Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Where were we?
(Wait! Don’t tell us! We got this one.)
oh yeah. Here.
What that was, and this (post) is, is all about writing posts for the New Reader. A visitor, perhaps link-following from our primary bloghops ( the TToT, the Six Sentence Story or the Unicorn Challenge), taking a moment to see what this ‘Wakefield Doctrine’ is all about.
The goal is twofold. a) to see how we would explain our little personality theory compared to how we did at various points over the last fourteen, fifteen years and 2) to re-capture the simple joy and exhilaration of those early years when everything was a topic for a post explaining the Doctrine and the provocative jostled with the careful-not-to-offend like two pre-adolescent boys trying to impress a girl despite not being able to explain their determination.
lets jump into the middle, shall we?*
The Wakefield Doctrine posits three personality types:
- clarks (Outsiders)
- scotts (Predators)
- rogers (Herd Members)
so, do we think we can recapture the energy and spirit and such that produced Readers saying stuff like, “Wait! What did you just say about living life as the Outsider was like being a detective that had to solve a crime while preventing everyone else from know their identity and mission?”
Having an established, if not educated, Readership is far more intrusive, subversive and distractive that we realized. Huh. Interesting.**
New Readers are directed to ignore most, if not all, asterixeded sentences and such.
The three predominant worldviews are relationships. Better to say, they are the character of the relationship we, all of us, develop and maintain throughout life. (Note: while we are all born with the potential of three personality types, settle into one at a very early age.)
blah.. blah…blah
err, New Readers.
Lets start over.
A clark, a scott and roger stand on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the city street from a very popular restaurant. It is nearly noon and there is a line of people waiting outside the door. The scott is shouting and pointing at people in the line. At one point he walks across the busy street and talks to a woman who is three couples from the door. (From our vantage point we cannot make hear what he is saying, except when he laughs.) The woman laughs when the scott points back at his two lunch companions on the opposite sidewalk. But she also waves at them. Something from the middle if the line gets their attention, a frowning man, gesticulating to his own companions. The scott laughs and walks back to the obviously upset man who immediately gestures and motions with his hands, pointing at his expensive watch in the general direction of the people around him. The scott smiles. Leans as if to confide something to the man (and his immediate companions).
Back on the other side of the street, the clark watches and smiles. The roger watches, frowns and begins to cross the street but stops as a bus nearly hits him. When it passes, the scott is almost back to their side of the street. The three continue waiting. One is relieved, the other, impatient and the third makes a joke.
A little vignette to get the week started.
New Readers? Despite the genders of the characters in our little illustration, write this down: ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is gender-neutral.
It is also culture and, even age, neutral. (This aspect, the age thing? Gets really facinating as it brings to the fore the effects and influences of the individual’s secondary and tertiary aspects. But that’s Introduction to the Wakefield Doctrine 103.)
*ok, right here is the first differences between the early days and the present. there was no ‘middle’ when we started. There was simply, (and this is an accurate, if not literal, description of the process of post writing) a new day and an empty (post) page. We’d sit down and see what showed up on the screen.1
** no, sorry there is no prize, hat or otherwise for “I know the predominant worldview of the writer! Because of what they wrote in that line.”
- Damn! For those following along, those non-New Readers, there is fundamental difference Numero Uno. We have a history now. There was no history against which we might write new and better ways to describe the Wakefield Doctrine.
