self-improvement | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story short, impromtuous re-print Post -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 5, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Here we are in the holiday-created-no-mans-lands-day-of-the-week, Mondnesday! Aiyyee… do I get going and try to make up for the possibly-three days (or two) lost or do I relax and try to sprint into next week? If I do, can I hope for a landing in the proper (or, failing that, psycho-calendistic day that corresponds to the day I should be/could be/would be were we not interrupted by that most scottian of The Big Four Holiday, the Fourth of July?)

Yeah, now that I think of it, I really need to write more. I was going to start my Six Sentence Story, as I often do, today, for publication tomorrow. But thats like going to Church on Saturday*.

The fact of the matter there’s (was) as much to have said about the Fourth as there is about Thanksgiving, aka St. roger’s Day. Please allow for a little chrono-shrinkage in the excerpt, seeing how the 4th was yesterday instead of tomorrow. But if what I see for subtext in virtually every commercial on TV, targeting Generation Next, it won’t put them off as they (the people who are young now**) believe that if it’s not immediate then it doesn’t exist. (also the truth that small, when it comes to food, is best). That I do not get. Ask yourself, ‘When did I last see a food commercial that used a family-seated-at-a-table visual?’ Or better, if not more obscure, when did the element of shopping for the benefit of having plenty of food in the house play strongly in a commercial? The range of answers: a) I can’t remember b) never c) I think I remember but must be mistaken and d) Did I already say, ‘I can’t remember?’

Enough of the heavy chrono-cynicism. If you have any questions about the scottian worldview, just ask.

Quick reminder about the Holiday tomorrow: If you do not know that July 4th is one of the most scottian of holidays, then you need to write in one of the Comment boxes below 50 times

“scotts love loud noises, it lets them believe they can have an effect on the world“.

Seriously, picture the coming Holiday:

takes place at the height of the Summer season

eating and drinking to excess is encouraged

minimal clothing allowed in virtually all public places (including churches and hospitals)

outdoor sports activities including chasing frisbees, being dragged behind a boat and the use of explosive devices (such explosives, that were it December instead of July, a visit from Homeland Security would be the immediate result)

…minimal clothing

So for you non-scotts reading this, three July 4th Survival Tips:

stay indoors

keep the lights off and the glow of the TV shielded from windows and doors

turn up the air conditioning and ….wear extra clothes

We hope that helps.

*way, way old reference and, even then, the marginal and too-young age for this reference to apply is sketchy at best. Suffice to say, back in the Sixties, (or early Seventies), the Church introduced the Saturday Mass, which punched the avoid-a-mortal-sin card for a lot of people who found the (necessary) attendance to Sunday Mass off-putting.

** as opposed to you***

*** by definition, (and paraphrasing an old saying), “If you ask, ‘does he mean me’, he does.“

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 1, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Famous (and Doctrine fav) painting by Maximillien Luce. Man sitting on a really rudimentary bed, almost a cot (or to use the more archaic, ‘pallet’) judging by the really spindly legs under the bed which has an orange blanket the appears (in this image) to be tufted, but that wouldn’t be right for the era. The man in the photo is sitting on the edge of the bed, adjusting the cuff of his trousers (which are brown). He has on a white(wish) shirt and a tie. He has one shoe on (right foot) and the left shoe is in profile to the right of his left foot. The shoes are black and they are of a style that would come up over the ankle. (‘High tops’ would be not only anachronistic, but ‘flippant’ as the man in the painting is serious about getting dressed.) The room also has a narrow table with a blue pitcher on it. There are four pictures on the wall, the lower half of a skylight and, I can’t explain it, but what for all the world appears to be a rubber chicken suspended from the ceiling above and behind the man. The man has a beard. His eyebrows are a touch arched, one could be forgiven for thinking, ‘a roger wakes up and wonders when the world will recognize his contributions.’ This photo courtesy for the Metropolitan Museum and there is a description on the page this image was copied from:
‘This intimate scene depicts Luce’s close friend and fellow painter Gustave Perrot “getting up” and dressing as morning light streams through a garret window. Luce enlivened the traditional subject of an artist in his humble living quarters with a vivid palette of red, orange, yellow, and blue, applied in stippled brushstrokes, in keeping with the newly minted technique of pointillism. Little is known about Perrot, aside from the fact that he died young. In 1892, his brief career was remembered in a fifteen-work tribute held at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.’
(For the record I neither painted nor do I own this painting or any rights to it. image courtesy The Met.org)

