Understanding Human Behavior | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

February 25, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

This is our contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop. Established in 1990 by a once-removed, second niece of Jack Lewis (ambiguation here).

In any event, each and every week a group of talented writers, gifted bloggers and persistent word-hurlers, (such as ourselfs), write and link to the TToT posts on the topic of gratitude, i.e gratitude observed, experienced, remembered or anticipated, they’re all engaging insights to a most human of experiences. And it’s a fun and, with a certain perspective, beneficial exercise.

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) messed up weather (an immediate personal grat, a way-serious global hypograt)

5) the Six Sentence Story bloghop (like a ten cent box of Junior Mints at the movies that none of your friends saw you buy)

6) way multi-talented Friend of the Doctrine, Cynthia, has a post on the facebook this morning that demonstrates how some of what you see in these pages often serves as an illustration of the degree of un-earned good fortune in the people we get to know.

7) hey! wanna hear something strange? (…we’ll wait while our host Dyanne gets her breath, if not stop laughing entirely ). ok

Look at that food material. For some reason, while in the early phase of recovering from my cold, I developed an appetite for paleo-personal-historic foodstuffs. The first (in photo) of our embracing, purely for recuperative purpose, a Breakfasts-that-Time-Forgot. Used to love them Big Breakfasts from McDonalds, back in the before-time. So imagine our surprise when the thought occurred to me, ‘You know what would be good this morning?’

There are a number of things we are proud of here at the Doctrine. Not the least of which, and arguably a essential quality for anyone hoping to get the most fun and benefit from our little personality theory, is the willingness to entertain silly ideas. That and the odd self-confidence to treat intuition as the Sixth Sense (or seven or whatever, depending on what you read). So we ate the breakfast of McMagog’s and the next thing you know, the thought of a frozen salisbury dinner is whispering like a slot machine on an old Twighlight Zone. Any way, feeling better. As certain friends might say, ‘If it works, don’t fix it.’

8) something. somethings

9) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE (We used to offer a starter Grat if there was a Reader wanting to joining but was not comfortable coming up with Ten (Things of Thankful). If that’s your situation, let us know and we’ll totally fix you up. That is will post your Grat here at #9. Will as much attribution as you would like.

10) Secret Rule 1.3 from the Book of Secret Rules, aka the Secret Book of Rules

music and such

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

February 4, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Tipping our hand on Grat #9 we’ll say, cohostinae Lisa has the talent and ability at the writerly thing to create TToT posts that while impressively minimalistic are both engaging and satisfying to read. While that level of skill is receding in ambition’s front-view mirror at a rate to blur the eyes and disturb one’s vision, we’ll give it a go this Weekend of Viral pharyngitis.*

Photo above? One of the few excellent things about winter: sea smoke. (Photo from our tv dialed into a live web cam at the ferry landing at Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard.) Only with the right conditions and cold do you get to see it, as it is pretty much limited to the Arctic or Antarctic.

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop

5) TToT host Dyanne

6) TToT co-hostinae Lisa

7) TToT co-hostinae (emerita) Kristi

8) TToT co-host Mimi

9) Being healthy enough to catch a cold bad enough to justify taking the day off but not so bad as to be a matter of concern (aka vacation clark-style! lol)

10) Secret Rule 1.3

* aka a sore throat with an option on developing into a cold

music vid

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “…to be, or to have been? (Surely, Bill, that is your Jeopardy win.)”

January 2, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Hey, ho.

Despite enjoying, (or enduring), a certain reputation for making the understanding, appreciation and application of the principles of our little ‘personality theory’ a bit on the stodgy side, we will be indulging in a bit of the cultural canard of New Year’s Resolutions.

Right there! There’s a hint at both the _subtext and ^supertext of our first post of the New Year. As always we will leave it to you, the Reader, to decided what we meant*.

Since apparently we’re starting this ‘New’ year quoting famous dead guys, (hey, you think being perceived as standoffish, aloof and ever-so-slightly condescending comes without effort?! ). What say we surpass¹ on the usually misquoted Shakespeare riff about brevity and intelligence and, ‘What say we go back to the beginning-time and see how it feels to write posts in the 300 to 666 word range‘.

awright! at the semi-halfway

For our New Readers: some of the old admonitions and maybe some music and call it a wrap.

the Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them.

the Doctrine is an easy-to-use perspective on the world around us, and the people who make it up.

