me:  “Considerings (the blog) has been real busy…you’re getting good reviews”

Lizzie: “It has been indeed!  At some point I’m hoping to reach a tipping point and snag a few more members/followers/groupies…  I have been pleasantly surprised, because I am trying to take your advice and learn rogerian (see my new tab when you get a chance)”

me:  “damn, I hate to see you spending all your time re-inventing the axle! You have the Doctrine down to the point that you should be out there pushing the boundaries of (our) understanding.”

So I told our newest DownSpring, write me a question (about the Wakefield Doctrine) and I might use it as a launching point in an effort to present where the hot topics and current challenges are in our efforts to learn, use and have fun with the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers.

(here’s Lizzie’s Question):

‘How you came up with such a thorough Doctrine. And whether or not all the Doctrine views are ‘but only through the eyes of a clark‘, in which case,what might the other views think (or would they?)”

My Answer: ‘No’

The Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the idea of personal reality. Simply put, the totality of your experience of the world around you is more than the aggravation² of objective facts, (who, what, where, why and when). Reality involves interpretation of the external ‘objective’ world. Nothing earth-shaking there. The Doctrine is concerned with, ‘how we relate ourselves to the world around us’. No one should have a problem with that as a starting point. The Wakefield Doctrine holds that there are three characteristic worldviews (those personal realities we spoke of just now). Since the Wakefield Doctrine purports to be a personality theory, we have three personality types. The difference between us and the mainstream personality systems that immediately appears, is that the Wakefield Doctrine is not particularly concerned with the individual (as a source of information to determine personality types) per se. Rather, the primary goal of a person employing our Doctrine is to infer which of the three worldviews are being experienced. If we correctly infer that a person is living in, (and has grown up and developed in), the personal reality that we call, ‘that of the Outsider’ then we have what we call a clark. (and so with the respective worldviews of the Predator and the Herd).

Where the work of the Wakefield Doctrine currently lies, is in our efforts to develop a language that can be understood by an individual (from) the perspective of any of the three worldviews.⁴
The three worldviews are different. They are different in terms of how they require a successful ‘inhabitant’ to relate to them. This is a qualitatively, fundamentally, scrumptiously different difference (between the three worldviews). Lets go with the bullet points:

• clarks live in a worldview (in which) the individual is an Outsider. if you are an Outsider, what is the first thing that occurs to you to do?  what quality/capability/capacity found in (a) human being is best suited to this task? And while you are engaged in this effort what would you fear and what would you hope for
• scotts live in a worldview (in which) the individual is a Predator.  what is the first thing that occurs to you to do? (now to expand on the line of reasoning we followed with clarks), how you describe the world to another person is a function of how you relate yourself to the world (that) you find yourself in, (we call this ‘how the worldview manifests’), from the perspective of having the world of the Predator to relate yourself to and, given the range of human expression available how would you be inclined to express yourself to those around you?
• rogers live in the world of the Herd, the nature of the world for the person who lives in this worldview is relatedness  what would it be like, to look around at the people and the places and the things and the activities and the past and the future in a context in which everything (and everyone) is connected in some way?

The challenge of creating a ‘common language’ lies in the fact that in languages there are sounds and there are concepts that are exclusively the domain of one’s context, environment …world and is not necessarily even possible in the other two worldviews. And it is surely these ‘exclusive/characteristic/native’ concepts, that are critical to understanding/acting in/feeling the true nature of the three personal realities. For better or worse, the Doctrine maintains that we are all heir to the three ways to experience the world, so our job is to learn, understand, identify with, feel and do something with each of these distinct, though somewhat in common worlds.

We talk about our initial efforts to understand/act/feel the three worldviews as acquiring fluency. Only reasonable, no? You have three cultures that have only the biology of their inhabitants in common and you want to create a language that allows productive interaction between the three…first thing you better do is become fluent in each native language. Then find common ground. Then…then! try and convince those stubborn bastards that not only is this a good idea, but they will be better off once they learn to save the lava-walking and the witch-burning for their once-a-year culture celebrations and stand acting like the evolved people that we want to hang out with (and we promise to stop mumbling and hoping to be forgiven).

Any questions? Outrageous acts? Overwhelming Feelings?

(oh yeah!! new Readers?  clarks think…scotts act and rogers feel.  If you have the kind of mind that enjoys playing with ideas and you have the sharpness of intellect that you will see when you look at Cyndi (the brilliant young clarklike female currently known as Cynthia) and Considerer and the others  you might just get something out of this!)

1) actually I was typing…not one of the more effective ways for me to communicate

2) a rogerian expression³