self-improvement | the Wakefield Doctrine

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

August 17, 2020 By clarkscottroger

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

Looks like Summer is showing signs of breaking out in terminal autumn. Nothing un-ignorable as of yet… the beginnings of fade, individual leafs and such at this point. However, the overall effect is to leave one vulnerable to a did-I-really-see-that glance, maybe shifting your eyes as you drive, trying to locate an odd sound and when you return to the road ahead, it seems a bit more distant than you recall.

But enough of this ‘psychoanalyzin’ and dramatizin” as a certain woman from my way-distant past used to admonish we students.

This is still the Wakefield Doctrine blog. And it’s primary purpose has not changed. The reason for the blog is to make the incredibly useful perspectives it offers available to the largest number of people possible. To this end, is a more personal and specific goal (or, as I mistyped, gaol, which makes for a satisfyingly obtuse wordplay*).

The challenge I long since accepted is this: write a post that allowed the Reader to understand and apply the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine after reading it once. Whether or not, especially, if not, they’d encountered this blog prior to reading the post. This would be ‘the perfect Wakefield Doctrine post’. Still working on it.

(what? now?!?! it’s like, ‘five to’ you-gots-to-get-to-the-real-world!!)

(damn, that old saying is still true***)

The Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective of the world around us and the people who make it up. Based on the notion that all of us are born with the capacity to experience life in one of three characteristic ways: as would an Outsider(clarks), as a Predator(scotts) or the Herd Member(rogers). Each of these three inform the personal reality of the individual and, at an early age, we all settle into one, (and only one), of them. While we never lose the capacity to live in the world of ‘the other two’, the context in which we develop our style of interacting with the objective world, (aka personality), is reflected in which of the three worldviews of the Doctrine we exhibit.

When we learn the qualities of the three predominant worldviews, we’re in a position to know more about the other person than they know about themselves. The reason for this: by knowing the nature of the three realities, we can know how the other person is relating themselves to the world around them. (Not, ‘how the other person is relating to the world around them, but how they are relating themselves. Critical difference.)

By observing the relationship of, (the other person), to their world, we are then able to know most of their personal qualities, predilections, foibles and ….and favorite colors! (no, not this last****) And, of course, the more we know about the other person, the more we can predict how they act and interact. And, of further course, the process of learning more and more about another person requires us to identify with them. If we have the faith/self-confidence/desperation to put ourselves at risk by identifying with another person, our self-understanding can only grow.

Lastly, by attempting and failing to write the perfect Wakefield Doctrine post, we cannot help but to self-improve ourselfs. Seeing how, having all three qualities within, by identifying with clarks, scotts and rogers, we must come to accept the good and the bad of the totality of ourselves. Not easy. Always beneficial.

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Don’t forget to share it and send it out to wherever you can, who knows who might read it and, rushing to their phone/computer/fax machine, sending the message, “By George I think I’ve got it!”

* jar, jar** as Friend-of-the-Doctrine, Clairepeek used to say/type

** her native language was Norwayian…. or..to play it safe, Scandinavish… (sorry, Claire… let us make it up to you in our music vid.

*** ‘When the Master is still in the bathroom, the Student walks to the front of the class and shares what they know‘

**** just a little personality survey joke

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 20, 2020 By clarkscottroger

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

Know how cool the Wakefield Doctrine is?

…besides knowing more about the other person than you have any right to, given that you saw them for the first time as they joined the raffle ticket spaced line at the supermarket.

It, the Doctrine, not the line at the supermarket, also allows you to better know your-own-self.

How? (You ask, rather rhetorically, seeing how you’re ‘out there’ while I’m still here typing. Hell, I haven’t even hit Publish yet. Damn! This is metaphysical gold!)

New Readers: If you’re here for the first time, we’re serious with the single word question. While it normally requires more than one data point* to figure out a person’s predominant worldview, aka personality type: clark(Outsider); scott(Predator) or roger(Herd Member), the process is simple.

Learn the nature of the (three personality types) relationship to the world around them along with their overt characteristics. Then, when you’re standing in the line, eliminate the one that, ‘There’s no fricken way they’re a ….” That leave two worldviews. Now observe as much as you can, without getting creepy or arrested, and one will make more sense than the other. Another analogy:

The three worldviews are distinct ways a person sees, (actually, the right word is ‘experience’), the world around them. Think of them, (the worldviews), as lenses at the optometrist and see which one produces the clearest, truest image. You know, “Look at the image. Is this one [click] clearer than [click] this one? Now, how about [click] this one?” Thats how we determine the worldview of the people around us and get a secret box-seat to their lifes and times and such.

