We use the word “need” so casually that we forget how radical its evolution has been. A few days ago I wrote about how most needs aren’t needs at all. They’re stories our minds learned to believe. And the deeper I have looked, the more striking the shift became. In I Need That, I cite a linguistic analysis of one million English-language books: Two centuries ago, “need” appeared once every ~10,000 words. Today it appears once every 2,500. If you include “needs,” it jumps to once every 1,600...