$5,000 Leaderboard
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 10.9.25
With just over three weeks remaining in our first-ever $5,000 essay contest, we created a new leaderboard so you can check in on the competition! Read the top articles on the platform, vote your support, and help determine the winning writer!
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Learn more about the $5,000 essay contest in our Official Contest Terms and in our announcement post:
This week, we are highlighting the top three articles based on current contest rankings. We encourage you to explore the work of these writers, consider subscribing to them directly, and check out their posts on Aemula to show your support!
Going Solo
Published by Taming Complexity, comprised of Taylor Dotson, author of The Divide, associate professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and interdisciplinary researcher, Michael Bouchey, a research program specialist for the Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and Shunryu Garvey, a Zen Buddhist priest and political decision theorist.
Read “Going Solo” on Aemula >
“When people from the west encountered the intensively irrigated rice paddies in Bali, they could only imagine that they were the outcome of raw executive power. Marx called it the “Asiatic mode of production,” what later scholars referred to as “hydraulic societies.” The coordination of something so complicated must have been accomplished by the control of a king, who, in turn, derived his power from successfully managing essential infrastructure. This kind of thinking would prove disastrous for Balinese rice farming, just as its analog in the social realm has decimated the infrastructures that once supported childbearing.”
A Life Interrupted
Published by Never Close the Inquiry, written by Nick Hagen, a lawyer focused on building mutual understanding and communication across the political divide.
Read “A Life Interrupted” on Aemula >
“Charlie Kirk is dead. He was shot in the neck from great distance yesterday during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah; he died shortly thereafter. He was killed in front of his wife, his three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, and a crowd that had come to learn from and contend with him.
It is tempting, in the wake of a genuine shock to the nation’s political consciousness—and I think this was that—to seek patterns, to take information available and unavailable and extrapolate until the shadows merge to form a clearer picture. That impulse is human: we want heroes and villains, scapegoats and victims; our conscious self flips and grabs and twists and smooths at the behest of unconscious urges to understand, to be good, to be right, to be safe. In a modern world where so many of us have social media accounts, there is both opportunity and often significant pressure to share our thoughts publicly. The Internet and our political discourse grow loud, loud, and louder—ironically, at a time when a voice which once was loud has, with the squeeze of a trigger, been quieted.”
Why ‘Why Liberalism Failed’ Fails: Part I
Written by Travis Monteleone, a UT-Austin graduate and PE investor writing about politics, polarization, and theology, with volunteer experience with depolarization organizations such as Braver Angels, the Forward Party, and the Burke-Paine Society.
Read “Why ‘Why Liberalism Failed’ Fails: Part I” on Aemula >
“Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is one of the few books I’ve ever read that I haven’t been able to put down. What drove me to keep reading? It wasn’t enjoyment or agreement. It was extreme frustration.
The book came out in 2018 amidst a growing wave of populist discontent, but its relevance has only grown as the viability of liberal democracy has continued to be called into question over the past seven years. Arguably, no book has had a bigger impact on the discussion around the future of liberalism than this book.”
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