One essay could change the future

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The colonists could not have imagined life without the British monarchy until Thomas Paine’s Common Sense made them realize they could become their own country. 

It was messy business, starting a democracy, and no one had any idea what that should look like until Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers got them behind the constitution.

Martin Luther King Jr. once read Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” and was inspired to peaceful protest. “I became convinced then that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good,” he said. 

It was Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey that inspired Steve Jobs to create the iPad, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation that inspired Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that inspired Yvonne Chouinard’s environmentalist movement. 

It has always been writers who came up with ideas for our future, and it is still writing that inspires us to build them. No other medium is as powerful. No other medium asks that we sit quietly and pay attention. That we read and think. That we are moved to action.

If we want to build a better future, we need writers to imagine it. Who engage in intellectual inquiry and spend their leisure, not as journalists documenting the problems but as thinkers coming up with solutions. Who research generative ideas for governance, economics, technology, and religion through essays and fiction. 

There has been a deficit of this kind of writing in recent history, with journalists spiraling into every injustice and fiction authors imagining only the apocalypse. That has created a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the only futures we can imagine are bad ones: Democracy is ending, we are on the brink of World War III, AI will kill us all.

These are not our only options. That’s why I write The Elysian.

Instead of “this president is going to destroy the world,” I wrote “look at this cooperative that saved it.”

Instead of “Brexit is causing international chaos,” I wrote, “what if countries could choose which parts of the EU to join?”

Instead of “our country can’t agree on anything,” I wrote, “but our states can agree a lot and maybe they should have more power.”

Instead of “inequality is getting worse,” I wrote, “but look how this company achieved equity.”

Instead of “climate change is killing us all,” I wrote, “opening our borders could solve it.”

This kind of work is not as profitable to write—it doesn’t have the kind of doomer headlines that will make people click and comment out of outrage and it isn't dramatic enough to constantly hit refresh. But I believe this kind of work is more valuable. It focuses on where things are working. It unites us behind ideas. It inspires us to act and create and build. 

This essay was meant to serve as my annual subscriber drive asking you to support my newsletter if you are able to, but my real request is that you use your subscription dollars to fund any independent writers who are coming up with solutions rather than mainstream media outlets that are spiraling into outrage and division. It’s a request that you vote with your dollars for a better media landscape so we can actually create one, and maybe even a better future in the process. 

There has been a resurgence of this work in recent years and I am so grateful to be part of it. I hope you’ll support my work and a renaissance of writing that just might inspire the future. 👇🏻

Join the community

I’m making a few changes this year. After gating half of my work for a year, I ran an experiment over the summer and kept most of it free. I loved making my work more available to everyone and being exposed to new voices in the discourse, but I missed the intimate quality of our literary salon and it was less financially sustainable. Without the paywall, my income dropped significantly.

It’s hard to know what will best support this work, and to balance being paid for my work with wanting to make it available to as many people as possible, but I’ve landed on a balance that I think will create the best of both worlds. Going forward, most of my writing will be free for everyone but the community is going back behind the paywall. As a thank you for supporting my work, paid members of the Elysian League can:

• Study utopian literature with us in our private chat community and on Zoom calls

• Join writing prompts 

• Participate in paid-only discussions on Substack Notes (new experiment!)

• Access my live video recordings (I’ll be hosting Substack Live discussions for everyone then sending the recording to paid subscribers)

• Comment on posts and join the discourse

• Join semi-annual workshops for writers (our next one is in January)

I’m excited to invest in this community of thinkers and imagine a better future together.

Get the print edition

Subscribers at my Collector tier can also receive all of my writing in print. My annual print edition contains one year of my writing, plus the writing of other authors I admire. I’m excited to debut the cover design for Volume II, inspired by the utopian city planning work of Ebenezer Howard. These will ship to Collector subscribers at the beginning of 2025.

I’m also excited to debut quarterly print pamphlets! As I complete various essay series I will print them into pamphlets for my subscribers at the Collector tier. My first pamphlet is titled, “The Cooperatist Manifesto” and will contain my essay series on Cooperatives. These will ship to my Collector subscribers shortly!

However you support my work, I’m so grateful you are here. 

The joy of this work really has been exploring a better future alongside a community of thinkers.

Thank you so much for reading, participating in my work, and supporting a better media ecosystem!

Elle Griffin

P.S. You will only receive two more emails from me this week during my annual subscriber drive, then we will be back to essays as usual next week!