Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
…you know how, on some days, (not that you notice anything when you wake up, and, certainly not something that you do deliberately), you are, for all intents and purposes …invisible?
…have you ever found yourself getting angry at something that a co-worker has done, quietly inadvertently, they probably would not know what the fuss was about and that makes you all the more angry and yet, when you try to get something done…. no, not punishment, simply doing something so that the person making this mistake does not make it again, or, failing that, at very least, understand their error?
isn’t frustration…. frustrating? no, we know what you mean, and it’s not something that you dwell on, except when the people who are probably the least qualified to criticize, or worse, clueless… yet manage to impose their arbitrary rules on others and you, well, there is nothing wrong with being …direct with them. that’s reasonable, right?
the above is the Wakefield Doctrine. (In our block quote today, done in a faux art film Mise-en-scène sorta way, ya know?) Of course, that’s just one of the ways that we offer the insights that warrant the effort to learn our little personality theory. Other times, the real fun of the Wakefield Doctrine can be found when we go the ‘outrageous route’. I don’t mean outrageous in the scottian sense… the ‘Hey!! fuck you!!’ (no, not all scotts yell ‘fuck you’ to get attention. sometimes they’ll make funny faces…) That’s not the point!
The point is this: the Wakefield Doctrine offers a perspective on the behavior of the people in our lives. There is ‘an internal consistency’ to the (application) of the principles that is…well, pretty frickin incredible. Long story short, a roger will exhibit rogerian attributes and behavior ‘to a depth’ that should not happen without the individual having at least scanned this here blog here (god knows, a roger would never admit to a clark that they, (the clark), have stumbled upon something remarkable).
See? right there! that last part. That is the fun of the Wakefield Doctrine! No of course not every roger will begrudge a clark, just as not every scott will talk in a louder-than-totally-necessary-voice addressing everyone in the line at the supermarket, just because someone laughed at a joke.
It is in the exaggeration that we express the insights (that) are inherent in the Doctrine.
(Having said that, you need to go over to Christine’s TToT post from the weekend. She tells of a confrontation with a …lets call them a service provider (I don’t want to talk the fun out of reading it, if you haven’t already gone there)… go ahead go read it.
… am I the only one who was picturing the scene as the guy using his computer as, like a chair… you know, the old lion tamer chair and whip to try and maintain the semblance of control?
(New Readers? Christine is a self-identified* scott. the worldview of a scott is that of the Predator lion(ess), wolf, any predator you might like, ferocious when frustrated, mercurial in temperament defender of the pack… the Wakefield Doctrine simply states: ‘the way that Christine relates herself to the world around her has the attributes of the predator’ pretty simple, isn’t it?)
Anyway, I’m rambling. Go out there today. Keep the following in mind:
- clarks relate themselves to the world around them as would ‘the Outsider’… ‘there but not there’, clarks shy aware from the spotlight, but will not tolerate being ignored.
- scotts relate themselves to the world around them as does ‘the Predator’ …. the lion, (not the invisible alien in the movie)…. scotts are a lot of things, invisible is not one of them, the men are great leaders and the women are hot
- rogers relate themselves to the world around them as should ‘the Herd Member’ if there is a Right Way to do things, a roger will be interested, they know that the world is quantifiable and understandable, provided it is taken seriously enough… rogers do an amazing language thing that is part humor and part aggression, we call it a rogerian expression and you’ll know it when you hear it… ex. a blogger talking about the real estate business, ‘on the whole, I found most real estate agents to be much too self-absorbant‘ or, upon seeing the deductions on their first paycheck at the new job, ‘oh man! look at how much they deducted for aggravated security‘ or “I really like that movie, but I’m going to wait until they release the un-abashed edition” yeah…like that.
* and that is the only kind there is…. self-identified (One of my few rules around here. No one has the right or authority to decide which of the three types another person is. At least, not to the extent that the person labeled needs to feel that it is with any force or effect. That’s not to say that we can’t talk about and help and try to figure out which of the three a person is… that’s how we practice the Wakefield Doctrine! It’s just that it’s for each of to decide that the way (we) relate ourselves to the world around us is consistent with being a clark or a scott or a roger.
New Readers? try it out! the other thing we say about the Doctrine is, ‘you can’t break it and you can’t get it wrong!’