Each week(end) Josie Two Shoes opens the doors of her blog and invites one and all to participate in the bloghop, Ten Things of Thankful (TToT). In the simplest of terms, theme is to recount/share/relate and retell recent, (and far distant past), experiences that have elicited a sense/emotion/feeling of gratitude. It’s easy. It’s enjoyable and, sometimes, in some circumstances, it can be quite beneficial.

The people, places and things for which I am grateful this week are:

1) Phyllis: she has the capacity to achieve and accomplish much in the world of the everyday work and life and such. She has, somehow, succeeded in maintaining that element of herself that is not bound to the concrete, conventional, objective everyday world of work and life and such. She has a tree house and enjoys the very idea of such a thing.

2) Una: those not familiar with the life, canine, might be forgiven for thinking, ‘yeah, but she’s just a dog. Nice, but not a human. She can’t talk, is limited to the things a dog does which is sleep eat, bark and need to be let out twice a day’. Una is a dog. She can communicate (with those for whom a relationship exists), does only the things that ~~a dog~~ every life form does, sleep, eat, make noise and ask for assistance. She lives her life to the fullest in each moment. I should be so fortunate to have even a 10th of her capacity to make the most of life.

3) The Wakefield Doctrine: a serendipitous intersection of perception, inspiration and reflection that resulted in a coherent perspective on life and the world and everything. It’s been a while since anyone asked, so following is the ‘Eureka Moment’ of the Wakefield Doctrine:

One day in 1981 or ’82, I was visiting my friend Scott at the music store where he worked, doing repairs on musical and electronic equipment. While I was there, a man came in with a double cassette recorder, put it on the counter and said to Scott, “This thing is brand new and it doesn’t work.” Scott looked the recorder over, noticed that it’s controls included a Volume control for each of the two cassette recorders and a single Master Volume control. The Master Volume control was set at ‘0’. Without a word, Scott turned the Master Volume up to ’10’, took a piece of black electrical tape and covered it over. He slid the recorder back over the counter and said, “All set.” The customer plugged it in, ran it through its paces (it allowed recording from one cassette to another) and everything worked perfectly. The man thanked Scott profusely and left the store. At that moment I realized that all reality is, to a degree, personal. The ‘solution’ that Scott came up with was nothing even close to what I would have thought to offer, in principle or in execution. It was, however, clearly consistent with the way that my friend interacted with the world. The Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) rose from that moment of insight.

4) Writing. It’s fun, in a horribly, painful-until-its-not and then it’s, like more fun-and-satisfying-than-almost-anything.

5) The community of the TToT (and the Six Sentence Story) and the Gravity Challenge. The internet does one thing better than anything else: it allows realities to exist (for a second, for a lifetime) that simply would not have ever existed otherwise.

6) Work. (most of the time). I watch ‘How It’s Made’ a lot. (I’m a clark, so, duh.) There are times when people are shown working at a task both simple and repetitive. At this point, I always say to Phyllis, “8 hours a day, 5 days a week.” I’ve worked at such jobs. Phyllis’ profession is of a much more…varied nature than the operation of a punch press or picking thousands of fish off the deck of a boat. This does not mean that Phyllis doesn’t work just as hard as the Peruvian, chewing coca leaves and happily weaving baskets of straw. As a matter of fact, the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that, ‘Everyone works just as hard as everyone else.’

