History

Radical Centrism as described here is the brainchild of Ernest N. Prabhakar (S.B. MIT ’88, Ph.D. Caltech ’95) of Santa Clara, California. Dr. Ernie trained as a physicist for eleven years before entering the working world at age 27. He spent two years with the Boston Consulting Group focused on value management, and is currently employed as an open source product marketing manager in Silicon Valley.

Radical Centrism grew out of Dr. Ernie’s attempt to apply the intellectual rigor of physics and the spiritual values of his Christian upbringing to the reality of business in Silicon Valley. The resulting synthesis is a creedal statement known as the Ground Rules of Civil Society, which acts as a manifesto for this website. This balanced focus on Reality, Character, Community & Humility forms the basis for a principled critique of existing ideologies as typically emphasizing one aspect at the expense of others (e.g., materialism, conservatism, liberalism, and postmodernism, respectively).

The Centroids online community was re-founded in July 2004 by Billy Rojas and Ernest Prabhakar after a server crash destroyed an earlier mailing list. It is currently the only known public forum for discussion of Radical Centrist philosophy and politics.