Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
(I was thinking about ways to over-come my current…whatever with Post-writing and, for no apparent reason, I flashbacked to a time years ago when I used to play Tennis and Tennis-related. What came back to me were the times we used to try and psyche each other out while in the middle of a close game. The strategy I most enjoyed (and I actually laughed to myself when I remembered it) was to get the other person to focus on ‘how they played’. The ‘how’, in this instance, was not ‘how well are you playing’, but rather, ‘how is it you get the racket to be in a position to intersect with the (projected) path of the ball?’ I’ll confess that, much like the MAD Strategy of the Cold War or the revenge sex in our early 20’s, backlash from the attempt to employ this gambit was pretty much assured.)
It occurs to me that I am, of late, doing just that when I sit down to write the day’s Wakefield Doctrine post. I’ll start with the ambition to write a really good Post, explaining the Wakefield Doctrine in terms that everyone can appreciate and understand and, pretty much right as soon as I get past, ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is…’, I ‘look’. psych!
(I used to describe my approach to writing Posts as, ‘I’ll seize on an idea, establish some kind of attitude or premise or position and then spend the rest of the time trying to write my way out of it’.) (lol)
So, be prepared for some fairly…. odd Posts in the coming days.
(I do have some kind of internal Puritan who really expects every one of these things to offer something of value (to you, the Reader), so I’ll do an easy one.)
Kristi’s Post contained what I refer to as ‘an artifact of her worldview’ when she made the seemingly innocuous statement that included the phrase, ‘the security of expectations’. Am I being needlessly modest if I say, I stared at that sentence for about 5 minutes before it hit me, this thought was from a reality that I have never experienced.
I think I’ll return to this topic tomorrow. Let me leave you with a thought, ‘expectations are a noun in the worldview of rogers and a verb in the worldview of clarks‘… clarks labor under/dodge and hide from (unless we are trying to undercut) expectations… rogers find security in them. can I get a ‘damn!’
damn! :)
Security in an expectation? Explain please?
I think I can (explain) but it will be from a clarklike perspective… will have find the original citation (where Kristi made that statement)…to be sure…
Dont worry I will be reading from a decidedly clarklike perspective.
Security in an expectation makes perfect sense to me. Stands as a good definition of trust.
Of course that doesn’t mean you’re always warm and fuzzy about it. You can reasonably expect 2+2=4, but you can also reasonably expect a terrorist to try to kill you.
security in predictability…thanks Roger
…rogers find security in expectations which I can see would relate directly to a roger’s need to always be prepared. Per the highest authority, rogers do not like (to put it mildly) to be unprepared!
Look forward to tomorrow’s post.
(all of this (preceding comments) strikes me as totally on target…in itself a remarkable event, given the worldviews of the participants)… (in my own opinion): perhaps in the most fundamental sense, expectation(s) are affirmations of the inter-dependency of the quantifiable reality of the rogerian worldview… in distinction (and contrast), expectations manifest in the clarklike world as demands upon the individual by the group (perhaps a subtle distinction) but I would venture that a roger does not perceive his/her herd as ‘the group’.
so if a Roger does not perceive the herd as their group…then where does the expectation come from? If there’s always a need to be prepared , & a need to be part of the larger herd, then doesn’t that infer an expectation from an outside source? (you know kind of like the pressure the clark is percieving.) and again its just totally possible I’ve been overthinking everything today…..i can be slow to catch on…..argh.
zoe
no…not slow and correct…. from the perspective of the clarklike worldview.
you illustrate the nearly in-surmountable challenge that is faced for those of us who would use to the Doctrine and no small part of this (challenge) is the secret fact of worldviews that they are real…and complete…and consistent…and different.
(I know you will enjoy this process if your secondary aspect does not interfere)… I use the words a did to try and suggest a reality in which a herd is not a group. The written words really sucks for this kind of effort… but I will grab words and smash them together with the assumption that you (all) will know that not only my (choice) of words are those of a clark (in the reality of a clark) but my very choices of perception are pre-defined/limited/proscribed by the nature of my reality.
We can imagine the ‘other two worldviews’ and be correct when it comes to the nature of the behavior of the person, we can even get a sense of the ‘reason’ behind the behavior… but beyond that we get into a discussion that resembles music and sex…. (and I will leave us on that, hopefully provocative note until tomorrow’s Post…when I will try and bring this very cool discussion into a Post…just for the fun of it.)
“Structure of expectations”–I had to go back to the post, because I didn’t remember writing “security of expectations”. I thought, is he talking about me Kristi, or the other Kristi? Not that “security” changes the meaning much. The phrase was in reference to me trying to figure out exactly what was expected in way of the guest post. If I know the rules, I know what to do.