7) ‘Home and Heart’ working on Chapter 15 for the weekend. (This will be an ‘interlude’ chapter. Sister Ryan will be creating an more and more effective social media campaign to pressure the Bernebau Company into stopping their foreclosure of her mother’s house. Drusilla Renaude and Arlen Mayhew are in the middle of getting the marketing up and running for the biggest development Crisfield MD has ever seen. The two efforts have a common point, one Cyrus St Loreto. They will be in conflict.) Go to jukepop and read and vote, please.

8) Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules)

9) (garden photos tomorrow)

details at 6

10) SR 1.3

Click on this here icon here and join them whats writing and reflecting on the gratitudinous things in life.

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

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘Found in translation’

June 19, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Just happened past this field of cows and such this morning. No! Seriously I had no idea that I’d be writing this post as I took the photo.

As we all know, ‘clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel’.

We (also) all know that…with the perspective afforded by an appreciation of the three predominant worldviews that comprise the personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine, we can know the people in our lives better than they know themselves. Even better, will can know what they will (decide to) do before they themselves do’.

So, you’re thinking, all this is well and good, so how come I still have trouble communicating with my clark/scott/roger?

There is the topic of today’s post. Communicating between personal realities, worldviews.

First: accept that your reality is manifested in a manner fundamentally different from that of the clark or scott or roger with whom you are exchanging ideas, interviewing for a job, asking for a date, coaxing into doing chores, making a pass at and offering your condolences. If you are a clark these things/ideas/thoughts are in the form of knowledge/information; if you are a roger then they are (to you) emotions/feelings/consensus and if you are a scott they are the things you do/your acts/your appetites.

Second: accept that, since you’re the one with the Doctrine and, apparently, the ambition, to get across an idea to a person, despite their different experience, it is up to you to translate what you think, (or feel or do), into something more compatible with that person’s reality.

So, how is that translation done? Well, for the moment, we’ve discovered one of the three (necessary) transformations: from a clark to a roger. For a clark to communicate an idea that they have to a roger, they, (the clark), should take the thought/idea and transform it into an effective metaphor. It is not overly helpful to say to a roger, “Here’s what I think”, or “The best thing you can do about your problem is realize that,” or even, “Have you ever stopped to think that…”

Much better to say, “Hey! that girl you want to ask out, thats a lot like,” or “Your boss is giving you a hard time, that’s similar to”

(Astute Doctrine followers are thinking, ‘I get it! rogers deal in emotion, so I need to give them a situation that they can identify with on an emotional level.’ Exactly!)

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘the coolest thing about the Wakefield Doctrine?’

June 14, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

The coolest (and best) thing about the Wakefield Doctrine is not that we get to make statements such as “Everyone lives in a perfect world”, and it is not the fun of asserting, “Everyone works exactly as hard at life as everyone else does.” Nope making these statements isn’t what this Post, (and its tantalizing questionistical subtitle), is proposting.

What does makes the Doctrine so cool, is that if a person is able to apply the perspectives inherent in the Doctrine to their world, these (and many other, equally outrageous declarations), become totally self-evident and, true even.

You know whats the hardest part of this ‘applying of (a) Wakefield Doctrine perspective’ process? (And it’s not confined to the Wakefield Doctrine), its that any philosophy or belief system that offers an alternative path (in life and such) always demands payment in exchange for it’s benefits. And, just to make matters worse, the price is not, strictly speaking, a ‘quid pro quo’*. What is asked for/demanded, for the privilege of enjoying the benefits of an additional perspective, is that one relinquish the bedrock-certainty of knowing the nature and character of reality. Many Readers are muttering into coffee-shadowed cups, “Hey! I’m open-minded. I know lots of people who see the world different than me, and, well, I got no problem with that!”

(…almost. this close. Unfortunately, that is not the level of acceptance of the validity and reality of another’s worldview required in order to take full advantage of a perspective(s) as contained in the Wakefield Doctrine.)

