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

Let’s talk about scotts.

A reprint from 2013, to start us off:

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

Given that most of the current week is, at least in our North American culture, focused on a celebration that is the essence of the rogerian worldview, I thought I’d get a quickie in about scotts*.

The very young human who is left to grow up in the worldview of the Predator, develops certain skills and abilities and traits, all appropriate to thriving and surviving in a reality where it’s (metaphorically, at least):  ‘kill or be killed’ / ‘eat or be eaten’ / ‘fight or flight’ …pretty much all the time.**

We all have a scottian friend. (unless we’re scotts….then we have a clarklike friend (no! not her! she’s just a roger….the other one, the one who, while you might not speak on any regular basis, when you do get together, (be it a month or 13 years later), she picks up where you left off, without the slightest hesitation…that’s your clarklike friend)

scotts!!  they’re the ones who get us in trouble with the Principle in grade school (and)  in trouble with the cops in high school (and) …more frequently than we’d care to admit, in trouble with our spouses in adulthood. We all have a scottian friend. They’re the life of the party and the only person who, like a job applicant on her way to her first serious job interview…curriculum vita in hand, are on the guest list with a pre-emptive excuse from someone. (“Hey, sure it got a little rowdy last time… and he might have broken a lamp, but we all had fun, right?!“), That’s your scott.
Have you ever started the annual chore of cleaning out the gutters, and before you get the ladder set into the proper (and safe) 53 degree angle, you hear  ” Hey!  let me give you a hand!!” and before you can turn around, your neighbor is  climbing the ladder, without holding on with his hands and then stops and then decides it’s easier to just get up on the roof and walk along the edge and clean the gutters that way, rather than have to move the ladder…which is not really that bad an idea, until you see him climbing back up the ladder (you’re not sure how he got back down without seeing him)…. with a leaf blower on his back?  …yep, that’s your scottian neighbor.

scotts: energetic, loyal, mecurial, helpful, sloppy, hot-headed, impulsive, aggressive, natural leaders, inveterate trouble-makers, sexy, short-attention-span(ned), can’t-do-enough-for-others, can’t-follow-instructions-beyond-‘open-caref….’,
male scotts excel at being:

• • mob leaders (and)
  • police officers,
  • gym teachers (and)
  • one-term politicians, (and)
  • surgeons

female scotts excel at being:

• elementary school Principles (and)
• sales trainers,
• being female (and)
• real estate brokers,
• actress (ages: 7 to 23 and then 43 to 79) (and)
• family matriarch

that should hold us, in this ‘week of Herd’! Remember now, the goal of the Wakefield Doctrine is to come to be able to see the world as the other person is experiencing it. Learn the characteristics of the three worldviews, observe the people in your life and when you’re able to correctly infer how they are ‘relating themselves to the world around them’, you will totally know more about the other person than they know about themselves.

… was just Replying to a Comment from Kristi and I think it would be a good way to end today’s post.

“…it (the notion of a secondary and tertiary aspect) is one of the best things about the Doctrine, it would have us believe that, instead of trying to be something we are not (often the biggest encountered on the path of self-developing ourselfs), all we need do is realize the potential that we have to cope with a different world (one shared by ‘the other 2/3rds of the population’). Rather than have to find and learn something new and therefore not genuine to who we are, we need only accept ourselves both ‘as we are’ and ‘as we might have been’. “

 

 

* yes,  cue the ‘elbows and laughter’….pretty much have them ready,  this is about the scottian worldview, after all!

** note to New Readers: the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the notion that we all live, to a certain, but not overly weird degree, in a reality that is personal to us… think about, oh I don’t know, the last time you stood in line at the supermarket and the cashier was talking to the the kid who was supposed to be bagging the groceries and everyone is getting impatient, or maybe, lets say you’re at a child/Teacher conference and even though the Teacher is not only very young, but clearly very, very new at his job, and yet,  it’s  becoming abundantly clear that he’s beginning to lecture you on child-rearing practices…. thats where worldviews are found.

ok

Now that we’ve had our little laugh, there’s a week out there, people. It’s lurking in the closet that the end of the hall that your bedroom is on; it’s standing, back against the faux brick siding of the front of your house and it’s waiting in the parking lot (or zoom holding page, where you see the others but have your mic muted…or so you believe) of your school, workplace or supermarket/mall or even the park where the parents start their day and the old people wait to see who among their ranks made it through the night.

That you have a scottian friend is not important. That you can leverage this fact into a better understanding of the Doctrine, is. Chances are you’re a clark. And, chances are, of the qualities manifested in ‘the other two’ types, you’re inclined to want to be able to act like a scott…. at times, anyway. Don’t despair. The Doctrine maintains that we all retain the potential to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. All you need to do is take be willing to risk it all that, push comes to shove you’ll act properly.

There! That wasn’t hard, was it?

Yep, first lesson is over.