the Wakefield Doctrine

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

Cut!  At the bottom, in a nice, neat, block quote, is the post that I started Sunday night with every intention to publish Tuesday. But I didn’t. NP. Here it is, in it’s-completed-this-morning-entirety. …down there, at the bottom.

But, sometimes, clarks have been known to get all gnomishly-enthusiastic and excited by a pile of information, like a cardboard box full of Saturday Evening Posts in mint condition. What about the simple, laugh-out-loud fun for the scotts and rogers (and some clarks)?

So how do you know if you’re dealing with a clark or a scott or roger? Start by looking at them:

• clark (Outsider) bad posture, sloppy dresser with something going on that prevents you from thinking ‘aww, poor homeless person’… it might be a pair of two hundred dollars shoes, barely showing at the end of the frayed cuffs of a pair of worn out Dockers, or a streak of green on the side of a head of hair that looks like the aftermath of an unsuccessful eviction of a family of robins, the color is perfect and un-ignorable. Maybe it’s something as simple as mis-matched fluorescent socks* Or perhaps a really short mini-skirt….. over a softly-worn pair of Levis. Best be thinking: ‘clark‘. (Doctrine Insight Hint: clarks do not like being in the spotlight however, they will not tolerate being ignored)
• scott (Predator) hands-down, single first clue: their eyes. There is no, absolutely no mistaking the ‘eyes of a scott‘. Hell, even in photos they grab you. Go back to yesterday’s post and look at the photo of the clark, scott and roger. If we need to tell you (yes, I removed the caption…lol) which is the scott, the door is to your left.   no! clark! come back! you are only being un-necessarily polite and considerate of your fellow Readers when you say you’re not sure…(the same way you used to sit there, in the exam room with your SAT pretending to be still answering questions, until someone else gets up to return their Number 2 pencil and test booklet)… clarks sense scotts the way a lemur will notice the .000012 percent reduction in the light reflected by the leaves of the tree over-hanging the watering hole, a careless panther goes hungry.
  The thing about the eyes of a scott is that they are totally alert, alive and aware of whatever is going on around them…even when there’s nothing going on…. ok, one more thing about scotts: scottian females? One word: sex appeal (like the chrome on a ’59 Cadillac Eldorado, you won’t even think about stepping out of the road) or a male scott? he’s the one telling jokes. very effectively, everyone laughs and the jokes, guaranteed, will get more outrageous, increasingly risqué and the circle of his audience will diminish. He doesn’t mind, he’s just looking for the perfect …..lemur to take to lunch.
• rogers (Herd Member) well, to begin with, two-thirds of the population are rogers. These fortunate people grew up in a world where everyone belonged (even that odd one on the fringe…. they belonged; the better to highlight the virtue of the Herd.
• 0rogers are sociable and charming, they enjoy people and they know everything about everyone (important distinction here, we said, ‘they know everything about everyone’ not ‘they know everything’ contrary to how they may talk.) We collectively owe the relative stability of the culture to our rogerian human. He or she is the one forming the clumps of people in the too-large reception room (they are not the center of these clumps… that position is occupied by a scott (by choice) or a clark (by error in judgement and/or bad luck). The scott is glad to be there, the clark not so much. Good thing that rogers live in the reality of the quantifiable universe… we rely on them to keep the airplanes in the sky, the computers connecting the parts of our modern world and assure us that Hester Prynne did not suffer in vain.

Where has the time gone?!!?!  I got to get out of here. Please forgive any typoes… tomorrow, don’t forget Six Sentence Story! The prompt word is up. Go there, get it and write yourself a sextidacious story and join in the fun.

* true example. I remember them (and wish they still made them… orange and green flourescent) from high school

As the subtitle implies, today being Tuesday we will focus on the use and application of the Wakefield Doctrine in the personal reality of the Outsider. aka clarks.

(New Readers: the Doctrine is built upon the concept of personal reality. That space around you that only you experience directly. Not necessarily physically close but definitely close to you. Nothing too outré, straining one’s credulity muscles; the world-as-you-experience-it that varies in small, but perceivable ways from everyone else.  The Doctrine’s employees this principle of personal reality, (often substituting the phrase ‘predominant worldview’) to account for the manner in which personality is developed. If you are raised, grow-up and develop in a world best described as the world of the Outsider, your style and strategies to cope with the world will be different from a child raised in the reality of the Predator (or Herd Member).

The Wakefield Doctrine offers three perspectives on the world and the people who make it a place in which to live. With a thorough understanding of the nature and character of each, you will be better equipped able to see the world as others are experiencing it.

Today the topic is totally the secret of relationship.

oh man… so I play a lot of jigsaw and I saw the secret of the universe this Sunday morning past.

The puzzle? Doesn’t much matter, but to help any rogers and scotts, it was of two women in the foreground, a crowd of other people in the background. Maybe a sporting, maybe not, the point being the foreground and background consisted of similar objects (‘people’).

So I completed the majority of the two women (primary, foreground figures enough to know I’ve got them mostly ‘assembled’. I’ve established most (but not all) of the outer boundaries. The blank space in the middle was getting tight. My efforts were to figure our how each of the primary figures connected to the surrounding background. (The objects of the gestalt, for all you Fritz Perls fans). Nothing was fitting, connecting, linking!! I tried moving them (the two main figures) up and moving them down against the row of indents and projections of the open edge of the boundary. Nothin!

