Only four submissions? Wish I had run across this at an earlier date...! Guess I'll have to wait for the next contest to roll around.
Essay contests are a great idea... if marketed properly. What's the point of this contest? Is it to obtain material for the second book? Or is it to evangelize immortalism? Or is it to provide active forum fodder? Those are all valid reasons, but it seems that where essay contests shine the most is in presenting radical ideas to new audiences. What better way is there to seriously evaluate something new than by writing about it?
If we ever do this again in the future, we should look towards the
Ayn Rand Institute as a model. Even if you're an ardent socialist with a shrine to Chomsky and a passionate hatred of capitalism, it's hard to deny the ubiquitous influence of their
essay contests. I read
The Fountainhead during college, and I was consistently amazed at how many people came up to me and said "Hey, I read that book in High School for some contest or scholarship or something." These were kids who would've never picked up a copy of a radical libertarian treatise but were easily exposed to passionate ideas (during their most formative years, no less).
Even I remember seeing the contest advertisement on the bulletin board of the guidance counselor's office back in my high school days. Probably because it was so unique -- how many contests are out there that are actually based on philosophical questions, something outside of race, income, or GPA?
Wouldn't it be fabulous if there were Imm Inst flyers in HS financial aid offices around the US asking kids to read something like
The First Immortal and give their opinion on "Is it moral to seek extended life spans in a world of limited resources?" (Or something like that -- something to get people thinking). There's potential here!
