Up here in Eu­rope, I’ve bounced up a new and ap­par­ent­ly rapid­ly in­creas­ing dis­ease. For now, it’s be­ing called “op­ti­mi­sa­tion cul­ture.” It does ap­pear to be en­dem­ic to cer­tain groups, main­ly the rich and the spoilt, but I sus­pect, as it spreads, it may soon be clas­si­fied as an­oth­er dread­ed epi­dem­ic with po­ten­tial to go pan­dem­ic among the mass­es. We must be aware of this new dis­or­der be­fore it does that, or our gov­ern­ment, which is show­ing a de­cid­ed ten­den­cy to be au­thor­i­tar­i­an, may lock down the coun­try for a cou­ple of years in an­oth­er use­less at­tempt to stop spread.

The dis­ease is char­ac­terised by de­cid­ed changes in life-style be­hav­iour. It be­gins with the sud­den ap­pear­ance of ob­ses­sive think­ing where al­most all as­pects of life, body, mood, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty etc, are seen as per­for­mance prob­lems to be fixed and up­grad­ed. These re­quire con­stant self-mon­i­tor­ing and tweak­ing, with the ex­pec­ta­tion that reg­u­lar “good” is not enough and must be con­tin­u­al­ly im­proved, or the per­son af­fect­ed feels like a fail­ure.

It is best ob­served in the area of health and the de­sire to get “fit.” Sud­den­ly, the per­son, who may have al­ways been seen as a bit “neu­rot­ic” or “per­fec­tion­ist,” be­comes su­per-im­pressed with the need to be­come health­i­er. Why health? Well, we live in a cul­ture where youth and beau­ty are wor­shipped, es­pe­cial­ly if those fea­tures are en­closed in mon­ey. Our he­roes are movie ac­tors, en­ter­tain­ers, in­flu­encers, TV pre­sen­ters and re­cent­ly, for ob­vi­ous rea­sons, foot­ball play­ers of the soc­cer va­ri­ety. They look so good on TV, why shouldn’t we be im­pressed? Even the ref­er­ees look sexy, my fe­male friends tell me. Oops, al­most for­got, there are now fe­male ref­er­ees! They look­ing good too.

So a “smart­watch” is bought to “get fit­ter.” Ex­er­cise is the name of the game. Quick­ly, all hell breaks loose. The abil­i­ty to “re­lax” is soon gone. “Track­ing” has be­gun. Every­thing is con­stant­ly tracked with the new watch, heart rate, steps, sleep, weight, calo­ries, ECG, every­thing! Anx­i­ety is the im­me­di­ate re­sult. If the dai­ly steps goal is not reached by din­ner, steps must be made up be­fore sleep can be had. A low sleep score means some­thing is wrong, an in­cip­i­ent ill­ness per­haps. The high heart rate from lit­tle sleep now might be car­diac dis­ease.

The ill­ness goes through char­ac­ter­is­tic phas­es.

This first pe­ri­od of anx­i­ety is fol­lowed by a tem­po­rary phase of self-re­as­sur­ance last­ing about four to six weeks. Then the “check­ing,” the “track­ing” again takes over. So­cial life be­comes in­hib­it­ed if it in­ter­feres with fit­ness rou­tines. This stage is char­ac­terised by in­tense pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the body and its ex­cre­to­ry func­tions.

Google gets in­volved. Here are the “16 most com­mon caus­es of con­sti­pa­tion.” Here are the “27 most com­mon caus­es of a rapid pulse.” Smart watch­es do not ap­pear as caus­es of wor­ry though. Not enough has been writ­ten about them for AI to de­tect in­cip­i­ent warn­ings from mi­nor au­thors. Oth­er symp­toms turn up. A mild headache be­comes a pos­si­ble brain tu­mour. The heart rate goes high­er. Car­diac fail­ure! Sleep be­comes rar­er. Men­tal dis­tur­bance! More time is spent in the gym in a des­per­ate at­tempt to im­prove health. Friends aban­don the pa­tient, a sign that the dis­ease may be in­fec­tious. Weight loss en­sues. A doc­tor is con­sult­ed. Lab tests are in­di­cat­ed. Anx­i­ety reach­es an all-time high. Noth­ing is found. An­ti-anx­i­ety med­ica­tions are pre­scribed in a use­less at­tempt to re­gain con­fi­dence.

What hap­pens next de­pends on friends and fam­i­ly. All vari­a­tions are in play here. Al­co­holism. Sui­cide. Or life on med­ica­tion. All be­cause of a per­son­al­i­ty pre­dis­posed to per­fec­tion­ism, an en­vi­ron­ment of body wor­ship and the ap­pear­ance of tech toys which at­tract us like mon­keys to bright­ly-coloured gad­gets, giz­mos and the like.

Some poor per­sons are walk­ing time-bombs, mon­i­tor­ing blood oxy­gen lev­els or blood sug­ar lev­els, not­ing every­thing down, get­ting wor­ried for noth­ing but re­act­ing to it like crazy. In fact, it is crazy. No one, ex­cept a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete or sick per­son, needs to make these tech­no­log­i­cal ob­ser­va­tions and at­tempt to cor­rect.

What’s the use of all of this tech­nol­o­gy ex­cept to make us lose com­mon sense and wor­ry to death?

The glam­our in­dus­try has the an­swer. Why ex­er­cise when there are mys­te­ri­ous prod­ucts cre­at­ed by na­ture and in the lab that will do the work of im­prov­ing your health, as you re­lax in front of the TV or en­joy a good Tik­Tok ses­sion with your smart­phone?

Re­al­ly, the best thing is to buy some “Ko­re­an Beau­ty Won­der­balm—the all-pur­pose balm,” or bet­ter yet, the Sol De Janeiro “Brazil­ian Bum Bum cream.”

You couldn’t make up this non­sense if you tried!