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

“Outsider. This could be my motto for life. I’m surrounded by rogers and um…ya know…have figured out that the office environment…well…let’s just hope the rogers don’t gang up on me and kick my ass.”

Thanks go out to our friend, Cynthia, for the ‘Friday Post Prompt’ (Friday Post Prompt motto: ‘thank god!! a coherent thought to base a Post on!!!”)

Is there any, more common reason, (for a clark) to like the Wakefield Doctrine, than it being a resource in figuring out how to deal with the rogers in their lives?  No. Well, maybe. No, yeah, but that business about how we can rest our brain even for a minute…. that qualifies, right?  (I remember being in a conversation one evening  with a group of people. We were having a good time with the Great Questions of Life.  There came a moment when the question of ‘communication between people’ rose to topic-level and, when there was one of those pauses in the give-and-take, (when the rogers are preparing their rebuttals and the scotts are calculating their chances of getting lucky after the intellectual  activities ceased), I made the following statement:  “I’ve always wondered what it is that real people do, with all that time in-between sentences.”  Had there been a person to throw a handle full of pins, everyone would have come up with the same number, …someone whispered, very loudly, ‘oh man!! what is it with this guy!!’ His tone was not negative, it definitely had a certain quality of ‘wonderment’… this was followed by good-natured laughter.

I identify with Cynthia. We are fortunate to have rogers who are of such a mind as to be willing and able to share with us their perspective, (thinking of Kristi and Michelle and Phyllis and even, accidentally Sarah), however, the solution to ‘Cynthia’s Problem’ is not in learning what the rogers want. The solution to the problem is for Cynthia to know what she wants.  You know how we have this saying for the New Readers, ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them‘?   There is an extensionary thought* to be derived from this,  ‘It’s about us, not them.’
A clark lives in a reality where things should make sense, that there should be an understandable reason for everything. Where we clarks often get into trouble is when we project this (quality of understandable-ness) and believe that the ‘correct answer’ will be possible only with the participation of the real people in our world.   (Now, stay with me….)

We don’t believe us.

(That’s not fair. I should say: as clarks we don’t believe that what we understand is sufficient, unless it’s supported, corroborated, validated, confirmed and otherwise approved of, by the people around us.  You Advanced Readers are now looking around and waving your hands. “I know!!! I know”….  lets let the New Readers have a moment to figure out what is it about clarks that cause them to get trapped , despite the clear fact that they are thinking everything through in an organized and rational manner.)

I’ll be back a little later in the day.**

* an attempt at a rogerian expression¹

** yeah, right

1) not to be confused with a person’s ‘rogerian expression‘