Back to our special quality.

The cool thing is how the Doctrine, even as it allows us to better understand the world and the people who make it up, is a tool for self-improving ourselfs. And the key to this lies in the stated ambition/goal of learning and applying the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, ‘How do I relate myself to the world around me.’

As always, this: I said ‘How do I relate myself…’ I did not say, ‘How do I relate to the world around me.’

Know the difference and the pilot light flashes green and you in business.

(Useful, btw, in any situation, not just figuring out another’s predominant worldview. If you find yourself in a conflict with someone, something, some event in the ‘real’ world, ask the question: How am I relating myself to the world around me.**)

* ‘ceptin, maybe a scott, specifically ‘the eyes of a scott‘ One of the more fun and amazing things about this here Doctrine here.

** don’t forget to use the correct wording! a short cut will only reinforce the problem.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: predicting human behavior, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Monday* -the Wakefield Doctrine- “for Outsiders (aka clarks), asterisks are the ‘X marks the spot’ written in nearly invisible ink’

July 6, 2020 By clarkscottroger

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

Thats right, you do see what appears to be an infant in a WWII leather helmet.*

*as to the ‘why are you seeing an infant in a vintage pilot helmet’ you’re just going to have to read the post.**
** ok, seeing how you’re still reading, paragraph 8

Before we get started, a quick note to New Readers: three personal realities; highly reliable identification; learn more about the other person than they know about themselves. Try the middle column, back on the homepage. Any of the three will get you started. Questions? Best way to sort through things and get started.

Speaking of New Readers, a long established insight is, if a person comes back here and reads a post more than once, its a lead-pipe cinch they are a clark. If not, they’re a scott or a roger with a significant secondary clarklike aspect. This observation is less significant than its meant to be reassuring to those who feel there’s something to this thing and just want it to start making sense.

Should this apply to you, I hate to say it, but you picked a bad post to start your education in the Wakefield Doctrine. But then again, who am I to say what kind of post is most likely to encourage a Reader to connect the dots that are starting to appear.

That said, we need to continue the conversation begun in yesterday’s post. The topic: How best to learn the language of ‘the other two’ predominant worldviews of the Wakefield Doctrine?

(Reminder: the predominant worldviews that account for the existence of the three ‘personality types’ of the Doctrine are, for all intents and purposes, reality. The reality, the world of each of the three types. To wit: A place where one is intrinsically separate and apart from; a world where everything surrounding us is predator or prey and a place that is established, with rules that exist separate and apart from the person who finds themselves in the middle of.)

While our theory of clarks, scotts and rogers does, for reasons less understood than totally enjoyed, describe the characteristic behaviors and social strategy ‘go to(s)’ of each of the three, we can only infer the nature/character of the world they are inhabiting. These, admittedly superficial, descriptions allow us to infer what it is like to be in the reality of the predominant worldviews other than our own. We cannot, as of yet, know what it is like to be: a clark, scott or a roger unless (it) is our reality.

Fortunately, the Doctrine provides that, while we settle (and develop) in only one of the three realities, we retain the potential, the capacity, to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. Unfortunately, we’re limited in how far into the (other) worldviews we can be aware of, due to our lack of language.

So, lets return briefly to our language metaphor. Mentioned towards the end of yesterday’s post, we likened the experience of one’s predominant worldview as being the one, of three countries, that we flew over as tiny, babies, the country in which our plane landed. (Sure, you can misconstrue my words as implying that we were the pilots, but if you choose that interpretation, then we’ll have to insist that you include, in your visual, wearing those leather helmets from the wars of the last century and, as long as we’re in the 1900s, you’re flying a B-25 type airplane. Because, well, you’re a baby and can’t really be too choosy.)

Without claiming any qualification for understanding linguistics or the teaching of foreign languages, (this properly falls in Cynthia’s domain), I will assert that, for our purposes, one’s native language is a major element in the fabric of a person’s reality. To genuinely experience another culture, it surely must be necessary to be so fluent as to be thinking in that (land’s) language.

Otherwise, like Denise‘s trip to Paris, France, we are walking, as confidently as our little ‘Let’s Speak French’ books can help, hoping to encounter situations we studied up on. You know, a bistro or a cafe (with an accent over the ‘e’) or a guy with a beret or a young woman wearing black-silk stockings and smoking a Gauloise.

