A Zebra Jockey is a high-Adaptation man whose default response to the Chaos of uncontrollable circumstance is to make necessary and rapid adjustments to stay in motion. As an adherent to Occam’s Razor, he expects to see a horse if he hears hoofbeats, but as a man committed to movement, he is always prepared to ride a Zebra if that is what appears. He would never let a perfectly good Zebra run by simply because he was standing outside of a barn and planned on riding a horse. That is what a Controller would do.
Because he is by nature and nurture low-Control, the Zebra Jockey believes that there are only three areas of his life over which he has been granted Dominion:
· Input—the wholesomeness of what he deposits into his body and soul.
· Heart—the purity of his thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
· Output—the integrity of his words and deeds.
Dominion is authority. As to everything but Input, Heart and Output, the Zebra Jockey has no Dominion because he lacks the power to determine events and direct the actions of others. He knows that Chaos is what it Is and accepts that he is powerless to conform uncontrollable circumstances into what his vision of the Should Be.
Which is not to say that the Zebra Jockey is impotent in the face of Chaos. While he lacks the authority to determine and direct, he does have the power to Influence events and the actions of others by igniting a powerful desire for voluntary movement from the status quo of the Is toward the Advantage of the Could Be. Because he is an Adapter rather than a Controller, the Zebra Jockey does this through his leadership rather than employing the compulsive power of the governance in order to mandate the Should Be.
The Zebra Jockey is also a Collision Learner who gains wisdom through failure, so he knows that the effectiveness of his Influence will correlate directly with the exertion of his Dominion. If his Dominion is accelerating, his Influence will increase. If his Dominion begins to flag, so shall his Influence.
He also recognizes that the three components of his Dominion are interdependent and operate on a loop. If the Zebra Jockey internalizes something unwholesome, it will be more difficult for him to keep impure thoughts from germinating into damaging emotions. If he loses control over his emotions, his words and deeds will dis-integrate and he will lose Influence, which will in turn make it more likely that he will further drop his guard against unwholesome Input.
Left unchecked, this downward loop will gradually erode a man’s Adaptability until he is no longer able to exert Dominion over his Input, Heart, and Output. This will render him incapable of making the rapid adjustments that are sometimes necessary to stay in motion when confronted with Chaos. Instead of being an Adapter, he will devolve into an inert member of the Passive mean who either ignores Chaos or hopes that it will dissipate on its own accord so that he can maintain his status quo.
Because they lack Dominion and Adaptability, Passives are subject to the predations of the Controllers, who view Influencing a man to voluntarily move toward his individual Could Be as inefficient and unnecessary when they can simply employ the compulsive force of Mandamus to herd everyone into what they deem to be the collective Should Be.
The Controller does not share the Zebra Jockey’s view of Dominion. Instead, he believes that he has authority over every aspect of his own life and that he should have the power to determine events and direct the actions of others that adversely affect not only him, but anyone who claims to be unhappy.
Unlike the Zebra Jockey, who sees a direct correlation between the exertion of his Dominion and the effectiveness of his Influence, the Controller is oblivious to the inverse correlation between his own self-discipline and the need to determine events and direct the actions of others.
As a result, the less Dominion a Controller has over his own Input, Heart and Output, the more Control he will seek to wield over others through the compulsive force of Mandamus.