But enough of the coyness. Here’s a fun** experiment. I was roaming the contemplative and hallowed halls of the Facebook the other day, and a person wrote about losing friends. He concluded that the cause was related to the current politico-cultural mashup thats currently sweeping the world, (like a seaweed and ice cream sandwich wrapper cluttered wave, moon-pushed up the beach farther than any of the previous 3,897 waves). Anyway, being a thoughtful person, he wrote that maybe it was something in him, maybe his own views (on the state of ‘the world’) were at the heart of the problem of otherwise seemingly compatible people running away.

I offered the following: find a person in your life that has seemed like a normal, regular person who, if they are not currently long-standing friends, have the resume to make a successful bid for the job… except of one part. They are totally fervent believers in (fill in the blank with politics/religion/scientific opinion…whatever). You are forced to scratch your head and think (or say), “I just don’t understand how a person like Joe/Jane can believe in that!! He/She is an intelligent, educated, accomplished person, but they believe in….” Now imagine that, from their perspective (i.e. the reality that they are experiencing) there is nothing incongruous in their beliefs.

When you can be comfortable with that, you’re ready to pay the price for the power of alternate perspectives on reality.

And, the irony is that for most of us, when we confront the notion of surrendering the exclusivity of an idea or belief, premise or tenet, our initial reaction is that we are being threatened with a loss. When, in fact, when we accept that our belief or tenet or premise or perspective is not exclusive, we open ourselfs to adding to what we have, what we are.

Ya know?***

* Latin phrase inserted to culture-up this little post, and since there isn’t an ‘Illuminated Text’ font handy, this will have to suffice to provide, you know credentials.

** no, really, it is fun

*** well, sure I can explain what I mean by the cool thing about making inflammatory and outrageous statements and claims and such… have to be the next post… be sure to bring along your scottian aspect!

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Two ‘T’ oh ‘T’ -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 11, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Sunset over the land on the far side of the harbor of the Port of Galilee in Narragansett RI. We’re standing in the parking lot. The sun has just touched the earth and is putting up a fight. The center of the sun is too-bright-to-look-at white but it’s bleeding red to the sides, the remains of the day spreads, bright yellow into pale yellow into a tired rose, spreading to the right and left. The color, more hues and shades than primary colors, stands out against the dark line of the earth. The top third of the scene is comprised of evening gray clouds against the previous afternoon’s blue sky, settling downwards, like blankets on an un-made bed. In the immediate foreground is water, bracketed by boats tied up to docks. There is a single, vertically-serrated line of sunlight that crosses the water in the middle of scene. If you’re inclined to think that this line (which almost touches the setting sun) is a support, a pylon for the still too bright to see sun, you’d be disappointed. If you stare at the light in the water, you end up feeling certain that it, (the line of sunlight), is a hopeless lifeline thrown towards shore.

This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. Organized and presented by Josie Two Shoes every weekend, the TToT is a grat ‘hop with a difference. As the title suggests, the idea is to relate to readers and fellow writers the people, places and things for which you are grateful. What sets this grat blog apart is that the only true requirement (for participation) is ‘good intent’. (Yes, that is a rather vague term. It is also a hugely inclusive, wildly open-ended term, which is why I use it. A very simple ambition, though, to act with good intent. But now I run the risk of stem winding*, so on with the show.)

Lets begin with something simple… (someone tell zoe that ‘guffaw’ is not, in most circles, the optimal response)

2) A Friday Walk with Una (unplugged)

3) What do you mean, ‘Where did Number 1 go?’ How would I know?! Here I am, sitting at my computer on a Sunday morning looking for a photo of Phyllis to anchor it’s own Item and I realize that not only am I out of sequence, there are numbers missing!

