Understanding Human Behavior | the Wakefield Doctrine

whyday -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a tale of the Stone and the Crone]

June 15, 2024 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Unicorn Challenge, jenne and ceayr‘s weekly photo prompt bloghop. Simple enough: new photo each week and a two hundred and fifty word limit on our story-ettes.

(Hey! We haven’t visited with our favorite (“Are they who I think they are? Nah, now way. Even that Doctrine guy wouldn’t reach that far!“) couple, ‘the Stone and the Crone’. (Previous Installments: Here …oh, yeah, and: Here)

This week:

“You know, I been thinkin…”

The man paused, the conversational backleading found in couples of only the longest tenures; bent-knee of one leg an additional support to the woman slightly behind him.

“Now, what have I always said…” the woman, an age and adversity-drawn caricature of Nature’s male-female size discrepancy, drew a breath that seemed to cling to her body like passengers on a slowly sinking ship.

“Only one of us can be the brains and the other…” her words trailed as she leaned towards the man. The absence of the expected sharp retort sparked a sad alarm in her companion’s eyes.

“Let’s sit here a minute, I’m tired,” the easy lies couples exchange, like monetary instruments or favored talismans, have never been immune to the wear-and-tear of time.

Crouching, his right knee an inverted ‘V’, the man did his best to position his trailing leg at a right angle, perpendicular to the other, creating, at least to a child’s eye, every bit a throne of ivied-timbers; the woman leaned back, her eyes trapped by the incline below the two fleeing anachronisms.

“Has it occurred to you that walking up stairs is god reminding us of the difference between man and angels? That, should we only recover the part we left behind in the Garden, hills and steep staircases would be celebrations of our wings and not a curse of our aging bodies.”

The man paused, a patient waiting. Time now a comforting breeze, no longer an endless headwind.

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

Fraedie -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 7, 2024 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution-of-the-weak to jenne and ceayr‘s bloghop, ‘the Unicorn Challenge‘.

A mirror of unreliable silvering, all invitees are told one thing: ‘this is an image, now tell your Readers and we few, we creatively-driven few, we band of bloggers a two-hundred and fifty word story.

“Shit.”

Surely the most concise and, therefore, powerful of invective.

The human animal often holds up language as its crowning achievement and distinguishing characteristic. Above all other animals, on a throne supported by a stubborn consistency of sound, at once remarkable and, yet, in it’s tendency to branch off into dialects and pidgin in fact, diminishing. Nothing is more emblematic of the curse of the fruit of a certain Garden than to choose, among the countless choices of sounds… words, than this:

“Shit.”

I looked down over the terrain. The blue of the sky made more the abyss by banks of grey-on-white clouds. The first to navigate the River of Time and my first impression is ‘an Artist’s studio minus the nude’. Of course I recognized the buildings, there was no mistaking my location.

When I was, as the Bard so tactilely invoked, there’s the rub.

The Mound was as it must be. The approach to the Baths was as conspicuously missing. Compounding my sense of dislocation were black pathways running in too-even rows among trees that had shed circumference by a factor not possible to yet remain alive. The afterbirth of Man’s effort to sire Nor Loch was there, but possessed the smoothed contours expected of the very young and the too-old.

“Damn that Professor Egmont and his infernal machine!”

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

Midweeksday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 5, 2024 By clarkscottroger

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

New Readers?

There’s this thing we’ve discovered about our Readership over the years that’s encouraging to most (Readers) and challenging to some. At least to the extent that this insight has been validated by all who come here and stay for any length of time.

Of all the Readers who come back here more than twice, most are either clarks or scotts with a significant secondary clarklike aspect or rogers … with a significant secondary clarklike aspect.

Sure, you’re thinking, ‘Well, duh. That pretty much includes all three personality types. Where’s the 411 in that?’

Hey, we have established that clarks consume ‘new’ like starved monkeys in a banana factory, right? The thing about insatiable appetites is theys always in a hurry. That’s why clarks do so poorly at tasks/jobs/hobbies/relationships that require a careful reading of concise and mandatory-for-success instructions. We* get it. We see the parts all in a box and such. Unfold the instructions. Read the first page, the top of the rest of the pages and then, if the pictures at all resemble what we have held in our minds since we started the assembly process… no! wait! make that ‘since we imagined having whatever it is that involves this task/job/hobbies/relationship’ then we’re all set.

Sure. Take all the time you need, New Readers** We’ll pause and, hell, why not lets stick a music vid here while you process the preceding paragraphs. (A little courtsey from your friends here at the Doctrine. Allows those for whom the thought is dawning, ‘Jeez that stuff in the other posts wasn’t, like for effect, where’s the door?’)

Lets what say we provide a little cognitive dissonance: the clarks (those whose predominant worldview is the of the Outsider) more often than not have greater difficulty getting anything useful from this little thought experiment than do the scott or roger (for each, the presence of a significant secondary clarklike aspect is totally sine qua non.) All that ‘Hurry up and lets get to the next thing that might have the Answer!’ don’cha know.

