You could step into some sort of device in the morning which would inject some drug that rendered you unconscious. Then your muscles could be stimulated in some fashion that mimicked weight lifting physiologically. Your heart and lungs could be exercised. You could be tanned, and you could be put through a sauna to improve your vascular health. All this, without any conscious effort on your part. You wake up, and the health maintenance part of your day is complete.
Would you assent to such a thing? Many people would. They resent effort and work. They have been bred–that is the word for many–to feel that life without work would be better, and that life with work is drudgery.
But life IS work. Even love is work, is it not, at least when done over the long term? Are not all the small moments that make up a life found in the little things, the drudgery, the looking-to-the-other-side through what often seems monotonous, difficult, and dull?
If we are our work, then this machine would be terrible. Every rep of every exercise I do is a little different. Every time I stretch it feels a little different. All these nuances are what create affective and cognitive complexity and what make a mind and self interesting. People bred to use machines of this sort would be difficult to differentiate from cattle, other than in their use of language.