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

Shit.

Reluctant decision, after forced-into-decision, followed by lesser-of-two-evils decisions and there you are, stuck in your seat in class with nothing more on your desktop than a folder (one of those drugstore binders with the little square windows built into the covers (that rectangular window is created with a clear material that you know must be the ‘plasticene’ that the Beatles sang about) and inside the square window are the words: ‘the Wakefield Doctrine (an alternate perspective on personality and personality types)’ and when you open the cover (an improbable pale blue-greenish color) you see one page with the words.  ‘The purpose of this paper….’   (you know, the weird thing is not that you have not completed the assignment that you know you are capable of completing, no the weird thing is that you are feeling self-conscious…in advance of the words, “Mr Clark…. your Report, please’)

(ahem,,,,)  the purpose of this Post is…

In the week coming, we will:

1. return to the Comment/Question posed by Amy (Adorable Chaos) that asked what our personality theory had to offer her (…being beset on all sides by a scott and/or a scott with a little faux pack of rogers),
2. describe our first Thursday Wakefield Doctrine AP Study Hour (and announce the time of this week’s Hour)
3. talk about the Wakefield Doctrine book
4. write 2 participatory Posts: one tomorrow on Tuesday ( Twisted Mix-tape Tuesday hosted by Jen and Kristi ) and FTSF ( the tilt ‘n whirl of blog hops presented by our Four Sistas:  Janine and Kate and Stephanie and Dawn )
5. and finish this Post… which while it may not seem important, I have come to believe, courtesy of DownSpring Cyndi, that there are ‘Read-blogs-days’ of the week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday),  so I damn well better find a way to provide you, my Monday Readers, with a little more in content than a catchy Title and a numbered bullet list.

The Wakefield Doctrine says this: we all experience the world in what you might call a personal reality (we call it a ‘worldview’). Now this idea of a personal reality is nothing radical, no ability to fly… no invisibility (well, except for clarks) and no unicorns ( have you read the description of the worldview of scotts?! unicorns? nooo sorry, all chased off or eaten).
Anyway.
Personal reality is simply meant to designate character of the world as we experience it, the ‘inside view’, if you will. We are all born with the potential to experience three distinctly characteristic realities: the world of the Outsider (clarks), the reality of the Predator (scotts) and the life of the Herd Member (rogers). At an early age, we ‘pick’ one of these three and grow and mature, responding and reacting and developing traits, strategies and behaviors appropriate to the worldview we inhabit. clarks are very creative because they see everything from a distance, not conditioned or indoctrinated into ‘the right way’, scotts are confident to a fault, simply because in order to survive as a predator time spent in introspection is time spent being eaten by a larger scott …and rogers, they make such ‘good’ managers because they know that everyone and everything will be so much better once they understand ‘the Proper Way’.

So, for the Wakefield Doctrine, personality types are not habitual ways of responding to situations in life, personality types are reflections of the world as the person experiences it.

The big thing for those looking to use the Wakefield Doctrine as a way of understanding the behavior of the people in their lives is that, while we all inhabit one of the three worldviews described here, we never lose the capacity to see the world ‘as do the other two types’ do. In other words, I am a clark, but somewhere within is everything I would need to live successfully in the worldview of a scott….or a roger.  Herein lies the key to the Wakefield Doctrine being a tool for self-improving yourself.
Quick example: DownSpring Cyndi. A clark. We all know that you can spot a clark at family reunions ’cause they are the ones behind the camera. Show me people at a get together where some one whips out a camera and I will show you the clark…they are ones that volunteer to take the photos. In any event, clarks hate to have their pictures taken (and they are not wild about being tape recorded).  Cyndi has started to do a series of video Posts. They aren’t just good. They are amazing. I say this because as you watch them, you are not seeing a clark ‘toughing it out’ enduring the fear and revulsion of being on ‘film’. You are seeing a clark using a portion of (her) scottian aspect. (scotts, as we all know, loves the spotlight, they are natural performers.) Cyndi has managed to access that aspect of herself (remember, we always retain the abilities to experience the world as do ‘the other two’). How cool is that?  Example: Video Post

Enough. It’s Monday and the alphabet, like a fuse has ticked itself down to clark…. time to “hit that streets a- runnin’ ”