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

For reasons that I do not understand, we have a Post today. Perhaps it is simply that the pattern is established, i.e. that I write a new Post every other day (or third day) at minimum. Maybe it is because I have a feeling that the body of knowledge that is the Doctrine is going through yet another ‘growth spurt’. It might even be that I know that there are some Readers out there, who are on the edge of taking the leap and writing a Comment.

Whatever¹

So lets keep this short. Here’s the thing:

The Wakefield Doctrine is a way of looking at people, the way they act, re-act and inter-act. The Wakefield Doctrine is a way of understanding our relationships: (with) our spouses, our friends, our jobs and the gigantic bunch of strangers that comprise the world. The Wakefield Doctrine is a tool, one that we can learn to use on ourselves to make the good things that we do better and the bad things that we do… better. The Wakefield Doctrine is a way of looking at the day to day  world that will provide us with amusement, insight and understanding. Most of all, the Wakefield Doctrine is good for:

• getting your noisy boyfriend to not shout when you are standing in a slow line
• convincing your girlfriend that while purple really is ‘her’ hair color, that just maybe, for her job interview she might want to go natural
• realizing that even though your boss always finds mistakes that you have made, that you know that you can do the job better than anyone
• convincing your husband that, while it is important to research all major purchases, perhaps taking 6 weeks to decide on lawnmower brands is a bit much

The Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the idea that we all live our lives in what can best be called individual worldviews (a less threatening word for personal reality) and that all people are born with the potential to live in one of three distinctive worldviews:

1. the ‘world’ of the Outsider, where there is a gap, a critical difference between us and the rest of the world, especially the people, those who exist in this worldview, we call clarks
2. the reality of the Predator, this world is characterized by the predator-prey existence that we see in nature, those who grow up and develop in this worldview are designated as having the scottian personality type
3. the world of connectedness, the world of belonging to the group, sometimes referred to as the herd this person, referred to as a roger develops a personality type that is predicated on the world being a quantifiable place that is subject to discernible Rules

At an early age we pick one of these three and that becomes our personal reality. We call this the predominant type. And a big difference between the Doctrine and ‘mainstream personality systems’ is that we look at the reality first and the personality type second. Makes much more sense.
Finally, while we all live our lives in one (of three) characteristic worldviews, we never lose the capacity to see the world as the ‘other two’ do. In fact,  in some people, one of the other two ‘aspects’ is developed to the point that it influences the choices and actions of that person. For example, I am a clark because my reality, the world in which I grew up and developed my ‘personality’ is that of the Outsider. I also have a highly developed secondary aspect, that of the worldview that we call a scott. That shows in some instances and, in a sense, it accounts for some of my ‘personality’ that is not strictly the result of living on the fringe.  However, that does not mean that everyone develops their ‘other two’ aspects to any degree, some people are pretty much all of the type of their predominant worldview, showing no signs of the other two.  According to the Wakefield Doctrine, all people relate to the world consistent with the world being one of the three: clarks, scotts and rogers. We know all the stuff we do about people simply because we are able to see the world as they see it.

1) as the kids² would say

2) by kids we mean people who are:

• not as old as us³
• confident enough to use whatever slang word they think is appropriate ( clarks )
• sure enough of themselves to know that they are ‘tuned in’ to the ‘young people’ and can talk to them like they want ( rogers )
• just don’t care what words they use, they will capture your attention no matter it they have to set their own hair on fire ( scott )

3) which is most everybody it seems, we can say that ’cause this is the internet⁴

4) which being a virtual world, allows us to pretend that we can appear to be anything to anyone simply because we are not likely to run into them at the Dentist’s office or the health and supplement section of  the grocery store

5) we are a little weird about privacy here, most of us use a damn pen name (French, ‘Nom de Bic‘ ) so you can sign in however the hell you want.