Then, epiphany. It occurs to me, “Maybe this nearly-complete-figure on the right belongs on the left. And the one on the left belongs on the right.”

cha ching.

The Secret of the Universe in our willingness to consider that the relationship of the parts of our world might offer other configurations….

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

It is common knowledge among those who visit this blog more than twice* that I started it in order to expose the maximum number of people to the benefits of the Wakefield Doctrine.

As the years pass, I’ve pursued one ambition, to write the perfect Wakefield Doctrine post. It, (this perfect Wakefield Doctrine post), would be such that a Reader would, reading it but once, look around his or her world, (and the people who make it up), and apply the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine to their benefit.

So let’s try one this morning.

The Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective on life, the world and the people who surround us, as we navigate the course from our helpless births to our powerless deaths. The Wakefield Doctrine is a tool. A tool to aid the understanding of the afore-mentioned world, people and life, as well as a better understanding ourselves.  (Tools are funny things. Our world is crowded with those offering to sell us tools. Before signing up for the 3 Easy Payment Plan, we would be well-served to remember our experiences as young children when encountering tools. I, for one, still believe that a hammer can work on a screw; if the need is strong enough or the patience limited. lol)

The Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the notion that we are, all of us, born with the potential to experience life in one of three characteristic realities. The world of the Outsider(clarks), that of the Predator(scotts) and the life of the Herd Member(rogers). At a very early age, we settle into one of these three. We grow and mature, learning and developing strategies for interacting with the world.

The Wakefield Doctrine maintains that, even though we all settle into one (and only one) of these three worldviews, (Outsider, Predator, Herd Member), we retain the potential of ‘the other two’. This explains why sometimes, a person new to the Doctrine might say, ‘Hey! I know I’m a clark but there are times when I surely am a scott.’ At times of sufficient duress, we sometimes access the strategies and styles of ‘the other two’ in order to deal with the situation. (This, btw, is a total hint at the power of the Doctrine as a tool for self-improvement.)

The Wakefield Doctrine, at its heart, is all about ‘How we relate ourselves to the world around us‘. The wording is critical and quite deliberate. We are all used to the idea of ‘relating to the world’, our efforts to respond to the demands of daily life. We did not say that. What we said was, ‘How we relate ourselves to the world around us.’ The emphasis on the self is not as egocentric and self-absorbent** as it may sound. It is, rather, a call to know yourself.

So that’s the philosophical part. Now the fun part! How do you recognize the three personality types?  wellll! Before I go into a ‘three part description, lets go simple(st): clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel.

Of course, as we said, this is not about answering self-describing questions in the back of a magazine or on the facebook. This is about the identifying the reality that surrounds you or the person you are trying to understand.

• clarks (Outsiders): self-effacing, shy, diffident and hopelessly rebellious. clarks live in the world of thought and ideas, knowledge and information, they are congenitally curious, and are heir to a wealth of facts of varying degrees of practical value. clarks will be found on the edges of the group, have a tendency to mutter and exhibit fairly poor posture, they are passive by choice (the saying is: ‘clarks abhor being the center of attention but will not tolerate being ignored’) Hopelessly creative, imaginatively self-destructive they make great friends and disappointing students/employees
• scotts (Predators): aggressive, mercurial, confident and always on the move. The saying ‘Carpe diem’ applies to scotts both literally and figuratively.. they are the easiest of the three personality types to pick out… they are the ones at the center of a group (at least after they’re established their ranking among any other scotts in the area) and people like them, scotts are natural leaders because they are certain and have confidence, they don’t always have the best plan but they are the first in most situations to say ‘Follow Me!’ and most people do… off the cliff or into the New Frontier… doesn’t matter to the scott, all that matters is that they are acting and living life…now!
• rogers (Herd Members): sociable, knowledgeable and always at home. those who grow up and develop their personality in the reality of the Herd Members have the advantage of certainty, they know they belong. rogers know that the world is a quantifiable place and that there is a Right Way (-to do things, to operate machinery, build a deck, cure a disease, raise a family) and their pride in being aware of this forms their attractiveness and lays the groundwork for their downfalls and setbacks. They are easy to talk to, socially confident and account for the present state of the ‘hard sciences’ especially engineering. Which is re-assuring as you travel thirty-five thousand feet above the ground. (scottian engineers are easily distracted and might be in the break room with the newest intern when it was time to re-check the calculations for the airframe of the newest jet and clarklike engineers….well, there’s that thing about 2 + 2*** so maybe it’s good that, with their dislike for mathematics, the percentage of aeronautical engineers who are clarks is fairly small.)

There you have it.

* once is accidental, twice is ‘did that site really claim to know more about me than I know about myself?!’ but three times is the charm, the curse and an indication of either: a) predominant clarklike worldview or 2) a significant secondary clarklike aspect. in either of these cases, we say, ‘welcome’

** one of my favorite ‘rogerian expressions’. Beyond the scope of a post. Go look it up.

*** ask a scott, “How much is 2 + 2? And, after making a joke, they’ll laugh and say ‘I’ll tell ya later’. ask a roger the same question and they will say, “4” (No comment, question or even emotion. It’s just a fact of life.) Pose this question to a clark, “How much is 2 + 2?” and their likely response will be something like “In what context?”