Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
“I’ve called you here because we know something new about that strange, strange land of the roger.”
I hadn’t planned on writing a Post today. I’m finally getting traction on Chapter 9 (Blogdominion) and with only so many words in me, I thought to surpass on writing a Post today.
That, (for you New Readers), that use of the word ‘surpass’? is a deliberate reference to the rogerian worldview, be best if you looked it up.
So, I’m getting ready for work this morning. I open a letter from Blue Cross (Blue Cross motto: ‘we’re in control of your lives, you would think that paying us tons of money would be enough, but you’d be wrong! We enjoy sending mildly threatening letters to you, every now and then, not just because it upsets you, but precisely because it makes us feel good (in an institutional sense, of course)’ whew! long ‘throw away’ joke, even for us here at the Doctrine!) and it said something about, how, at a certain point in time, I need to make the transition to other medical coverage. So naturally, I said to Phyllis (who was standing in the kitchen cooking her lunch to take to work), “Damn! I really want to get very expensively sick before I have to quit Blue Cross! Seeing how much money I’ve paid them over the years, it would be a shame to do otherwise.”
To which Phyllis replied, “…you wouldn’t want to hold onto one thing and give up a benefit in another form… like not paying a bill on principle.”
And I stopped. I said, “My god! that happened 30 years ago. rogers never change the profile of the people in their lives.”
Several things followed:
- I realized that not only do rogers hold on to things from the past, (about themselves and about others), but they establish what can best be termed a ‘profile’ upon the establishing of a given relationship
- Phyllis, fortunately is a roger with a strong secondary clarklike aspect, so she can talk about her rogerian worldview, at least as much as any of us can talk about our predominant worldviews… you know, it’s our reality, so we tend to not know what other people (in ‘the other two’ worldviews) are not experiencing or are otherwise unaware of, and so we could talk about this establishing a profile
- this is very cool, because finding artifacts or landmarks that are ‘way inside’ a different worldview is tres difficult
- how difficult? well there are only a few, the best example being from our rogerian brethren’s world…. and that is the concept of ‘referential authority’ which tells us that if we encounter a person who wishes to impose their will on us, but almost always tells us that ‘it’s because that’s way it’s done‘ or ‘everyone knows that‘ or ‘it says so in the Manual’ then we need to be getting out our checklist of rogerian characteristics
- finally, and this where the Doctrine is so very helpful, Phyllis and I continued our discussion of rogerian profiles and agreed that rogers can change their profile (of a person, place and thing), but it is always on ‘an additive basis’
New Readers? I’ll leave that last item un-elaborated upon, changes on an additive basis is the best way and, not coincidently, the best way to describe this new artifact of the rogerian worldview.