The Wakefield Doctrine is our little book. It is better than nothing. (For that matter, compared to the guides to other personal realities available in all those other ‘personality theories’ it is better than anything else available.)

Tomorrow, let’s meet here again and I will relate the story of ‘The Discovery of Referential Authority’.

(though I’d love to take credit for being consciously clever with this choice of music vids, once again, the award goes to the iceberg part of my mind.)

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

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “When time loses it’s invisible stays, and world serves only as stepping stones.”

July 5, 2020 By clarkscottroger

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

Before I move too far beyond last night’s Wakefield Doctrine call-in, let me try and, at least, preserve the structure, if not the insights, uncovered by Denise, Cynthia and YHN.*

To the topic: How best to acquire and develop a fluency in the language of ‘the other two’ worldviews.

New Readers: The Wakefield Doctrine holds that we, all of us, live in one of three personal realities:

the reality of the Outsider(clarks) Those who seek to understand life by flyers retrieved from trash bins in the parking lot of the local shopping mall, advertisements in magazines on the pages three further back than the last ‘(cont’d on Page 35)’ and the obvious, (to us, at any rate), subtexts of time-honored fairy tales, zen koans and religious parables. clarks are kinda all around you, but aren’t big on being noticeable.

the world of the Predator(scotts) If you want something done right away, (and quality of the finish is not paramount), get yourself a scott. Their motto, (not that they would spend too much time trying to create one, but, that being said, get it, (the motto, not the Scott), embroidered on a jacket and they will wear it down to the liner. Think: wolves, lions and the Tasmanian Devil (of Warner Brothers fame). If that hint makes you think of: police, exotic dancers, high wire performers, waitresses that are, without resorting to anything illegal, putting three kids through private school, surgeons and/or boy’s gym teacher… check in with us down in the comments. You have the kind of mind we’re always on the lookout for.

the life of the Herd Member(roger) Precise and meticulous, gossipy and vain. If the people who live the life of a Herd Member did not demonstrate these traits, I would not: get on an airplane, refuse to trust refrigerated chicken salad and have anything read that was enjoyable but pointless.

The thing about the three personal realities is that a) they are realities and 2) what other systems call personality types, we call: “Hey! Try growing up from infancy in the world of (Outsider/Predator/Herd Member and see what kinds of quirks, strengths and peccadilloes cover you like dandruff in a blacklight factory.” We’re all just trying to live life. However, it is the height of nativity** to think that the social strategies and tactics that result in success when living in the shadows, (as a clark) will do anything good while roaming the savannah, (as a Predator), looking for a place to get a drink of water. The critical thing to remember: each of the three personal realities of the Wakefield Doctrine, (aka predominant worldviews), are real to the person experiencing it. The goal and the benefit of the Doctrine lies in understanding and accepting the fact of these three personal realities. Appreciating how, (differently), the other person might be experiencing a shared situation is the secret to understanding them.

Note: we are born with the potential for any of the three. We all settle into one, (and only one), in our earliest lives. We never lose the capacity to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. (Try thinking of it this way: you just got born, you’re on a plane and it flies over three countries. You grow up and speak the language of the country the plane lands in.)

We, as students of the Wakefield Doctrine, are in a language class.

So, Cynthia, she be saying, “Language is easier to acquire when you’re young and not particularly concerned with the rules of grammar or how silly you sound when you pronounce ‘Parlez vous, francais’, as: “Parly vu huma huma’***

“Children,” she continued, “tend to listen and listen, imitate the sounds and then, at a certain point, put things together and speak the language. Not burdened by grammar or rules of rhetoric, they just do it.”

This so makes sense. Unfortunately, Cynthia went on to infer that the older a person gets, the more difficult it becomes to acquire a new language.

Luckily for us, Denise chimed in with, ‘Those rogers are so obvious with their anything-for-a-reaction’ responses to an ordinary social interaction. Plus, they always recognize their own and that serves to increase the pressure on our hypothetical language student. At least there’s no shortage of people speaking it around us.”

Hey! YHN here. This is too big a topic for one post. Lets continue it later. Comments will be appreciated. And, New Readers? Remember: ‘There are no stupid questions. Only your questions.’

* Your Humble Narrator … that kinda gets a certain post-Elizabethan vibe I’ve always been partial to, this sensibility a bit heighten by comments exchanged with a participant (The Vintage Toy Advertiser) over at the Six Sentence Story bloghop. I found cause to reference a character from a Michael Moorcock book from back in the the (The Dancers at the End of Time).

