I’ve always been nostalgic for office hours, particularly as hosted by Victor Hugo. He spent his mornings writing, but opened his home in the afternoon for discussion with readers and peers who would show up to chat with him about, I imagine, the French Revolution, the Catholic Church, and his related writings and publications on the most important ideas of his time.
I’ve always craved these kinds of discussions, and know they would influence my work. So I’m going to try something similar by introducing office hours during which paid members can “come to my home” and discuss the most important issues of our time. Paid subscribers can drop in to the comments section to ask anything you like. I’ll answer in a future office hours email in two weeks.
As with most things here, this is an experiment—I’ll make it a regular thing if there’s interest in this kind of open discussion, but I’ll discontinue it if there’s not. As much as I would love to open my home for in-person salon discussion, it’s much harder to translate that concept online and I’m still figuring out if it’s even possible.
I have some meta-level questions! What has it been like to successfully crowdfund a really ambitious project, in a really unorthodox way? What have been the biggest struggles with the Elysian this year, psychologically, creatively, intellectually? Have there been any instances of 'breakthrough' articles that added a lot of new readers, or has it been slow and steady? Anything that pissed a lot of people off and made them unsubscribe?
Talking about Revolutions, currently the grievances against the global economic/power system is coming to a perilous state again, sort of say end of 19th century which with historic hindsight resulted in two world wars and the current global power system. How does one survive power struggle revolutions? That is: join the revolution, smash the system and hope for the best or be steadfast in gradual reforms?