the Wakefield Doctrine

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

Here it it, ‘pre-Thursday’ already! It’s been my practice to put some words on ‘paper’ as a way to reduce lock-up come tomorrow (Thursday) morning, when zoe’s bloghop ‘Six Sentence Story‘ opens for business. It helps to not have to stare at a blank white page.

The theme, (of the bloghop), is simplicity itself: write a story in six, (and only six), sentences.

This week, our host, zoe, has charged us with creating a story of six sentence length using the word, ‘Point’ as the prompt, reference, starting p….

“No fricken way,” the writer stared at the list of definitions for the word ‘Point’, his confidence leaking like the hollow pillow of a life raft full of holes, CO2 canisters hissing like cats on a merry-go-round.

“I’ve lost it, finally a word without a story… or too many stories,” he felt the faux nausea of the previous nights non-sleep, eight hours of waking up too soon and not getting back to sleep soon enough; like an old movie where a plot point is announced by a display of newspapers being printed and put, full screen, headlines blaring, the jagged dream fragments ran through his head. The only bright spot was the memory of a creative twist to a night of worry-dreams, as he recalled that every other dream centered on relaying someone else’s six sentence story into the mornings collection.

Counting periods with the exaggerated care of a precocious four-year-old, all too aware of the how important it was to the adults, he counted, then remembered another metaphor to contrast the child image with that of an elderly adult, all Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea, like.

“Whats the point,” he thought, kicking the thorny deja vu chewing at his ankle across the floor and under the bed, he looked for a rhetorical insurance policy, “it’s always a good idea to muddle up the imagery and make it hard to remember if you’ve written this story before, otherwise you’d need pray that the group’s collective memory is all cozy with strangers, like a college dorm on a snowy Thursday night. Satisfied that he kicked at his rhetorical trail enough to evade all but the most ruthless trackers, he smiled with relief and punched in the last (period) .

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

It has long been my ambition to write the Perfect Wakefield Doctrine post. (One might argue about that adenoidial descriptor, it has always been my ambition, since the very first post, hell, before the very first post). In any event, I’ll give it a shot today, Monday.

The definition of perfection? A post that a total stranger, (to this blog or, for that matter, a person who has not come into contact with anyone who knows of this personalty theory), can read…once and apply it to their own life right then and there. They will look around and they will see the clarks and scotts and rogers.

As a personality theory, the Wakefield Doctrine is more the key a song is played in than it is the song. It is not a definition of a set of established behaviors, tendencies, drives and tropisms, rather it is a way of looking at (the) behaviors, tendencies, drives and tropisms that everyone you encounter today will exhibit. Including yourself. Unlike most of the personality theories that we all come into contact with, the Wakefield Doctrine is not concerned with establishing where, in a pre-established matrix of behavior, you fit best. The Wakefield Doctrine is not concerned with behavior. The Wakefield Doctrine is concerned with ‘how you relate yourself to the world around you’.

Quick set of assumptions and predicates: reality (the world around us) is, to a small, but certain extent, personal; we are, all of us, born with the capacity to experience the world around us in one of three characteristic ways: as an Outsider (clarks), as a Predator (scotts) or as a Herd Member (rogers); finally, although we all, (all of us), settle on, settle into one of the three worldviews, we never lose the capability to experience the world ‘as do the other two’.

Even though the Wakefield Doctrine is concern with relationships, it helps to have labels and definitions (provided that we do not ignore Korsybski’s famous statement, ‘the map is not the territory‘.

Hold on. Enough with the Wikipedia citations and the excessive use of semi-colons!

I think I’ll settle for a quiz that’s as close to a personality assessment as you’re going to encounter here at the Wakefield Doctrine):

• When you woke up this morning, did you feel good/scared/confident that today would be a good day in ‘the world out there’? If that sounds at all reasonable, go stand over there… no, there are others already in that section of the gym, you’ll see them when you get there.
• When you woke up this morning, did you get up? ok… amuse yourself while I deal with the last group of personality types. Sure, anywhere will be fine.
• When you woke up this morning, (well, lets rephrase that to ‘when you transitioned from quiet concern to active concern), did you feel that although you might describe yourself as confident, you will swear in a court of law that the world makes sense if you just work hard enough at understanding it. If you don’t find that description of the start of the average day totally un-reasonable, don’t go anywhere… stay here in the middle of the crowd of participants

There you have it! The three personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine!

How do you know which you are?

Up at the top of the post, I wrote ‘how you relate yourself to the world around you’. That is how you know. Even at the Doctrine, where words are viewed as either those colored semi-candy things that you sprinkle on desert or, the yellow and black Cliff Notes that serve as badges of ‘success at any cost’ in school, sometimes we mean exactly what we say. When we say, ‘how you relate yourself to the world around you’, we do not mean, ‘how you relate to the world around you’. It is about you and your relationship to the world that the Doctrine is concerned. So read some posts, read some pages that describe the characteristics of the three worldviews. The perspective ( as an Outsider or as a Predator or as a Herd Member) through which the world is least blurry, that’s your predominant worldview, your ‘personality type’.

Congratulations! You’re a clark (or) a scott (or) a roger.

Lots more to tell you* stop by anytime!

*self-grading of attempt at the perfect Post: C+ … ok a B- (seeing how you’re a clark and clarks are nothing if they’re not willing to do most things to help the other person feel better).