5) Hey! Go to Amazon at this link and treat yerself to a muy coolita** coloring book created by our friend Cynthia, she is a living example that with determination and a willingness to follow the path no matter what, a person can totally self-develop themselfs. Go to her site ‘Intuitive and Spiritual‘ she’ll show you how.

Una sitting at the dining room table. In front of her (she is facing to the left in the spindle-back chair), on a white tablecloth with a field of small rose-colored squares, is a black laptop computer. On top of the laptop is a gift from Friend of the Doctrine Cynthia. It’s copy of her just-published adult coloring book, ‘The Tree of Life’. The cover has a tree taking up the top 2/3s. The tree is a very simple trunk, two parallel lines rising and curling apart to blend in with the individual leaves of the tree. These leaves are elongated ovals with smaller colorful ovals contained within. It is a very cool thing.

6) Phyllis and Una

Phyllis and Una. Phyllis has her hand on Una’s head and laughing at the camera, in part, and you have to look closely, due to the fact that Una, for reasons known only to her, is sticking her tongue out.

8) Garden Update:

A photo in portrait orientation (taller than it is wide by half). We’re standing before the Una garden, the ‘U’ is easily discerned with it’s brown, raw soil cut out of the pale green of the lawn. From where we stand, the ‘U’ could be an ‘n’. The open part of the letter is to the left, the bottom is to the right. The other letters, due to the angle, are visible only as thin brown lines shrinking into the distance. (The space within both the ‘n’ and the ‘a’ of ‘Una’ is foreshortened so much as to be non-distinguishable). Above and beyond the letters the lawn continues until it runs into a wall of tall pine trees. The horizontal branches of the trees are lighter and almost fuzzy green. The trunks of the trees are black and very straight, parallel lines. In the immediate foreground left, is our cairn. The pile of stones and rocks. They are roughly rounded in texture and the predominate shape is cubes-trying-to-be-squares. There is an oval stone, long axis upright, in the front of the pile from our perspective. Colors fall victim to texture, grayish white, turning dark from shades formed by their own surfaces. They look old and common, but friendly enough.

View of the garden from the house. Actually from a second story window. The letters are clearly letters, (capital ‘U’, small ‘n’ and small ‘a’). The brown of the raw soil ranges from dark, (where the soil appears damp), to light brown. The cairn is to the far left side of the photo and the rocks look pretty much all white, but that ‘stone white’ rather than chalk white. It’s easy to see the individual stones, being as ‘simply solid’ as stones tend to be, what little space might be between the individual rock are full of shadow black, contrasting nicely, even at this distance.

9) Home and Heart (a Sister Margaret Ryan story). Double Chapter week this week! Chapters 11 and 12 will be out tomorrow morning. (For those falling behind on our tale, Sister Margaret is having lunch with her mother and her brother, Father Matthew Stephen, (yeah, seems to run in the family). She is asked to do something about the foreclosure on the family home. Meanwhile, Sister Catherine is with Roanne Avila getting similar bad news from an attorney about the recently-windowed young woman’s home and, worse, there appears to be a problem reaching her daughter, Patrice. Finally, Arlen Mayhew (yes, a descendant of the Thomas Mayhew, who established the first settlement on Martha’s Vineyard) and Drusilla Renaude (of Renaude and Associates, the brokerage selected by the Bernebau Company to market their newest development to be located in and around Crisfield MD), are on a corporate jet headed to Miami. There. All caught up. Join us at ‘Home and Heart’ things are about to get curiouser and curiouser

7) Lets go for a quick visit to the 1980s for a little music to get out of this admittedly odd TToT post.

10) SR 1.3

* ‘Stem winding’, hey! I thought the phrase meant, to indicate, by the winding of a watch, that a speech is going long. Apparently there is more, including it’s first usage as a statement of high quality, from back when a wristwatch was a luxury. Here… read it for yourself.

** probably not ‘real’ Spanish… heck, probably not real words in any langauge

Click on this here icon here and come join us at the TToT (“tell ’em the Doctrine sent ya’)

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