Essays are the foundation of a free-thinking culture

Why essays? When someone asks me, "Why not expand this project to the larger universe of writing?"—fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, business memos, philosophical treatises, wedding speeches—I send them this page. I get it ... the word essay is terribly unpopular. The coercive nature of our education system made the essay a symbol for transactional, bullshit homework. (A friend told me he'd rather die than write another essay). But actually, when you write to make sense of something that matters to you—to bring light to the fuzzy questions that haunt you—it's an act of cognitive liberty. Essays are more than fodder for the SAT industrial complex, they are the foundation of a free-thinking culture. At risk of sounding bombastic, I think they're our most important form of literature, the key to saving education from the Homework Apocalypse, an antidote to political polarization, and the vaccine for brainrot. The bright side: the Internet has catalyzed a mini golden age for independent writers (as foreseen by Paul Graham in 2004). The reality: there are still challenges in making essays culturally relevant: it's hard to teach composition, hard to combat fear and laziness, hard to find quality on a noisy Internet, and hard to imagine writing's future in the age of superintelligent AI. This project is dedicated towards manifesting the unrealized potential of the essay, through curriculum, software, prizes, and publishing. The dream is to one day host a $1 million open essay prize. The goal of this page is to share with you my unreasonable excitement for this medium, and hopefully to inspire you to write, whether it's been a month or a decade. So what makes the essay distinct?