What we’re about
Are our politics trapped in false binaries? Does our culture feel “stuck”? Do you feel “politically homeless”?
Triangle Common Good is a civic club dedicated to exploring ways to secure the material and social conditions for living flourishing lives in ways that address the failures of our current political order.
We have a set of values that guide us, which you can find below. You do not need to agree with all of them! All you need to join is curiosity and a belief in the ideals of frank discussion, empathy, honesty, and nuance.
## Vision
We envision a society where our public political philosophy believes common goods, development of community, virtue, and human flourishing are things a liberal politics should pursue, and which takes both positive policy actions towards providing the material conditions needed for these goods, as well as restrictive actions that maintain the psychological and social context needed for these goods to exist, for an active democracy to thrive, and for technology to serve a human experience.
## Mission
We encourage associations that are ordered not just around shared personal identities, but shared material needs and goals, universal aspects of humanity, and building healthy local dependencies, including civic clubs, unions, and mutual aid organizations.
We do this through three avenues:
- Discussions and lectures that promote a “public philosophy” and cultural and policy alternatives to our current political order.
- Discussing policy reforms that address the conditions for human flourishing, income inequality, democratic decision-making, labor rights, and universal programs.
- Designing and implementing pilots of mutual aid, including intentionally designing local, prosocial, not-for-profit digital platforms and decentralized systems.
Put Simply: Society should have goals beyond efficient markets and just the protection of individual negative rights.
## Values
- The functioning of democracy requires some minimal realist theory of truth for productive conversation to occur.
- Technological progress is not an independent, natural force of history we have no control over.
- Measures of efficiency, output, and scale are means and not ends.
- “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” – David Graeber
A Quick Notes on Rules:
Polite, respectful, and empathetic discussion will be required at all times. Vigorous and passionate debate is desired! Challenge each other! However, the fact that we will be reading controversial works will not be an excuse to engage in insulting or offensive interactions.
Upcoming events (3)
See all- Lecture Lounge Event - AI and the Black BoxWolfe & Porter, Raleigh, NC
Our sister organization Lecture Lounge will be hosting a fascinating talk from Dr. Lauren Alvarez on what to do when we are dealing with dishonest AIs.
TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED HERE: https://www.lecturelounge.org/events/ai-and-the-black-box
Dr. Lauren Alvarez is an IBM Research Fellow, former Responsible AI Scientist for Apple, and data scientist at WillowTree whose research has been focused on explainability and interpretability in artificial intelligence and opening up the "black box" of AI model functioning.
In particular, she has worked on ethics and trustworthiness problems with AI models. This included developing the "STEALTH" method for deriving reliable explanations of how an AI model works - without triggering awareness by the model that could result in it lying about its functioning and tendency for bias. This has become particularly relevant when assessing the biases of machine learning algorithms used in criminal justice (e.g. COMPAS), medicine, and other fields. Dr. Alvarez has been published in the IEEE journal and presented at various conferences on her work.
This will be a 90 minute lecture, with 15 minutes for audience Q&A. Doors open at 7:00pm. Talk begins at 7:30pm.
- Bowling Alone: The Collape of American Community - Robert PutnamWeaver Street Market, Raleigh, NC
Come join Triangle Heterodox in reading the ever more relevant Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam.
Originally published in 2000, Bowling Alone charts the decline of in-person community and socializing in America - and the loss of "social capital" - through looking at everything from the advent of television correlating with Americans spending more time inside, to the decline in membership in local civic organizations, labor unions, and religious institutions.
Robert Putnam himself is a professor of comparative politics at Harvard University. The Open Syllabus Project puts him as the sixth most cited author for college political science syllabi and Barack Obama would award him the National Humanities Medal in 2012.
The concerns of Bowling Alone represent key concerns of this club. We will particularly consider the work's continued relevance in the context of digital media, the internet, the pandemic, and an increasingly mobile and transient American population.
A Nation of Homebodies - Most Recent American Time Use Study
https://archive.is/ItlYIThe Interview - 2024 Interview with Putnam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqZ4Po4vMAQJoin or Die - Why You Should Join a Club
https://www.joinordiefilm.com/ - Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason HickelWeaver Street Market, Raleigh, NC
Come join Triangle Common Good in discussing Jason Hickel's Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
Hickel is an anthropologist whose focus is economic anthropology and has served as a senior fellow at the London School of Economics, editor of World Development, and member of the US National Academy of Sciences Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable.
Less is More is an argument for "degrowth", which Hickel personally defines as "a planned reduction in energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being". This will be a chance to talk about the relationship of our economy to questions not just of the environment, but of critiques of looking at the size of an economy or GDP alone as a measure of the well-being of a society and how this relates to a society ordered around some conception of limits or intentional design.
Those of you who were present for our Abundance discussion will know that Hickel and this book is referenced and Abundance is explicitly framed as an option in opposition to "degrowth". This will also then be a chance to compare and contrast these two approaches.
What Does Degrowth Mean: A Few Points of Clarification? - Hickel Article
https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/files/2022/11/What-does-degrowth-mean-A-few-points-of-clarification.pdfTurns Out GDP Doesn't Buy Happiness - NYT
https://archive.ph/NrFi7Oren Cass Interview - Example of Conservative Critique of How We Talk About Economic Growth
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-right-wing-economist-makes-his-case/id1081584611?i=1000712061927The Case for Degrowth
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/08/the-case-for-degrowthCentre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity - Degrowth Think Tank
https://cusp.ac.uk/
