I wrote to you earlier this week on Substack with the news that Sunday Letters was making its way home to this website. This current issue is, in fact, the first time that Sunday Letters reaches your inbox directly from the backend of this self-hosted WordPress site. Before now, I relied on third-party services such as MailChimp or Substack. From now on, I'll handle each issue with the tech on this site, and I'll monitor how that goes. There's further technical complexity and cost in taking on this process, but I'm happier regardless. There's something pleasing about learning curves; for better or worse, I have tighter control over the content. Substack is free, but nothing is really for free, is it?
The Tech (for those interested):
- I use Blacknight, an Irish hosting company, to host the domain.
- I built the website with WordPress and it is hosted by WP Engine.
- Functionality is via open-source plugins by various third parties
- I deliver Sunday Letters using Proton Mail SMTP (one of the most secure and privacy oriented available) and the Mailpoet Plugin (by Automatic, creators of WordPress)
- I had initially tested Jetpack by WordPress.com for newsletters, but it didn't have the functionality I needed.
Ok, so anyway…by way of reminder.
I started Sunday Letters around 2015, although I subsequently deleted some of those early posts. The format has altered a bit, but it endures nonetheless. The early efforts were terrible, to be honest, and I deleted a lot of them. Some of the ones that survived are not great either, so I'll be going through those, editing, and making further cuts.
In these writings, I am having a conversation with myself. I am largely settled on the fundamental question of human existence–who and what we are and why we behave the way we do–but I nonetheless struggle to articulate it. I believe we humans are deeply troubled. Most of the time, we just get on with living, and we occupy ourselves with the drama of the day. What's on the news or in our social feeds? Where are the threats? What do our friends and neighbours think of us? How can I maintain this facade? In this, we are uniquely attuned to the negativity of the world. Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman detailed it in their 2001 paper on Negativity Bias. News agencies and marketing departments know this only too well, and they take full advantage of it.
Keeping our surface self alive consumes our mental and emotional energy, and we are unaware of ourselves. We are always on the surface of life, concerned with our life situation, material gain and loss or the prospect thereof. Are we merely slaves to propaganda? Can we not think critically for ourselves? It seems we cannot. Hundreds of years pass, maybe even thousands, and yet we make the same mistakes. We worship idols, imagined or real, as if this magical someone can save us all from our worst nightmare.
Erich Fromm, the Freudian psychoanalyst, suggests in the book Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis that this problem of humanity arises through alienation from oneself and nature. Society and all that comprises it isolates us and reinforces this separation. He asks, “How can we overcome suffering, the imprisonment, the shame which the experience of separateness creates; how can we find union within ourselves, with our fellowmen, with nature? Humanity must answer this question in some way, and even in insanity, an answer is given by striking out reality outside of ourselves…”
“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
Erich Fromm
“The aim”, of life he says, “is to be fully born, to develop one's awareness, one's reason, one's capacity to love, to such a point that one transcends one's own egocentric involvement, and arrives at a new harmony, at a new oneness with the world”. I think we're still trying to hit that target. As my father says, the world is alright; it's the people in it who are the problem.
Little has changed in our world since the 1950s when he wrote these lines. In many ways, the world of people has become a more dangerous place. Fromm was writing from the perspective of post-World War II, and he might have thought we had an opportunity to emerge from that insanity. Given our present-day reality, we know that didn't happen. We continue to inflict the same daily obscenities on one another, and we are just as narcissistic and neurotic as we have ever been. Perhaps more so.
Regardless, in my own tiny corner of the world, I am seeking an answer to this question. I don't know how it will occur, and I don't think it's something we can conjure. I think this answer must arise in us spontaneously. The one thing I have learned about the human condition is that despite what we appear to have learned and despite our best conscious intentions, nothing really changes in our consciousness. Maybe Freud was right when he said that the ego is not the master of its own house. Real change must occur of itself; we can't force it. It is a consequence of a personal and collective realisation. Realisation comes after the fact. You don't make yourself understand something, you simply do, and then you come to know that understanding intellectually.
We might eventually realise the flaw in abdicating our responsibility for life to one personality, but it might take a few more rounds. It really is a remarkable situation that the masses would be willing to hand over control of their lives to one man, is it not? Just look at the crowds of people whooping and wailing in St. Peter's Square yesterday for the new Pope. It's insane! At the far end of the spectrum, you have the MAGA crowd who would willingly follow Trump, Vance and Musk into hell. In fact, these guys would likely stop short of the door, telling the mindless followers, “in you go, it's just through there.” And so, this question I attempt to answer is an existential one. This is what Sunday Letters is about.
Until next time, here are a few reads that I've already run a rule over.
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