Luke Burgis. The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. St. Martin’s Press, 2026. $30.00. 288 pp.
Ever since Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, the discourse around society has often emphasized social fragmentation and isolation. There are books and essays about the decline of fraternal organizations, third spaces, and church membership and the rising isolating effects of social media, remote work, and delayed marriage. Most cultural criticism is worried about a decline in belonging and attributes much of our bad behavior to that. But what if we’re actually pretty good at joining a crowd and we’re missing some other issues by bemoaning the loss of bowling leagues? Luke Burgis’ new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine, suggests we should spend some time thinking about a differentiated self and better ways of belonging.
The One and the Ninety-Nine rests on a “simple” premise: “Each of us is torn between belonging and differentiation, and few ever learn to manage that tension.” Early in the book, Burgis introduces August Landmesser, famous for a photograph taken in Hamburg in 1936, where everyone else is giving the Nazi salute and he has his arms crossed. What made Landmesser capable of withholding his approval in the middle of that crowd? Burgis finds Landmesser a good starting point, because he is especially worried about “social contagion.” While not new, he believes it has been “exacerbated by technology.”
Burgis suggests that there are at least two versions of each of us. When we allow ourselves to be shaped by social forces, we slip into a “pseudo-self,” which “is captive to what others want or expect.” The alternative is a “solid self,” which “is not negotiable in every interaction.” That solid self does not have to be a radical individualist or live in the woods like a hermit, but it is a differentiated self. Burgis worries that “If we continue down our current path toward systemic conformity, the future will be dominated by pliable selves—shaped not by conviction but convenience, ready to bend with every social current.” Despite his concerns, he is “optimistic that we can build more places and practices that cultivate the solid self.”
This book explores the forces at work in shaping us, often pushing us to a pseudo self, and the opportunities for the emergence of a solid self. Burgis treads expected and unexpected ground. As you might expect, Burgis writes about tribes and the political self. More unexpectedly (and despite some pages with QR codes), this book is not all about technology and social media and all the ways the twenty-first century is especially scary. Those things come up, but Burgis is not fixated on them. In fact, he spends time on families and the ways in which they can shape us to be pseudo or solid selves. Arguably, this hits closer to home. Few people are willing to defend their scrolling habits.
Burgis navigates between popular, academic, and trendy. Going beyond a critique of technology and social media pushes him into a more serious category. He draws on the work of Paul Tillich and René Girard and St. Benedict. He integrates study findings. Yet he also uses the concept of “pills” to write about the political self. Though Burgis connects pills to Czesław Miłosz, he acknowledges he is indulging in “internet lingo.” It is unclear how distinguishing between true and counterfeit red pills might be read in twenty years. Yet at times his cultural awareness is beneficial. One of the best sections of the book is when Burgis focuses on art and the work of Ornette Coleman, who had a remarkably solid self.
Interspersed through The One and the Ninety-Nine are biographical moments from Burgis’s own life. He shares about his early career and search for meaning, his vocational discernment, and about the challenges faced (and caused) by his aging parents. The short scenes offer a narrative to help pull the reader along and serve to connect the ideas that Burgis is drawing from books and thinkers to life and the human condition. Burgis also uses the biographical passages to share moments from his own Christian faith journey.
Though Burgis does not write everything as reflective of his own experience, some of his assessments reflect specific perspectives in notable ways. For example, he writes that, “We didn’t see what smartphones were doing to our children until they had been frying our brains for more than a decade.” That is true in some circles, but definitely not all. Plenty of people were screen skeptics for children (and adults) before Jonathan Haidt made a career of it. Burgis also writes that, “For over a century, the idea of ‘school’ has not changed much. There are classrooms, quizzes, and exams. Lectures are the norm.” Those who work in classrooms are more aware of how much those old norms have been challenged, classrooms have been flipped, and how much lecture is actively discouraged (even sometimes prohibited). Though it may appear we still have traditional “grading,” it might be more accurate to say we have “assessment” in many schools today. But broad statements like these are more occasional than common.
The One and the Ninety-Nine is not a work of theology or apologetics, but it does integrate faith. The book’s title comes from Luke and Jesus’s parable about the lost sheep. Burgis identifies religion as a good path to a solid self: “Religious practice, when it is genuine, is the search for what is real—not what is socially accepted.” Burgis himself nearly became a priest and his discernment of vocation was part of his own path to a more solid self. Burgis is also an advocate for religious communities, because “most are rooted in a vision of human relationships that has an eternal horizon.” Among other things he writes about the Cluniac reforms. (He is the director of The Cluny Institute at The Catholic University of America.)
In the parable about the one lost sheep, Jesus asks who would not leave ninety-nine sheep to go after the one that was lost? The sheep has differentiated itself, healthily or unhealthily, but a good shepherd will return it to the flock, where it belongs. In the same way, a differentiated, solid self, belongs with others. In the final passages Burgis offers some specific guidance for assessing communities, because, ultimately, communion is the goal after differentiation. Some readers may take some issue with a few passages of The One and the Ninety-Nine, but the book introduces and explores helpful concepts and may serve many people who are striving for healthier belonging. The book also pushes us to think past the idea of belonging as an end in itself and the best hope for our hurting culture.