BEgin… NOw

Pencils down…

be sure to tune in*** tomorrow. that, being Thursday, you, New Readers, are invited to participate in the Six Sentence Story bloghop. Go ahead! Join in! Instructions are right there on the landing page. What you got to lose? (other than self-respect and the dream of being considered a legitimate writer, of course. lol)

The point of our post. The ‘takeaway’ is twofold: a) the presence of a secondary clarklike aspect cranks up the curiosity factor in scotts and rogers and 2) of the three, only clarks perceive out little personality theory as something not only interesting, but potentially useful.

* yes, we are a clark… we know you knew, but just wanted to crank up the ‘Annoy’ on the rogerian Readers and distract the scottian ones. Best of intentions, a course.

** totally grateful for your presence, yo. If for no other reason that our own fluency improves ever time we try to explain this here personality theory here to a stranger

*** ayiiee such a ‘How did so much time pass so quickly that this idiom is a frickin’ Rosetta-fricken-Stone for just about every one you’ll encounter today… (the polite ones will look slightly-unbored and say, “This ‘Dial’, you mean you watched ‘tele’ ‘Vision’ in the shower?!!’)

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

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 3, 2024 By clarkscottroger

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

Where were we?

(Wait! Don’t tell us! We got this one.)

oh yeah. Here.

What that was, and this (post) is, is all about writing posts for the New Reader. A visitor, perhaps link-following from our primary bloghops ( the TToT, the Six Sentence Story or the Unicorn Challenge), taking a moment to see what this ‘Wakefield Doctrine’ is all about.

The goal is twofold. a) to see how we would explain our little personality theory compared to how we did at various points over the last fourteen, fifteen years and 2) to re-capture the simple joy and exhilaration of those early years when everything was a topic for a post explaining the Doctrine and the provocative jostled with the careful-not-to-offend like two pre-adolescent boys trying to impress a girl despite not being able to explain their determination.

lets jump into the middle, shall we?*

The Wakefield Doctrine posits three personality types:

clarks (Outsiders)
scotts (Predators)
rogers (Herd Members)

so, do we think we can recapture the energy and spirit and such that produced Readers saying stuff like, “Wait! What did you just say about living life as the Outsider was like being a detective that had to solve a crime while preventing everyone else from know their identity and mission?”

Having an established, if not educated, Readership is far more intrusive, subversive and distractive that we realized. Huh. Interesting.**

New Readers are directed to ignore most, if not all, asterixeded sentences and such.

The three predominant worldviews are relationships. Better to say, they are the character of the relationship we, all of us, develop and maintain throughout life. (Note: while we are all born with the potential of three personality types, settle into one at a very early age.)

blah.. blah…blah

err, New Readers.

Lets start over.

A clark, a scott and roger stand on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the city street from a very popular restaurant. It is nearly noon and there is a line of people waiting outside the door. The scott is shouting and pointing at people in the line. At one point he walks across the busy street and talks to a woman who is three couples from the door. (From our vantage point we cannot make hear what he is saying, except when he laughs.) The woman laughs when the scott points back at his two lunch companions on the opposite sidewalk. But she also waves at them. Something from the middle if the line gets their attention, a frowning man, gesticulating to his own companions. The scott laughs and walks back to the obviously upset man who immediately gestures and motions with his hands, pointing at his expensive watch in the general direction of the people around him. The scott smiles. Leans as if to confide something to the man (and his immediate companions).

Back on the other side of the street, the clark watches and smiles. The roger watches, frowns and begins to cross the street but stops as a bus nearly hits him. When it passes, the scott is almost back to their side of the street. The three continue waiting. One is relieved, the other, impatient and the third makes a joke.

A little vignette to get the week started.

New Readers? Despite the genders of the characters in our little illustration, write this down: ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is gender-neutral.

It is also culture and, even age, neutral. (This aspect, the age thing? Gets really facinating as it brings to the fore the effects and influences of the individual’s secondary and tertiary aspects. But that’s Introduction to the Wakefield Doctrine 103.)

*ok, right here is the first differences between the early days and the present. there was no ‘middle’ when we started. There was simply, (and this is an accurate, if not literal, description of the process of post writing) a new day and an empty (post) page. We’d sit down and see what showed up on the screen.¹

** no, sorry there is no prize, hat or otherwise for “I know the predominant worldview of the writer! Because of what they wrote in that line.”

Damn! For those following along, those non-New Readers, there is fundamental difference Numero Uno. We have a history now. There was no history against which we might write new and better ways to describe the Wakefield Doctrine.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, predicting human behavior, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

May 25, 2024 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT). First published in 1983, the TToT has been the preeminent Grat blog since arriving on the scene. And, as you’re sure to guess, this week’s TToT is a celebration of the moving-threshold-of-a-body’s-capabilities. To move stuff. And, as Mimi confirmed, we’re almost ready to submit a paper in support of the under-reported fact that the earth’s gravitational field has not only increased in what amounts to the blink-of-an-eye (geological time) but has also directly altered the density of certain parts of the earth such as flooring (op. cit. mimi 5/2023) while paradoxically-decreasing the density of certain others, i.e. soles of the feet, and the latissimus dorsi (et. al.)

Theses are interesting times.*

1) Una