Come with me on this thought experiment.

It’s the year 2089 and the world is enjoying an incredible new medicine. Scientists working in the jungles of Papua New Guinea have discovered a natural compound that induces a host of tremendous health and quality-of-life improvements in virtually everyone who takes it. Because of its incredible properties, it has been named miraculos.

At first miraculos was only used to aid immune system function, and at this it was profoundly effective. People who take this medicine on a consistent basis get sick much less often, both with minor ailments like cold and flu, and major ones like cancer, heart disease, even dementia. As such, they live longer.

Researchers subsequently discovered that the same treatment confers dozens of additional health benefits. Subjects report things like clearer skin, improved sleep, greater bone density, and better joint health. They enjoy increased physical strength, flexibility, and co-ordination.

Amazingly, these physical benefits come with powerful cognitive and emotional benefits: increased focus and mental clarity, improved mood and outlook, and a lower incidence of depression and anxiety.

Miraculos is known to be socially transformative as well. Those who take it are consistently rated as better looking by focus groups. They invariably become more confident in their interactions, and receive more compliments and romantic interest. They do better at work. Their social status improves. They like themselves more.

Users of miraculos — when taken as directed — also notice greater subjective ease and well-being in almost everything they do, although this benefit is less often discussed than the official scientific findings. Doing anything physical, such as cleaning, loading up the car, or carrying groceries up the steps, feels like a breeze compared to how it felt previously. This effect often extends to the realm of self-control as well — it simply feels easier to eat right and get to bed on time, for example, creating mutually-reinforcing secondary and tertiary benefits. Users of miraculos often say their lives have transformed entirely within a few months of beginning their first serious treatment.

No prescription is necessary for miraculos, but it is recommended people talk to their doctors before self-administering the compound. In 2089, it has been rigorously tested for several decades now, with very few people reporting negative side effects, at least when taken in the recommended doseage range, which is quite broad.

The terms of the deal

Think about what would you pay for such a medicine, if it existed — for a guaranteed, virtually entirely-positive life transformation in many areas, not to mention a longer and healthier life. A day’s wages per month? A week’s? . . . especially if it made you more capable of virtually everything, perhaps including earning money.

Thankfully, miraculos can never be patented, due to obscure technical reasons. It has been made available to every human on the planet, but not for free. The enlightened bureaucratic systems of 2089 guarantee that anyone can secure access to miraculos and its life-changing benefits by performing a moderate amount of manual labor every week — most often three to six hours in total. The exact schedule is up to the patient, but it can’t be done all at once. Typically this labor is done in short, daily instalments, so that people can fit it into their work and family routines.

There’s a wide variety of forms that this miraculos-qualifying labor may take, and subjects may choose the forms that appeal most. There are specialized locations for doing this labor, but many forms can be done at home.

This labor-for-miraculos arrangement sounds as though it would be unfair to people less capable of vigorous manual labor. For that reason, the effort required is scaled to meet one’s present ability; it need only be vigorous for that person. People can simply work to their current level of capability, which increases gradually due to the transformative powers of the medicine. However, the labor must always be vigorous — for one person, that means unloading two hundred heavy crates, while for another, it’s walking, or hoisting a pair of soup tins. Under this system, miraculos will always have a meaningful cost that is payable by effort, but nobody is priced out of it.

The required amount of labor isn’t huge, certainly not compared to its ultimate benefits, but neither is it insignificant. People are busy, and it’s a non-negligible feat to ensure the labor gets done on the consistent basis required to secure miraculos’s benefits. You generally do not get paid money for this labor, although it is possible to arrange things that way.

Whatever the form, the benefits are so transformative that it’s hard to imagine anyone not prioritizing this work, especially as it makes almost every other aspect of life easier.

Why opt out?

Of course, miraculos does exist in our world, metaphorically, along with its scalable cost in labor. Most people do not opt to pay.

Just reading the word “exercise” can induce a certain tiredness, but that’s what miraculos is. It is available, eminently transformative, and, given its powers, surprisingly unpopular.

There are undoubtedly medical conditions that prevent a person from getting a miraculos-level dose of vigorous exercise, but that’s not the case for most people who opt out. Chances are, you can have the magic pill if you want it, under terms similar to those above: doing 30-60 minutes of vigorous (for you) exercise per day will positively transform your life, in a dozen or so mutually-reinforcing ways — unless you’re already doing it.

So why don’t people pay the quite-reasonable price for the best medicine in existence? Having been someone who has both paid in full, refused to pay, and paid inconsistently, I think most of the resistance boils down perceiving the cost as higher than it really is, and the rewards as smaller than they really are.

In other words, the best deal in the world looks like a bad deal from the outside — i.e. when you’re not taking the deal.

When you’re not regularly doing anything vigorous, doing something vigorous feels awkward and uncomfortable. This problem is a completely surmountable one, but it is only a problem in the first place because of the anomalous period of time in which we live.

Our weird century

There’s only been a short window of history, roughly a century, in which it’s even been possible for a normal person not to regularly do vigorous work. For better or worse, we live in that window. Technology has allowed us to drift away from frequent moving and lifting and making stuff happen with our muscles, which used to be called “life.”

The resulting great illusion, particular to our era, is that regular vigorous activity is for human beings an elective pursuit. Being into bodily exercise is viewed as a niche thing, like being into K-pop or competitive Scrabble, only a little more popular.

Vigorous activity is only optional from the point of view of our anomalous, sedentary century. Think of it this way: human bodies were made specifically for doing strenuous things, and so living without regular vigorous activity makes us sick. Opting out of vigorous daily exercise isn’t denying oneself an excellent opportunity to rise above the normal human state, it’s to never know it at all.

How to cross the divide

Given that we futurelings are unlikely to get much exercise on an incidental basis, how do we get ourselves to voluntarily take the deal of the century? Even if you agree with my hypothesis that we’re emphatically made for physical activity and become sick without it, how do you cross the divide?

I’ll unpack that in an upcoming post, but for now I’ll say this much: the number one thing is to never do an exercise you truly hate.

Beginners almost always force themselves to do exercises they don’t like, because they’re the “best” ones, according to some person who exercises for a living and long ago achieved self-sustaining momentum. You do not ever have to do burpees or sit-ups or broomstick twists. You have to do exercises that have something for you in them — something at least marginally interesting or attractive. Try a lot of activities, build a repertoire from the ones you’re most keen on, and drop the ones you dread.

In fact, it is possible to get into great shape doing only things that are fun for you (climbing, squash, hiking, etc) although it should be said that once-unpleasant activities can become fun and comfortable in ways you never expected, once you’re not so sick with “exertion aversion.”

People that do any kind of vigorous activity regularly do it because they’ve found something they like about it in the short term. If it’s not the feeling of the movement itself, it’s beating their previous numbers, its social environment, its rituals, or something else that feels at least a bit good today. Nobody is running on pure willpower, or visions of distant rewards. Find the activities with qualities you like, and drill down.

And remember that you can’t evaluate the how well miraculos works for you until you’re taking it properly, and taking it properly entails consistency over a number of weeks at the very least.

That’s the deal, but it’s a very, very good deal.

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Path photo by Emma Simpson, brick-carrier photo by Artem Beliaikin, all others public domain.