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

So why is it that, of the three personality types, clarks look upon Tuesday as, perhaps, the best of all days of the week? Simple. The weekend-workweek transition day (Monday) has been survived, the focus on achieved (or not) progress day (Wednesday) has not yet occurred and the deceptively desirable end-of-workweek day (Friday) is still a distant dream.

Tuesday is all about optimism and promise. And clarks, well, clarks are nothing if not the embodiment of promise.* No, in our brief discussion this morning, ‘promise’ is decidedly a noun. And the context is social context-free! It is not about breaking a promise, making a promise, promising to better. It (the promise of a clark) is the potential… for (totally fill in the blank).

If anything, the promise inherent in the worldview of a clark is the event horizon of their existence. whoah! (whoah, indeed!) Damn, as often happens, I’ve stumbled into a topic that, like a quiet talk and a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter, the coming day still held back by the castellation in bleached oak of the cabinets bracketing the sink, the outside wall falls into the yard and the world yaws open, ever hungry for human time.

lol

Cliff Notes version of my tantalizing allusion: “…the promise inherent in the worldview of a clark is the event horizon of their existence.” clarks are always searching for something. Being of a rational bent (clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel), the sought-after thing manifests as knowledge/information. clarks are the insatiably curious of the three. The ‘something’ clarks seek is the thing that everyone around them appear to know already and, by tragic miscalculation, clarks assume is the knowledge that makes them, (scotts and rogers) real people. They must have been absent that day, when growing up and being taught about life, ya know. In any event, that is the singularity, the conviction that if they acquire more information, they might discover the secret and become a part of.** Like the nearly-all powerful black hole, we cannot see it directly and so are left with the edge of endless appetite, like golem with a question mark impressed upon our foreheads.

*  the natural tendency here is to interpret the word ‘promise’ as a verb, which totally changes the spin. That kind of promise is strictly of the domain of the real people, the scotts and the rogers. (“Hey, a promise is a promise, so get some clothes on an we’ll catch some breakfast”  “Yeah, but you promised. I heard you promise. Everyone heard you promise. How can you do such a thing?“)

** super-brief Doctrine for New Readers: unlike most of the other personality theories and schema, the Doctrine does not rely on quizzes and surveys, questions about favorite colours or food, likes and dislikes, in order to establish which category a person falls into. This is because, from our viewpoint, our personality ‘types’ are simply the characteristically distinct style of dealing with life, given the world we are experiencing. Ex: I grew up in the reality of the ‘the Outsider’ and I learned and developed the style of interacting that would best advantage me in that context. My tendency to mumble, have poor posture, make creatively eccentric fashion choices, be funny (provided you’re close enough to hear me) and exhibit a sporadic yet wildly original creativity is because that is what is successful when contending with the world as I experience it. For scotts and for rogers, the same applies. Start out as a little baby one in the world of the Predator and I betcha you develop a predilection for quick reflexes, act-before-being-acted-up real fast. It’s about what strategies are appropriate to the character of the world you grow up in, you know, what kind of likes and dislikes, favorite colours or food that increase the odds that you survive and thrive today.