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

Visitors to these pages, may of late, be tempted to think that this blog is about developing my writing chops. And, they would not be entirely wrong. When you think about the history of this blog, they are actually more correct than they know. This blog, from the first post back in June 2009, has been like one of those cardboard-cover, no-way-you-can-remove-a-single-page and don’t-even-think-about-rolling-up or folding-them-to-fit-anywhere-other-than-on-the-top-of-a-pile-of-textbooks.*

It’s no secret that once I started to meet people here in the blogosphere, I became aware of the fact that this is a world of the written word. (The inkblot-shaped island, Rhetoria, off the coast of the Noticia Archipelago, to be precise.)  But I digress.

While I’ve always been painfully aware of my relative lack of skills in the written word, the drive provided by the Wakefield Doctrine overcame any temptation to get all Ed Sullivan’d when I’d read the posts and stories and such put forth by the people I hung out with here and on ‘the Facebook’.

The reason there are still new posts here is that, in a really interesting and odd relationship with an idea, I’ve been charged with the task of writing ‘the Perfect Wakefield Doctrine Post’.

Haven’t done it yet. Still trying. ‘Course, having spent this much time cranking out the wordage, it should come as no surprise that, in order to practice, (‘to practice is to improve‘), I’m found myself writing stories with topics that, to new Reader, might seem to have nothing to do with our little personality theory. (yeah, hah! as if).

(ok! Perfect Wakefield Doctrine blogpost Take: 787834.x)

The Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective on the world and the people who make it our personal reality. The Doctrine proposes that we are, all of us, born with the predisposition to experience our surroundings in one of three characteristic ways. These three are:

1. the reality of the Outsider(clarks)
2. the world of the Predator(scotts)
3. the life of the Herd Member(rogers)

At a very early age, (way young, like, one or two-years-of-age, probably just before the acquisition of language***), we settle into one of the three. We refer to this as one’s predominant worldview. The child does not, however, lose the capacity to experience the world as ‘the other two’. And, for many, there is a certain relative strength in the un-realized worldviews. Example: I am a clark (predominant worldview), with a (strong) secondary scottian aspect and a (weak) tertiary rogerian streak.

but…but! Before I go, let me say a single thing about the Doctrine that serves to set it apart from all the other systems and schema for understanding how people deal with the world.

From the Wakefield Doctrine’s perspective, your approach to life the best way available. Your personality type is perfect. For you. Provided you’re willing to accept that ‘personality’ is for the purposes of our discussion, a shorthand for the strategies and styles of interacting with the world around us. For your world. The list of characteristics and identifiers for our three types are but descriptions. When you grew up and practiced the ways that helped you survive and thrive, what kind of reality were you contending with? Whether you were in the reality of the Outsider or the Predator or the Herd Member, we know how you approached the family, the friends, the neighborhood, the job, the world. With an understanding of the three worldviews, we know, (as you will know), more about the other person than should otherwise be possible.

The mission statement, (as a roger might say), of the Wakefield Doctrine is ‘to better appreciate how we relate ourselves to the world around us’.

The goal of learning the Doctrine is to develop the ‘other two ways’ to interact with the world in a dynamic balance.

…I do have to run. Be back.

*sure, put it between two text books, hell, if you’re in a hurry to stop in the middle of a crowed corridor, put two of ’em on top of each other and then in the middle of the pile of books.**

** hypo-birthday’d Readers? This was back in the day. One carried school books under a crooked arm, from class-to-class, on and off the bus.

*** from the Doctrine’s perspective, the common expression of ‘the babbling of an infant’ is more telling than most appreciate. Before settling into one of the three worldviews, in theory, the child is in all three. Their efforts to communicate is non-intelligible, not because they’re not making sense, its just they are speaking a language we’ve all forgotten. Call it Babelese. Makes a lot more sense, “How cute! Little clark is Babeling at us as if he could talk”