** minor rogerian expression… ha ha

*** old person warning: Cheech and Chong joke from the ’70s

music vid…cause I usually get a song in my head when writing and the best way to avoid ear worms is to play it (to replace the previous song)

anyway, here’s one of my favorite music vids for the view of a different time. If you’re old enough to have enjoyed the movie ‘Spinal Tap’ but not old enough to appreciate how different concerts were, back in the day vidi this

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 29, 2020 By clarkscottroger

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

Friend of the Doctrine, Mimi, has, in keeping with a long, non-deliberate tradition* become our current Meletus**.

So, last week in follow-up to Tuesday’s Post, Mimi said, in a comment, she said:

Leaving me to wonder (of course!) whether, because we can still choose to experience the world as “the other two” do, would the perfect personality blend be someone who chooses to use each 1/3 of the time? Of course not, but i think too much, naturally.

Good question.

I will say, in preface, there are still language issues in play, when it comes to describing and understanding the notion of predominant worldviews.

We know there are three predominant worldviews, those of:

clarks (the Outsider) those who live to learn new facts, acquire unfamiliar information and, in general, spend most of their waking hours (and sleeping dreams, (like there’s a huge difference for these guys, lol)), asking questions. Important to note, by virtue of being Outsiders, most of the questions are asked silently, however, the drive to discover the answers is unrelenting. Mostly manifested as reading and listening to everything that is said, sung, pronounced or otherwise manifested in their vicinity.
scotts (the Predator) these are the people who walk up to the abandoned package in the bus station and say, “Hey! Someone left me a present! Lets see what they got me.” As a people, they are naturally inquisitive, emphasis on the ‘natural’. They have virtually no need for reason, explanation, rationale or justification. If there is something that is all, in your face, unknown, scotts are the ones to walk up and say, “So what’s the deal?”
rogers (the Herd Members) if discovery is made and new knowledge is uncovered, then someone had better take it’s measurements so as to know what shelf or section of shelf is best suited for storing it. Information, both novel, (‘label it and store it!’), and consistent with other similar facts, figures and measures, is the mortar for the walls to be built and reinforced. The only good fact is the tried and true fact.

Predominant worldviews are a characterization of (a person’s) personal reality. Reality is personal. Not, ‘Look! In my world, I can turn my tongue inside out.‘ or ‘Us Herd Members know everyone in the world!’ (well, that’s actually true, in a rogerian sense), or even, ‘If my reality is personal I can do anything I want… lets get this baby up to a hundred and five and I’ll tell you my idea.‘ The thing of it is, there is a half-a-millimeter layer between me and the world around me. My experience of the world has to cross that teeny, tiny gap.

Here, an example from a common Doctrine scenario, and then back to Mimi’s question.

Imagine you and your scottian friend, along with one of your rogerian companions are standing on the sidewalk, across from a popular local restaurant. It’s the height of the noon rush hour. There’s a line of people out the door and up the sidewalk. Each of you ‘see’ something different. (New Reader? Consider this your first assignment: go read up on clarks, scotts and rogers; come back and tell us what you believe they see.) Or, a more useful phrasing: you and your friends are experiencing the sight of a crowded restaurant in a manner that is distinctly and characteristically, different.

The ideal personality, through means and methods not yet fully-understood, is a combination of the good qualities of each of the three hungry people standing on the less crowded side of the street, without the less-desirable qualities of the three impatient people waiting for lunch.

The area of understanding that is the focus of most our attention and is, as Mimi implies, the desired outcome of full utilization and realization of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, is how to bring our secondary and tertiary aspects into a working and balanced partnership with our predominant worldview.

(ed. note: Just re-read Mimi comment. lol yes, while doing the final edit. Where she be sayin’ ‘we can still choose to…’ and, to get all Strafford-on-Avon on you guys ‘ay, there’s the rub‘.¹)

Should be cool when we get there.

* its been our good fortune here, at the only personality theory that is both useful and fun, to always have at least one person who asks the questions that need asking. To paraphrase the old saying, “When the Teacher falters, the Student in the back of the room insists on one more clarification.”

** the guy who did most of the questioning of ‘So Crates’.***

*** yes, I did, in fact, enjoy the movie… more than I should’ve

free (future) Doc-tee to any Reader who can express the nature, (and for extra credit, the role it serves), of this peculiarly clarklike characteristic this erudite aside.

here is what is, possibly, the only Kiss song I might use here at the Doctrine: