Triangle Common Good

Come join Triangle Common Good in reading Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power from Byung-Chul Han. This is a short work of 80 pages.

Byung-Chul Han is a South Korean born philosopher whose short, punchy books focus on exploring how the era of big data and smart technology has resulted in a loss of space for narratives, rituals, and contemplation and boredom. In particular, his work Burnout Society would garner him more public attention in recent years.

In Psychopolitics, he argues that self-optimization and a regime of "positivity" are leading to a mental collapse that can be tied to the ways in which data encourages existence in flow states. We will consider this in line with our discussion of postmodernism as encouraging the experience of "kaleidoscopic flows" that don't provide space to stop and contemplate the flow of feelings or imagery.

"It is impossible to subordinate human personhood to the dictates of positivity entirely. Without negativity, life degrades into 'something dead'. Indeed, negativity is what keeps life alive. Pain is constitutive for experience. Life that consists wholly of positive emotions and the sensation of 'flow' is not human at all. The human soul owes its defining tautness and depth precisely to negativity...Now the only pain that is tolerated is pain that can be exploited for the purposes optimization. But the violence of positivity is just as destructive as the violence of negativity. Neoliberal psychopolitics, which the consciousness industry it promotes, is destroying the human soul, which is anything but a machine of positivity...Healing, it turns out, means killing"

You will find below a link to a copy of an approachable reader on his works if you want to explore more or need help understanding his ideas.

Come join Triangle Common Good in reading The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein is an author, activist, and filmmaker who first reached public awareness for her book No Logo, which critiqued modern branding and the power logos hold as symbols today. Most recently, her book Doppelganger received attention for its unique story of the impact of epistemic rabbit holes on changing ideologies by comparing herself to a right-wing parallel she is often confused with.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism looks critically at the history of implementation of neoliberal economic reforms in countries that had recently experienced the shock of war or disaster. This includes looking at the testing of economic policies in Chile after the CIA-backed coup of their democratically elected leader resulted in the installation of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Milton Friedman would serve as an advisor to Pinochet, with several of his students serving as economists on Pinochet's administration, as Pinochet implemented a series of reforms that privatized and deregulated their economy. Pinochet would go on to be responsible for the "disappearances" of thousands of political and social critics.

In her ground-breaking reporting from Iraq, Naomi Klein exposed how the trauma of invasion was being exploited to remake the country in the interest of foreign corporations. She called it "disaster capitalism." Covering Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment" losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq...

Come join Triangle Common Good in reading and discussing the works of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.

This session will be facilitated by Ben Cook. Cook holds a PhD in philosophy and possesses a strong understanding of MacIntyre's work. This will be a chance to learn - in a beginner friendly way - from someone with background in the ideas we'll be talking about.

Alasdair MacIntyre was a professor for moral philosophy who began his career focused on a Marxist analysis of society before his 1980 conversion to Catholicism and reading of the works of Thomas Kuhn resulted in a transition to an approach influenced by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine (although he maintained to the end of his career that he found Marx's critiques of capitalism accurate, even as he came to believe Marxism lacked a proper account of morality).

In After Virtue, MacIntyre argues that morality was previously grounded by an idea of "telos": the natural end(s) we should pursue as humans, tied to a concept of human flourishing. For him, the Enlightenment and liberal modernity severed the connection between morality and telos, and our moral language is now necessarily incoherent and empty. A belief in "emotivism", the idea that moral statements are just an expression of vague feelings of "boo" or "yay" rather than expressing belief in real propositions, has resulted from this. This emotivism accurately describes how we currently use moral language, but it has incorrectly caused people to believe that this is what moral language actually means. The way to restore a proper moral language then lies in the return of teleological virtue, where morality follows pursuing the natural ends of well-functioning humans.

We'll be looking at his work as it relates to the group's goal of considering the idea of "what is the good?" and what constitutes a proper account of human flourishing.

Come join Triangle Common Good for a discussion on Eitan Hersh's Politics is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change.

As the club begins reviving and expanding a volunteering and political action wing, we'll be reading Eitan Hersh's Politics is for Power and discussing critically the limits of our own intellectual discussions on politics.

Hersh argues in Politics is for Power that many who regularly consume and discuss political news and count themselves as politically informed are not meaningfully engaged in the work of politics. Politics is treated as a discussion topic and tied to satisfying certain needs, but not towards building tangible power in the political system and enacting a long-term will and agenda.

The book begins with the stories of various grassroots and community organizations that everyday Americans have started as a way of outlining what political advocacy and organizing at the local level can look like, before turning to an analysis of why political parties have turned away from bottom-up organization, local mobilization, and stronger party structures with precinct level presences.

Our interest in this book will be thinking through what meaningful political action looks like and how to encourage in our own lives and club activities a move away from political hobbyism.

Note that we will not use this as an excuse to deny the importance of history, theory, and the intellectual side of politics, but more as a chance to shift our focus.