For many centuries, the writings of Plutarch of Chaeronia (c.46-119CE) were central to elite humanistic education in the West. His Lives of Eminent Greeks and Romans and the philosophical essays in his Moralia influenced early modern authors from Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon to William Shakespeare. Many of Plutarch's essays have a practical focus that seems remarkably timely in our social media age.
Plutarch's Timely Insights for Digital Wellbeing
Plutarch writes about how to cool the desire to gossip and pry into other people's lives, and how not to be taken in by salacious stories. He gives advice about avoiding being triggered by others' provocations and benefiting from disagreement. He advises on speaking about ourselves without boasting or self-advertisement, distinguishing friends from flatterers trying to sell us something, and paying attention so our minds are not overloaded and scattered. It almost seems as if Plutarch was peering into the 21st century and responding to the mental health challenges our commercialised social media is producing at scale.
Journalist Max Fisher, in his book The Chaos Machine, outlines how social media companies have identified the same psychological vulnerabilities Plutarch hoped to correct, recognising them as effective ways to “maximise user engagement”.
Philosophy as Therapy for Modern Ills
Plutarch belongs to the ancient Greco-Roman culture in which philosophy was not solely a theoretical pursuit but linked to the pursuit of happiness. In this tradition, philosophers could act as therapists, offering advice on life's challenges. Plutarch's practical ethics in the Moralia propose two ways to help people live happier, more serene lives.
The first is highlighting the bad consequences of cultivating bad habits to invoke shame and a desire to change. People constantly comparing their lives with others suffer from envy and dissatisfaction: “there are some who cannot bear to face their own lives, regarding these as a most unlovely spectacle … but their souls, being full of all manner of vices, shuddering and frightened at what is within, leap outwards and prowl about other people's concerns and there latch onto and fatten their own malice.”
Even without algorithmic assistance, the gossip who pries into others' supposed secrets is likely to be taken in by sensational speculations: “For as wheat shut up in a jar is found to have increased in quantity, but to have deteriorated in quality, so when a story finds its way to a gossip, it generates a large addition of falsehood and thereby destroys its credit.”
The habit of dwelling on causes of resentment, as algorithmic social media can promote, produces “an evil disposition of soul, which people call irascibility”. A daily diet of outrage makes a person “become sore and vexed at trifles and querulous at everyday occurrences, like iron thin and beaten out too finely”.
Cognitive-Behavioural Exercises for Attention Control
Plutarch's second suggestion is prescribing regimens of cognitive-behavioural exercises. These start small and aim to build new, beneficent habits. For instance, busybodies wanting to know about things that don't concern them should first practice not reading every piece of graffiti on public walls they pass (the Roman world had plenty of such graffiti, as our inner cities do). “It may seem that no harm will come from reading these, but it does harm you by imperceptibly instilling the practice of searching out matters which do not concern you.”
Then they should practice not looking in at every door they pass on the street, and then not opening every letter they receive straight away. Gradually, through such small steps, they will build a new habit, winning attention back to their own affairs. Today, we can adapt Plutarch's advice by turning off alerts on our phones and computers, pausing before responding, setting times to do emails or check apps, and practicing reading carefully and breathing deeply before hitting “reply”, let alone “reply all”. Concerted repetition can gradually allow a person to regain control over how they engage with online content.
Unhappiness 2.0: The Ancient Diagnosis
Like the ancient Stoics and Epicureans, Plutarch argued the happiest life is one of inner serenity and cheerfulness towards others. The happy person prioritises what they really value and savours what they have, rather than being pulled in a hundred directions and wracked by FOMO. The chief cause of unhappiness is excessive self-love, which “makes men eager to be first and to be victorious in everything and insatiably desirous of engaging in everything”. It makes people want to be “rich, learned, strong, … and friends of kings and magistrates of cities.” Today, it drives people to compete to win thousands of “followers” they'll never meet and compare themselves endlessly with others' curated online profiles.
Advertisements are dissatisfaction machines from a Plutarchean perspective: they fill us with desires for things we do not always need and which cannot lastingly satisfy us. He observes that “we do not manage our impulses, as sailors do their sails, to correspond to our capacity; in our expectations we aim at things too great”.
Happy people focus on what they can control. They compare themselves only with people who are worse off, to remind themselves to be grateful. Social media prompts constant upward comparison with unrealistic, glamorous images. Quantified metrics of likes, shares, followers, views and citations fill people with envy, making them ever more dependent on others' approval: “despite all this, we habitually live, out of stupidity, with our attention on others rather than ourselves.”
Practical Steps for a Digital Age
Plutarch's counsel for us today would not be to turn our devices off—this is not socially possible for most people given the changed nature of work and leisure. Yet recent legal findings in the US, as well as growing research on the effects of social media use, especially on young people, underscore that algorithm-driven social media does not promote, and can negatively affect, individual wellbeing. It also has a divisive effect on liberal democracies, stoking mutual suspicion and hatreds.
Plutarch's philosophical therapies for the sources of our unease—stoked by our interconnected, commercialised world—all turn upon knowing ourselves. They recognise how our natural egotism can be played to by flatterers, or today by algorithms that “feed” our “likes” and our outrage. Becoming conscious of how platforms (algorithmic flatterers) are designed to foster social media addiction and play to our desires and fears allows us to become more deliberate about how we use our devices and better manage the information that floods us all.
