The One and the Ninety-Nine summary

Social media has been blamed for everything from the death of literacy to post-truth politics. The anxiety isn’t novel: technology is an old scapegoat for slipping standards. Before Facebook, it was TV; before that, rock ’n’ roll records. Twenty-four centuries ago, Socrates worried that writing outsourced memory and made people forgetful.

Technophobia is perennial and the prosecution routinely overcharges the case, but that doesn’t rule out a conviction on lesser charges. Tech can be toxic without causing civilization to collapse. The Silicon Valley moguls enrolling their kids in screen-light private schools seem to think that social media is a problem. So do the researchers who link heavy use to depression, dissatisfaction, and despair. The critique is plausible and aligns with experience. So why do we go on scrolling like smokers ignoring pictures of damaged lungs on cigarette packs?

Our account of desire described how it emerges (through imitation), but it didn’t say much about what we ought to desire. Yet most of us have a strong sense that some wants are more worthwhile than others. Let’s put some flesh on the bones of that intuition by looking at the different ways the things we want can matter to us.

Some things are like sugar or sex; they matter because they’re pleasurable. The biochemistry is complex, but the idea is simple: we like things that make us feel good. That’s the first way things can matter to us. When we forgo easy pleasures, it’s usually with an eye to larger payoffs. Eating cake is more fun than going to the gym, but working out extends our lives. There’s our second category – things that matter because they’re beneficial.

The Galápagos Islands are home to many kinds of finch. Some of these birds have large beaks; others have much smaller bills. During food-scarce droughts, the former do much better than the latter: they can crack open the hard seeds left in the ground that finches with smaller beaks can’t. Darwin was the first to notice this famous example of environmental change rewarding one evolutionary trait and punishing a second.

It’s the same with us and our technological environment: some traits are better suited to the attention economy than others.

We’ve seen that different selves notice different things. The question now is whether we can learn to notice differently. We can answer it with the help of an insect and a theologian.

Moths evolved to navigate by maintaining a constant angle relative to the moon and stars. Since celestial bodies are effectively infinitely far away, this angle keeps moths flying straight. Artificial lights are much closer, which means that moths continually readjust their course to maintain this instinctual angle – that’s why they spiral around street-lamps. This ancient strategy worked as long as the moon remained the brightest object in the night sky.

As the prisoner who escapes Plato’s cave learns, our problems don’t end when we discover the truth. We also have to come to terms with people who go on mistaking shadows for reality.

As children, we’re exquisitely sensitive to others’ expectations because we grasp that love, safety, and belonging are intertwined. We mature by differentiating ourselves, which often means disappointing someone significant and pressing on anyway.