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Sometimes you encounter an idea so fascinating that you really, really want it to be true. Sometimes you get lucky; but too often, interesting ideas are interesting because they’re also incre…

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Scott Alexander is a US-based psychiatrist who writes at Astral Codex Ten (and formerly Slate Star Codex) about psychiatry, science, philosophy, politics, culture, and other topics popular…

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Firstly: The next Essay Club will be posted on the 18th of January, 2025. We’ll be discussing Scott Alexander’s I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup (2014), a classic work of contemporary Rationalist thought. I have quite a few subscribers who were originally referr…

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For those who don’t know, Essay Club is a book club for essay enthusiasts. Each month I choose one great essay, summarise and respond to it, and then open the comments for discussion. Last month we discussed Carl Jung’s controversial essay Wotan (1936), an attempt to understand Nazi Germany through the lens …

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This month’s Essay Club pick is W…

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Today we’ll be discussing Cryptocracy by John Carter, another Substack local who writes over at Postcards from Barsoom. Cryptocracy really caught my attention when it was first published. It’s likely to be more divisive than some of our previous essays, as it’s more explicitly political than anything we’ve covered before, but I encourage you to read it regardless of where you stand politically. It’s a fascinating and well-written essay, and takes less than 20 minutes to read.

John Carter himself is a bit of an enigma. He describes himself as follows:

“Martian Wyrdlord. Blood memory enjoyer. Solarian barbarizer. Atlantean DNA activator. Portal dowser. Filosofictionalist.”

Beyond this, all I can tell you is that Carter is a Canadian scientist and writer (obviously). I suspect this is intentional on Carter’s part—people who write from a non-establishment right-wing perspective often choose to muddy their identities, as writing about these topics often carries a risk of being ‘cancelled’, fired, or even fined or imprisoned, depending on where you live.

Instead of trying to guess at Carter’s identity, then, let’s talk about his work. He writes about a variety of topics related to politics, culture, and current events. His style is direct, provocative, increasingly experimental, and often infused with evocative, techno-futuristic imagery. Cryptocracy has a particularly Lovecraftian vibe—fitting, I think, for an essay on shadowy, all-seeing elites—and is in my opinion one of his best essays. Let’s dig into it.

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Today we’ll be discussing In Praise of the Gods, one of my favourite essays by Substack local Simon Sarris. I hig…

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Last time we discussed John Michael Greer’s Myth, History, and Pagan Origins, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Today we’ll be discussing an essay by Christopher Hitchens called Fragments From an Education. It’s a relatively short one—it only takes about 12 minutes to read—so I encourage you to read Hitchens’ essay first, and then return here to join the discussion.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-2011) was a journalist, writer, and polemicist, perhaps best known as one of the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism. He was born in England, but moved to the US in the 1980s to write for The Nation and later Vanity Fair. Hitchens published numerous books and essays on a wide range of topics, including literature and culture, religion, education, war and contemporary politics, and biographies, as well as personal reflections on his own life and health.

Hitchens was a skilled debater, and cultivated an identity as a radical and contrarian. Whether or not his views were truly at odds with the establishment is, I think, an interesting question; but when he took a position he defended it fiercely, always with his characteristic charm and wit. In Fragments From an Education we see the same Hitchens—witty, uncompromising—but with a more personal slant. Let’s jump into it.

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Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of writer Violet Paget, whose work consisted of supernatural short stories and essays on art, music, aesthetics, travel, and politics. She was born in France to British parents, and although she is usually described as a British writer, and wrote exclusively in English, she was the embodiment of European cosmopolitanism. She was well travelled, spending extended periods in Germany, France, and Switzerland before finally settling down near Florence; she was knowledgeable about European art, literature, and music, and knew many of the great writers and artists of her day; she was a feminist, and although she resisted being called a lesbian, she is believed to have had relationships with multiple women; and, in an interesting echo of things to come, she apparently preferred to be called Vernon in her private life as well.

Lee danced to the beat of her own drum, and in In Praise of Silence this really shines through. I look forward to seeing what you all think of this one.

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This one’s a little more technical th…

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