Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
hey, you know how we say that one of the primary values of the Wakefield Doctrine lies in it providing a certain perspective on behavior that, when applied to our own lives, proves to be a unique tool for self-development?
well, we do.
the important thing is this: in order to effectively use the Wakefield Doctrine as a tool for self-improvement and/or self-development it’s necessary to understand the nature of the three worldviews.
new readers! dig this: we are all born with the innate capacity to experience the world in one of three ways, or worldviews (aka personal realities): the world/life as an Outsider (clarks), living and developing as one must to survive and flourish in the reality of the Predator (scotts) and experiencing the world as a member of a Herd (rogers). you with us? fine. we all ‘pick’ a worldview and grow up and develop our personalities in response to the particular challenges and advantages found in these realities. the thing is, we retain the potential to see the world as ‘the other two’ do. for example, I’m a clark, predominant worldview is that of the Outsider which means the world around me today is such that I do not fit in, I see things in a way that results in my demonstrating a certain creativity, I spent a lot of time being self-effacing, (often amounting to self-destructiveness), I have an insatiable appetite to learn new information and I am simultaneously sentimental and cold. that is because that is the nature of the world I wake up to. I also have a secondary (and a tertiary) aspect. my secondary is that of a scott and my 3rd is rogerian. (btw these secondary and tertiary aspects? thats why people sometimes will say, ‘hey I must be some kind of new personality type! like a clarkroger, because most of the time I feel like I’ll never fit in and then sometimes I can be real real stubborn and obstinate’ that’s your secondary showing through.
so…learn the characteristics of the three worldviews. observe your fellow lifeforms. infer the reality that they appear to be responding and reacting to and once you are able to correctly infer the worldview of the other person, you will know more about them than they know about themselves.
so…learn the characteristics of the three worldviews. observe yourself. first eliminate the obviously not fitting worldview, then hold the other two worldviews up and see which one makes the world make (more) sense… that is your predominant worldview. that is what will be useful to you, if you have an interest in: understanding the behavior of the people in our lives, taking better advantage of the people in our lives, knowing more about the inner thoughts and feelings of the people in our lives and , for some of you… learning ways to improve your own life.
we used to do an internet radio show and one of the things I always tried to say to the listener about the Doctrine was, “the Wakefield Doctrine is concerned with ‘how you relate yourself to the world around you’. note that I did not say, ‘…how you relate to the world’… I said, ‘ how you relate yourself to the world around you'”. that distinction is of critical importance in making the Doctrine a useful and effective tool.
… so we will stop here for today.
… one thing! to clarify my point, at the beginning of today’s Post, the key to using the Doctrine is learning and understanding the nature, characteristics and such of the three worldviews. in fact, it was DownSpring Cyndi who proffered the term ‘fluency’ as a way to describe our efforts to learn about the three worldviews, i.e. “hey, I am becoming more fluent in the scottian worldview… FUCK!” or “my fluency in the rogerian reality allows me to approximate the ‘projectile disinterest’ that we see so many of the ‘natives’ employ to such devastating effect”
(to be continued)
Friend of the Doctrine, Melanie has let us know that, due to shifting priorities, she would have her other blog ‘Steer Career Success‘ listed on our blogroll… it’s a good and useful and fun site, it has to do with jobs and careers and such and totally ties in with where we are taking this conversation about the use of the Wakefield Doctrine in the workplace… so stop over at her blog and say ‘hidy’
speaking of sent ya… if you are still reading this Post, I totally want to engage you in …. conversation! we are having the first weekly Wakefield Doctrine Video Brunch, this coming weekend. since you are clearly interested in the Doctrine, I totally care about making the Vid Brunch convenient to your time zone… so leave us a Comment and let me know your ‘zone …am currently thinking to start in the early am this coming Sunday (’cause Friend of the Doctrine Michelle is a nicely symetrical 12 hours ahead of us. but there is still room to play with the exact starting hour)
hey, ever one… Friend of the Doctrine, Mod Mom has got herself a whole new look over at elleroy was here (yes, the Rickenbacker is still there…)
About clarkscottroger
Very interesting. Based on your definition, I think I fall mostly in the Outsider category.
@Tracie
…nothing wrong with that! (some of my best friends…and DownSprings) are Outsiders
keep in mind this is a system of predominance…(hardly ever) a mirror image… plus the influence of secondary aspects but! to help you decide if you are a clark I will make a statement and you decide how you feel about the statement and pick from one of the following three responses:
a) strongly agree
2) what the hell are you talking about
c) hey baby, you look like you need a hug
the statement: ‘I am here and the world is out there’
(good luck!)
Yes, yes, I DO suppose that if you work in the world of languages, you end up relating a lot of things to “fluency.” LOL
Ah, I wish I could have called in Saturday night – I’d thought up some questions. I’ll pose them over the week…
One of which: because of the insatiable quest for information, I feel like it’s entirely possible for clarks to overwhelm themselves with thing they like to do and find out about. I am constantly checking myself so that I don’t overextend myself with activities and commitments to do things. Case in point: getting ready to finish my Master’s. The last time I was taking classes, I was teaching full time, doing Americorps, teaching extra community college classes PLUS trying to take one or two courses that were two hours away.
This time, I still want to continue blogging (I love it!), doing art, AND working full time. *sigh*
Is this part of the human condition that is the clark worldview? ha!
In any case, have a great day. :)
@Cyndi
well, duh! (lol hey, everybody* relax… I can make that joke cause I’m a clark too)
the simple answer is: yes. but there is a way of looking from (your) tertiary rogerian aspect and it (this aspect) will manifest your (projected) amibition/goal/project in a certain… orderly manner**
I will now open the floor for discussion and/or opinion if there are any rogers out there who would consider venturing an opinion… we will listen.
