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The Examined Life in the Age of Optimisation

journal.nyphilosophy.org · 2,596 words · saved by 1 readers

By Rodney King

Consider a woman who is doing everything right. She wakes before dawn, not because she must but because a podcast persuaded her that the first hour of the day belongs to the disciplined. A ring on her finger scores her sleep each night, an app scores her focus each afternoon, and a spreadsheet keeps a running tally of the books she has finished against the target she set in January. Her calendar is tiled so completely that even her rest has been booked in advance and filed under ‘recovery’. She takes the supplements whose names she has learned to pronounce, writes three lines of gratitude…

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