Triangle Common Good

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.

Our New Discord
Group Substack

## 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.