We are, all of us, experiencing the world at this moment as: a clark(Outsider), scotts(Predator) or roger(Herd Member). What makes us any, (and, by the way, only) one of these three is the world we grew up and developed in; our ‘personality type’ is perfect. Our way of getting through life is informed by the world as we experience it.

The basis of all this, on a practical level, is (that) by applying the Wakefield Doctrine in our interactions with others, we enhance our ability to see the world as the other person is experiencing it,

the three:

clarks(Outsiders) those who live on the fringe avoiding scrutiny, a clark is creative to a fault, funny, (when heard or in a bad mood…lol) and, while abhorring the spotlight, on matters of value to them, will not tolerate being ignored

scotts(Predators) the personality type we all, at one time or another, wish we were and, with the wisdom of maturity, are thankful we are not…lol scotts live in the here-and-now, experiencing the world as directly as possible. The result is they make to-the-death friends and fearsome enemies.

rogers(Herd Members) the one, (of the three), that accounts for civilization and enduring culture. rogers, are the reason trains run on time and science is coaxed into being useful to the rest of us. rogers know there is a Right Way to do things (and get through Life) and never surrender their right to help others accept that.

clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel.

* of course, as is the way of the Wakefield Doctrine, the notion of ‘discerning what the speaker/writer means’ is the first of the survival insights that students of the Doctrine exhibit. (Another Hint: it requires the verb ‘manifest’ to be, in any way, useful.)

1) easy one: New Readers go to the section on rogers and look up ‘rogerian expressions’. This one, the ‘surpass’, is the first of the most characteristic traits of the personality type: Herd Member

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

RePrint Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

December 26, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

We’re in the process of updating the ‘static pages’ of this blog. Have completed a redo of the ‘About’ page. Working on that middle tile of the landing page, ‘What is the Wakefield Doctrine?’ After that, the ‘In a Hurry?’ finally the bottom-most: ‘I (got) the What and the How now tell me Why!’

Hey, here’s an idea. We’re in the last week of the year, with New Years Day approaching like a cop walking up to your driver-side door with a big-assed flashlight and a recent break-up with his girlfriend. In other words, (aka, enough with the metaphors, already!), the traditional practice of stacking up the emotional baggage of New Year’s Resolutions. aka our last attempt to atone for the previous year by offering an IOU on the next.

So here’s the thing, let’s do the Resolutions before the end of the Year, rather than after.

Fine! It’s a deal! Our Old Year’s Resolutions are: complete the above-cited revisions and updates before twelve-oh-damn-it’s-over o’clock on this coming Saturday.

But, being only the Monday-that-would-be-Sunday, what say we do a quick, little reprint. You know, to get into character.

NTSB: Proposed Ban on Cell phone use in cars to be expanded to include: ‘distracting or frivolous talking among passengers!’

December 26, 2011

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )Hey there! Did Knackles¹ overlook you Saturday night?

But that’s not important now, what is important is that I think we have edged past the event horizon of the super-massive black hole of all Holidays. I am talking about Christmas, of course. Everyone understands that holidays are, ‘occasions meant to reinforce the social fabric’, serving to act as a binding force on the individual members of (a given) society. And since no holiday is without a cultural-historical reference point, it is very instructive to look at the basis of the holiday against the qualities of it’s ‘targeted demographic’. In other words, “why do we use Pilgrims to attract the rogers” (Thanksgiving) or “what the hell is it about babies and old men that will draw the clarks from their hiding places“? (New Years) and given that today is Christmas Day, ” a holiday in which the signifying character is a reclusive, over-weight, bearded man who spies on children, rewards behavior and insists on being permitted a degree of physical intimacy with total strangers that would have them doing ’30 to Life’ if they acted this way any other time of year… now which of the three personality types would respond to that? lol
(See how everything makes so much more sense when you use the viewpoint, the perspective made available by the Wakefield Doctrine?)

