The musical chimes started in quietly, then built to a delicate crescendo. Before Dave could even open his eyes, he was already irritated, thinking about how much he disliked this song. He picked up his phone. It was 7 a.m.

Now, he could have gotten up and done what he had intended to do last night, which was meditate, then make a simple breakfast of eggs and toast, brew coffee, and head off to work ten minutes early.

But Dave didn't even allow himself to remember these plans. He did not want to get out of bed. He did not want to go to work. He just wanted something to distract him from the fact  that he’d have to do those things soon. 

Dave snuggled into the covers in the cold and disheveled room, the morning light rendering everything in a dark blue tone. It was really quite a peaceful scene. But Dave wanted something. He looked at his phone, which turned on obligingly for him, and he navigated to the news and started looking at the morning stories. And this, dear reader, was his first mistake of the day.

First and foremost, it was one of those years again, divisible by four. A presidential election. In years past, today's date would be smack in the middle of one or two excruciating primaries, with a deck of candidates with glaring shortcomings all gathering to fight to the last contender.

But this year was different.

This year, instead of a shark tank, it was more like a fish tank. And there were only two fish. Two old, frail, not-at-all appealing fish, one whose colors were unmistakably fading away (sadly, of course, but the truth must be said), and the other, well, the other one was still orange at least, but was not the kind of goldfish Dave wanted with the nuclear codes.

But he only had these two fish to choose from, either that, or risk disrupting the frail ecosystem of the fish tank entirely with a third fish which, given the circumstances, might just choke on the poor old fish and leave the orange one to carry the day. 

Dave surveyed the headlines and grew despairing. And I do mean a real, if only moderate degree, of despair. 

I would like, dear reader, to momentarily pull out of the narrative and provide a note about the point of this book. Please forgive me, because you are here for a story, and a story is what I will give you. But know that in the twists and turns that this story takes, one of the many problems I'll be addressing is a problem familiar to us all living here in 2024, that might be stated as this: right now the world, seen through these phones we take with us everywhere, is a roller coaster of dopamine deficits and rewards. We dive to check the news, get sad, get mad, search for something to do or buy or donate to, to make us feel better, and much of this is happening reflexively more than intentionally. One point of this book, and the app it describes, is to make these little devices in our hand really help us fix our days instead of, well, do something else that starts with an “f” them up. And so again a thousand apologies, and I shall get on with my story. 

Now in one sense, Dave was a die-hard liberal. He believed that the current state of the country was tilted too much in one direction, that is, too conservative, capitalistic, anti-immigrant, etc, and that it needed to correct itself to the left.

But in another sense, Dave was not a die-hard, but a moderate, because he believed in the voting booth, and that other people out there have a right to be conservative, and that the world worked best when those two sides worked together to compromise, as they used to. Before partisanship ruled the day, and radicals from both parties started dominating the news cycles.

Dave’s eyes turned up to the ceiling. His mind went to work. He turned in the covers, and glanced at the time. If he got out of bed now, he could still make cereal and brew some coffee for the road. But the wind still coming in through the window forbade a cold and uninviting floor for his bare feet. 

So he went on to international news. He read about the war in Ukraine, and what the world was trying to do to stop it. Then he read about an earthquake, and then a story about the effects of new Fed policy on the economy. All stories that he clicked on because he wanted to know what was out there in the world, what to be aware of, which his instincts told him he should do. But what could he do about the problems, sitting there in bed? In reality, nothing, but become more resolved to support his favored presidential candidates. But what about the president then? Did any of these goldfish running for president, even in a good year, know where the country should really be going? What is waiting for us in the future? Would we descend into a dystopian madness, an artificial intelligence hell-scape with sea levels swamping every major city, water wars…. What was in store for us? 

Finally, the last minute available to waste had passed. He leaped out of bed, kicked his dirty things off, put his clean things on, grabbed his phone, wallet and keys, and left, slamming the door shut behind him. 

He walked downstairs and down the block to the local bakery, Shelly’s. It was not, to be honest, his favorite. Dave had grown up in New Jersey, which had certain standards. Coffee cake, black and white cookies, and great bagels. Shelly’s on the other hand featured an anemic selection of meringue-filled pastries and sugar cookies. And the coffee was not good either. He supported the local shop out of principle, and expedience. 

He waited in line, averting his eyes from other customers and the staff. Unimpressed as usual with the pastries, he surveyed the wall behind the counter. A bold-faced message on a yellow flier on the wall caught his eye. “Free pizza.”

“Not likely,” Dave thought, “there's a sucker born every minute,” but he inched closer to get a better look. Apparently there was a community meeting about a new development going on up the street. He had heard something about this development from the owner of the bakery, Shelly, who was always up in arms about how the neighborhood was changing. He wondered where the pizza was going to be coming from, because there was a lot of variety in the neighborhood. He looked at the name of the place and thought it sounded familiar, checked it on Google Maps, and thought “Oh yeah, that place!” The meeting was tonight. Great. Hopefully he could leave work early and make it.

Dave went to work downtown. A 28-year-old attorney, two years out of law school, he had a job clerking at a judge’s office. But you, reader, don’t need to remember that now—his specific profession won’t be relevant for several chapters, and at that time I’ll remind you. There are, however, more general points about the role that work played in his life and what he got out of it that I would like you to make note of.

Dave took the following trajectory in life, which I will present with breakneck velocity: white conservative upper middle-class parents, Eagle Scout, went to a small charter high school, grew up into a liberal teenager, went to the college of his parents’ persuasion, and wound up on the law school track. A thoughtful and funny person with an ease for making friends, he moved to Detroit to be near his law school girlfriend, and because he heard housing could be got for cheap inside the city.

He now saw his high school friends and despaired that living in a busy but strange city, enmeshed in the world of a law career, was devouring his soul. He still clung to his youthful ideals,  imaginging living in a community with friends. He just wished that, if he did have to live his life buying into the rat race, there could at least be some relief to it; instead, life in the race is accompanied by neverending stress that you'll lose your footing and be trampled at any minute. Why was it that we didn't have it figured out, like our ancestors did, living together in groups, enjoying ups and enduring downs in solidarity.

He arrived at the office and got to work, reviewing densely worded case law and then writing densely worded summaries for a federal circuit judge. The work was hard, and the days were long, but he passed the time well enough making jokes with the other law clerks behind the judge's back.

At 5:30 p.m., Dave got up from his desk, explaining to his coworkers that he was going to get dinner. He went to the restaurant and walked up to the second floor. A woman greeted him at the door. 

And now, to conclude the chapter, I will attempt to draw your attention to aspects of the narrative that serve the larger structure of the book, and how they do. I will do this in every chapter, as I am trying to make this as easy to follow as possible.

This chapter sets up the national storyline in this book, which is that there is a presidential election. It shows the way that a voter currently is oriented relative to the presidential candidates, which is to say, at a great distance, and when people do try to get involved—to donate, to sign up for emails—they are incorporated as nothing more than a cog, a vote that the candidats and PACs jab repeatedly on, as though we were nothing more than a malfunctioning button. In my mind, this is not an ideal way of having a democratic system of government, given modern technological capabilities.

Furthermore, there is the whole problem with the two-party system and the fact that we are just voting for a single one of two people, voting for a platform, and then in the end the primary between two people. This year, 2024, at least where we stand now in March of 2024, portends a very strange election, but still it’s true to the idea that in the end we are voting between two parties, two platforms, two people, one binary choice. All of the nuance, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and experience that you bring through your life to hundreds of distinct issues, is lost in this simple choice. That is, unless you can afford a $5,000-a-plate dinner to hobnob with a candidate.