables, helping wherever possible, such as clearing off empty tables. Of course, I had two other suggested ways for Emily to respond to having to wait for her appointment.
I presented the scenario to a roger and her response (to the option of getting up and helping out) was to say, ‘what?! that’d be crazy! she can’t do that!!’ Her response was so… heartfelt and unequivocal that I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. I immediately sought out another known roger and…. the same reaction!! “No way!! if she wants the job that’s the perfect way to be assured of not getting it!!” Naturally I was intrigued and began to suspect that I’d stumbled upon ‘an artifact’ of the rogerian worldview that was totally invisible to me, i.e. did not exist in my personal reality.
The clues were not the simple disagreement with the suggestion that Emily help out while she sat waiting, the clues were in the level of emotion that manifested (in the roger’s objection to this course of action).

The result: the discovery of ‘referential authority’. I might save a full discussion of this for the letter ‘R’, suffice it to say, that when a roger wishes to compel another to act a certain way, they will almost always invoke a power/authority that is outside… outside of themselves, outside of the person they are trying to compel. A separate source.
“Well, I understand how you feel, clark, I sympathize, I really do but my hands are tied… you know how it is” or ” well, because that’s what the manual/the company policy/common sense requires of me in this situation. You understand, don’t you?” or “I really wish I could, I even argued your case, but the powers that be…you can’t fight City Hall.” …. “I really hope we can continue to be friends… you know, it’s just something I have to do.” …”Just wait until your father gets home.” “If you ever hope to get a boyfriend, you need to start acting like everyone else…I just don’t understand why you need to always act so weird.”

what? oh, yeah. So that’s how we discovered the rogerian concept of ‘referential authority’

Hey!! speaking of scotts…. I was communicating with our friend Christine and she had an idea that I think I’ll try. Flipping through a paper dictionary and getting a truly random word… something in a ‘J’ is next, I think…. all I need to do is find a paper dictionary!

* lol… hey! I’m trying!