But it’s a big mistake to blame this messiness on cultural norms. It’s not ideological; it’s material. Much like Socrates, we are grappling with a new set of tools. While attitudes always shift from generation to generation — we get stricter here, more lax there — it’s certainly not the case that mine has radically expanded the list of things that are considered unacceptable. It would be incredibly difficult to claim that our real world is significantly more just, less racist, and less abusive towards women than the world 10 years ago.

What has expanded — and expanded exponentially — is the amount of evidence every human action, good or bad, leaves behind. Almost everything we do “roams about everywhere,” as Socrates put it, forever. We produce a whole lot more writing, in other words, both of the type that can indicate guilt, and that can be used to publicly condemn the guilty.