The Center for Peripheral Studies

Mission Statement

Exasperated by the pollsters and self-anointed prophets who profess to speak for us, and frankly envious of the awe with which their fatuous pronouncements are greeted in the mainstream media, we resolve to be a policy institute for the rest of us.

Our motto: Thinking is too important to be left to professionals.

We hold that more often than not the truth is to be found not at the center of things, but out at the edges, where the centrifugal force of our spinning existence has flung the denser particles of meaning, and where they can be easily collected and examined at leisure.

The Periphery, therefore, is our bailiwick, our mise en scene, the very heart of our endeavor.

In part we are proposing to be a virtual Chautaqua, "an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer" (-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), but with two important modifications:

1. our "chaw & talk" will not be bound by time, distance, or seating capacity; and
2. we have a house band.

In another part, the CfPS will be a resource for inquiry and discussion of all those other ideas that nag and harry us in our quotidian existence, the petty anxieties and tiny triumphs that frame the lives we actually live, as opposed to all the mediated phantasmagoria that piles up around us wherever we go, or even stay.

Therefore, to all these ends:

• We pledge to drive this HummVee of an institute boldly along the information superhighway, inspecting the rest stops on the intra-neural net, checking the maps for typos, and investigating reports that "here be monsters."
• We also pledge to be fully interactive, and enthusiastically welcome any and all to join this colloquy by forwarding samples of your thinking on all topics, as long as these do not deal with any vital, key, critical, or central issues which face humanity today.
  • That reminds me -- at the risk of flouting the First Amendment of fond memory, the Center for Peripheral Studies strongly urges a moratorium on the use of such flatulent terms as "vital," "critical," "key," "watershed," "sea-change," "paradigm shift," "state-of-the-art," "cutting/bleeding edge," and their ilk.
  • Let the duelling pundits pollute the airwaves with that kind of blue fume. We have more respect for our mother tongue.
• And finally, the Center for Perpheral Studies pledges to conduct all its experiments, polls, and perfunctory surveys entirely in the open -- no control groups, double-blind tests, or placebos. All of the Center's proceedings will be available for public scrutiny and revision.

Our model will be -- can you stand it? -- a democracy, which means, after all, "Power to the People!"

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Last updated: 7/16/2001
Comments: CfPS@infomonger.com