*the scotts and the rogers among the Readers
** this worldview is yours inherently, however you have not spent your life ‘practicing’ these skills, behaviors, strategies… so there will be, perforce as clunkiness… but trust ‘the instinct (of this worldview)
GOODY I am excited for this.
Also, ‘Wakefield’ and ‘Doctrine’ consistently had caps thus negating the original premise (yet, as a highlighting tool, very effective)
I found these songs today (well, not today – I’ve known them for ages, but the y just struck me today)
Alanis teaching clarks to be scotts – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tOHz2l0qE
Jessie teaching rogers to be clarks – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMxX-QOV9tI
Till just being a scott – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ARCuTlg-Y8
@Considerer
lol
excellent!
clarkroger
although with the right booze and pills I could fit in elsewhere
very interesting. I feel like I should have been given a password and handshake to post.
@Lance
well, actually your Comment is the password and secret handshake! (in all seriousness, the Doctrine is funny how, even when being more oblique than normal, it has a way of being self-selecting… the people who do not ‘get the Doctrine’ don’t see anything on these pages… the pass by with barely a glance. everyone else, have the …whatever, the insatiable curiosity or intellectual flexibility to have a sense of what is going on…even on dense days like today).
Welcome to the Doctrine, yo… actually I was hoping we could interest you in this here Doctrine here …for reasons that I am not at liberty to state.*
*lol …the thing about this Doctrine and the three personality types? we have this custom that no one can say, “hey so and so is a clark‘ or ‘you frickin scott you’ well, I guess the scotts around here can say that (they hardly ever listen to me anyway).
But the idea is that, for this to be fun and useful, the individual should decide for theyselves which of the three worldviews apply. Having said that, I am kinda over-familiar with this personality theory, so often I can guess early on which of the three a person is… and we can use more of you people around here!**
** there are DownSprings and one Progenitor around here who will be all over me for this Comment! “clark, you’re going to scare them off or get them mad before they even have a chance to see if they like this thing”
Wow – fascinating! I’m a Clark with a side of Scotts. Thanks for the shout out! The Rickenbacker ain’t goin’ nowhere… ;)
@Linda
cool! a lot of the people (Denise, Cyndi, Considerer among others) are of similar worldviews… clarklike predominant with a secondary scottian aspect. This secondary aspect accounts for a certain aggressiveness not common to the clark worldview, but by virtue of being a secondary, it tends to show in areas (of one’s life) where there is exceptional interest/involvement…
I see just one fatal flaw in your reasoning: not everyone sees him/herself as others do. That is to say, not everyone is particularly self-aware or self-absorbed (depending on your point of view), so while I may identify myself as a clark, my husband might find me to be a bit of a roger, since I jumped on the blog bandwagon. However, the guy who tried to touch my daughter at Walmart might find me to be a bit of a scott, seeing as how I nearly killed him with the burning heat of hate coming from my eyes.
Just sayin’.
@Melissa
good points, the Doctrine is nothing, if it can’t survive reasonable questions and/or challenges. (I will say, as a prelude to my explanation, that my rhetorical skill is a factor, at least in the initial stages of this blog, vis a vis an effective and clear explanation of how this things works and what it claims to offer)…that being said,
one of the sayings around the Doctrine, is ‘this thing is for you, not for them’.
This is meant to accomplish a couple of things, a)short-circuit the tendency of people to take a tool/perspective like the Doctrine (and most other personality theories) and try to apply it to others (“…oh honey!! come here… this test in my magazine says you are…. so all you need to do is…”) lol and 2) to give us a reason to wear Tee Shirts with our names on them
I assume that everyone will (potentially) see everyone else differently… but the thing about that is… assuming that the other person gives you a totally neutral and un-biased and non-agenda-ered description of how you appear to them…. what good does that do you? (We might say that ‘that is how you exist in their worldview’…and therefore a function of the worldview of the person that isn’t you.)
Now, having said that, the reason the Wakefield Doctrine is still around is that when you take the characteristics of the three worldviews, observe the behavior of another person (or yourself) correctly and infer the worldview of that person, you will have a sense of how (that) ‘person relates themselves to the world around them’. (for example…purely for confusion purposes, if you correctly identify a person as a roger, there is a high probability that they will use many, many more personal pronouns (I, me) than would a say, a clark or a scott. that person will tend to be more literal-minded than another, more likely to take a slight more personally and a have, for reasons still not understood, demonstrate a distinct fondness for hats! lol
But! to return to your orginal point.
What does all this mean to that other person? Nothing.
But the insight, I am offering (which is, of course, dependent on your own understandings of the characteristics of that person’s worldview) will be useful to you. The ways it is useful is kinda outside of the scope of this Comment, but I may have to write a Post, while your questions are fresh in my mind.
on that last point, how you would act in ‘extraordinary circumstances… yes, we all have a potential to act in a manner that is characteristic of the ‘the other two world views’ that is the source of the promise of this theory of personality to offer a tool for self-improving ourselfs.
great questions and very helpful in my efforts to better the way we explain this thing.
So, in the end, it really just boils down to hats and t-shirts. Huh. ;)
I find that the older I get, the more personalities seem to emerge, but the better I am at integrating them and bringing one to the forefront as necessary. For example, when I’m around my father, I tend to defer to his judgment, even if I disagree, because that is the relationship that we have. When I’m around my best friend, I’m a bit bawdy and tell “this one time when I was drunk” stories. When I’m around my in-laws, well, frankly, I tend not to speak for a variety of reasons.
Keep at it.