We live in an age of profound discontent. A discontent that manifests itself in a myriad of often chaotic and conflicting ways. We witness the evidence of this discontent in so many places. To name but a few, we might reference the explosive increase in the use of anti-anxiety and mood-stabilizing drugs, the irruption of protests and riots across the Western World, increasingly antagonistic political divisions, the inflaming of the cultural wars and the rise in people who feel utterly unfulfilled and alienated in their employment.
While these different explosions of dis-ease can be seen to arise from discrete problems, it is difficult to avoid the question concerning whether there might be some fundamental issue at work. An issue that effectively agitates, amplifies and sustains the various social ills we witness today.
With this in mind, I would like to invite you to join me in a close reading of Capitalism and Desire. The book itself is not concerned with comparing and contrasting Capitalism with other socioeconomic systems, nor is it offering an assessment of its moral, political or scientific status. Instead, the book offers us an insight into the ways in which pleasure and frustration, enjoyment and dissatisfaction are manufactured and maintained in the contemporary world.
By doing this, Todd McGowan not only offers a way of understanding the endemic nature of discontent today, but gives us a glimpse of how we might begin to address it in both the microcosm of our social lives and macrocosm of society at large.
Like all the book studies I run, we will be aiming for three things,
Intellectual development
Insights that can positively impact your life
A deeper understanding of pyrotheology.
To join, you need to be signed up to Blaze on Patreon. This will give you access to the following,
- Access to the private online community
- Regular reflections
- Coffee and Concepts
- Pints and Parables
- Early access to The Fundamentalists
- Monthly pyroseminars
- Pyroseminar archive
- My latest writing before anyone else
- All online courses I've run to date (over 30 hours)
- Live courses
- Book studies
- Guest list for events (If I'm doing an event near you I'll often be able to put you on the guest list, just drop me a message)