The question we ask is, what does a particular holiday allow, condone, encourage in terms of individual behavior, targeted, as it is, towards one of the three personality types? As with much else we do with the Wakefield Doctrine, the goal is to observe behavior and (from our observations) infer what the person is experiencing. The holidays offer an opportunity to see the world as the other personality types do, in other words, by inference. We believe, here at the Doctrine, that behavior and personality is the result of responding to the world in a manner that is appropriate, given the nature of the world (being experienced). The trick being, of course, to keep in mind that the other person is, in all probability, experiencing a reality that is different from the one that you are experiencing. One of three characteristic realties, the world of a clark, the reality of a scott and the worldview of the roger…all three quite distinct but with enough in common that we can all identify with each to some extent.³This concept is key because the Wakefield Doctrine focuses on the reality that a person is responding to rather than simply trying to create a list of traits and behaviors and other artifacts of the personality. When you understand the reality that a scott exists in, the behavior that you see exhibited (by a scott) makes sense, and as an added bonus you will be able to effectively predict the behavior of the scott.

For the newer Readers: the initial behavioral metaphor of the scottian personality type is that of predator. This means that your girlfriend or your husband or the woman who has worked the checkout lane next to you all these years? if they are a scott and you want to know what they will do next, simply think to yourself: what would a wolf (or a lion or Wile E Coyote, for that matter) do?
Really.
And the really messed up part (and the scary, inspired quality of the Wakefield Doctrine) is that their behavior will be less puzzling if you view it in that context. (the predator thing). Granted there is much, much more to the Wakefield Doctrine in terms of how we can apply it’s insights into human behavior, but bottom line? scotts = predator, rogers = herd animals clarks = outsider, aka blue monkey²

So read through some of the Pages that are listed at the top of the landing page of the blog. You will find pages that give overviews of the three personality types and you will find pages that have photos of examples of the three personality types, real people (well, celebrities at any rate), and you will even find photos of the Wakefield Doctrine hat. Ask the right question and you too could be stylin’ in a Wakefield Doctrine hat (for your damn head).

1) you so need to read this short, short story by Curt Clark (Donald E Westlake), click here

2) there was a famous experiment in psychology or sock

3) do not forget that the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that while we all are predominately one of the three personality types, clarks or scotts or rogers, we never lose the potential of the other two. These are referred to as the secondary and tertiary aspects, an important concept, but for the more advanced students of the Doctrine.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine- “It was a dark and stormy morning, the clouds, like a countless mushrooms in a forest, silently screaming.”

December 4, 2022 By clarkscottroger

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

This is our (weekly) contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop.

Legendary among: grat blogs, scholars of the History of Web Logs, fans of SOC and those who are intellectually confident enough to suspend disbelief at the drop of a ‘Previously on…’ Founded in a box on the doorstep of the convent at St Dominique’s in Crissfield, Delaware, the TToT was raised with care by those who know that, for most of us, wisdom is a quality, not skill. Miz ‘L’ soon drew followers, fans and co-hosts to the shoreline sanctuary in mid-Oceania.

This is our list of those people, places, things, ideas and occurences in the previous week or so*.

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine (sine qua and all, ya know)

4) the work we have chosen** the real estate with it’s variety of stresses and consistency of satisfaction

5) the Six Sentence Story bloghop: a virtual place where imagination is a foundation and limits are few and far between.

6) serial stories and such… (actually a bit of a hypograt as WordPress is becoming less hospitable which provides incentive to improve the hosting environment of a growing library of WIPs and such)

7) interesting work-situation outcome this week. high stress, limited control, bullet-dodged. (It was our response to the outcome that was interesting Doctrine/metaphysically-speaking. While it’s common knowledge that we here work hard at the grat-thing, being a touch emotion tone-deaf, we perceived a distinction to the overwhelmingly more common (ioo) feeling of relief at the positive resolution. For most of us experiencing ‘bullet-dodging’, ‘relief’ seems the emotional default response. For reasons beyond the scope of this grat item, we saw things a little differently (we know, knock us over with a feather) and came to the somewhat unexpected conclusion that ‘celebration’ was way more positive and beneficial an emotional response than ‘relief’. Go figure.

8) Livestream this afternoon, 13 ‘clock sharp.***

9) something, somthing

10) Secret Rule 1.3 ’cause how good can a Rule be if everyone knows it?’

* aka at any point accessible to our memory or our imagination

** yep! Godfather II

*** thx to mr. o for that most wonderful of concepts

music vids