Peripheral Intro
6 Jun 2016
Dear visitor, imagine yourself into a typical Italian town. When you look at this town from above you are likely to see a red-roofed historic centre surrounded by newer developments. Through the centre goes the historic main street that is the busiest also today. There, the old façades have been converted into bright shopping windows, and cinemas and theatres into shops and shiny bars. An odd, a little run down eating place of years ago now sells global clothing brands. Off this bustling main street life is quieter and slower. The further you go the less the names you read on the houses are known to you. They are local businesses serving local people. When you are in a town like this where do you go? Do you leave the main street to explore the periphery? Periphery means inconvenience and uncertainty. But it has the potential to surprise.
| centre | periphery |
|---|---|
| first | second |
| global | local |
| rich | poor |
| convenient | uncomfortable |
| optimized | inefficient |
| guaranteed | uncertain |
| tolerant | mistrusting |
| dominant | recessive |
| impersonal | personal |
| monoculture | diversity |
| monotonous | eigenartig |
| influential | irrelevant |
| new | old, used |
| perfect | faulty |
| labelled | named |
| adult | young, old |
| inspires periphery | inspires centre |
Centre is the “friendly” first. Periphery always comes second.
No philosophizing can change one thing: there are rich and poor people in the world. Centre invariably means money. Periphery means no money, having to work for a living.
Centre means convenient, efficient and guaranteed. When you step into a Starbucks you are comfortable, surrounded by optimized, assured quality. When you step into a local café you do not know what you will get. It may be very good, it may be quite bad. You have a new experience.
In a local café the person at the bar may be the owner. He or she will size you up: who are you? There is no one-size-fits-all smile. You need to tell people who you are through your attitude. You have an opportunity for a personal exchange.
Centre is dominant and in a conflict it is a destructor. Let us think of the logging of the rainforests. It is ironic that the greediest and most dominating destructor of periphery in our times is called Amazon. The name has become a symbol for replacing the effort of life with the convenience of doing nothing.
The Circle of Life:
Life is the universe’s beautiful mistake, striving for perfection.
We appear on the stage of life at the periphery. As we grow to become aware of ourselves and the world around us, we start being drawn by the centre. We are competitive. We want to give meaning to our life, or see it in money, and there is only one direction for this – the centre. We then spend our adulthood by solidifying our centre position and importance. At the old age we again start drifting towards periphery and irrelevance, till we drift off the stage into the oblivion.
Afterlife:
After death we walk out of a sea onto a sunny sandy beach. We lay on big soft stones and tell each other our stories.