Walk through Palermo, CABA: The Planetarium, the Conscious Pause, and the Algorithm Trap

Walking through some streets of the Palermo neighborhood, starting the route at the intersection of Scalabrini Ortiz Avenue and Santa Fe Avenue. From there, connecting via Santa Fe Avenue, República Árabe Siria Street, Las Heras Avenue, República de la India Street, Del Libertador Avenue, and Sarmiento Avenue, to do one loop around the Galileo Galilei Planetarium and another around Dr. Benjamín Apthorp Gould Square. A classic urban journey, city-trekking, or low-intensity steady-state cardio (LISS) to get moving.

However, this month was weak for my walks. I didn't complete the challenge. Neither of the two. They had enabled an extra challenge—one of those created for special occasions—in this case, for the FIFA World Cup.

It's the first time I haven't completed one since I started 6 years ago. It’s not that I didn't walk: I logged 140,000 steps, averaging about 4,500 daily steps. The daily, healthy exercise was accomplished; what wasn't completed was the self-imposed challenge.

"Freedom is not doing what one wants, but not doing what one does not want."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

 

This famous quote synthesizes one of the pillars of the Genevan philosopher's thought: the transition from natural freedom to moral and civil freedom. For him, doing whatever one wants without boundaries is not true freedom, but a form of slavery to one's own impulses or whims. Genuine freedom lies in self-determination and self-mastery, which breaks down into key points:

•    Autonomy vs. impulse: Anyone who merely follows their immediate desires ends up governed by their passions or by societal trends and pressures. Mature freedom requires the ability to be guided by a law that one consciously and rationally imposes upon oneself.

•    The freedom to say "no": Not doing what one does not want represents resistance against external expectations, manipulation, and imposed social conventions. It is the power to refuse to act against one's own principles.

•    The Social Contract: In the political sphere, Rousseau translates this idea into the general will. Citizens are free because they obey laws in whose creation they actively participated, meaning that, by obeying the community, they are only obeying themselves.

Reflection from Skepticism and Reason

I didn't care much about not completing the goal. Reality prevailed: I didn't reach it, and I was fully aware of it. When the time came to decide whether to go out for a walk or not—and with nothing "real" or concrete preventing me—it was I who chose not to, because I was tired, because it was cold, or because of any other minor, non-definitive reason. It’s not about quitting, but about pausing, resting, or using that time for another activity, and resuming without being tethered to an app. And this creates space for reflection.
From a skeptical or critical perspective, the problem is rarely reality—our actual steps, our health, the genuine effort—but rather the arbitrariness of artificial constructs. Fitness apps, algorithms, and platforms are designed with game mechanics (gamification): badges, rounded goals, streaks, and themed challenges. They serve as useful psychological scaffolding to get started, but often turn into an arbitrary tyranny.

A critical thinker facing this would ask: Why grant moral authority to a progress bar programmed by a software company?

Two key ideas support this viewpoint:

1.    The fallacy of the perfect streak: The narrative that a six-year streak is "broken" is a mathematical illusion. The six years of health, consistency, and habit accumulated in your legs are still there. A streak isn't erased; it is a continuous accumulation. The app's magic number is merely an artificial limit.

2.    The map is not the territory: The digital challenge (the virtual territory requested by the app) is not your real life (the physical territory). You walked 140,000 steps. Your muscles, heart, and metabolism received the exact same biological benefits, regardless of whether the app gave you a virtual medal or a sad screen saying "challenge incomplete."

Autonomy and Pause in the Face of the Algorithm

There is a gulf between quitting—indefinitely breaking a commitment to oneself—and taking a conscious pause. When an app becomes the main driver, the risk is falling into a heteronomous discipline: we perform to satisfy the algorithm, the streak, or the virtual medal.

But when the app recedes into the background and it is you, with total honesty, who says "today I'm not going out because I'm tired, because it's cold, or because I simply prefer to do something else," control returns to you. That moment of decision where you weigh the weather, fatigue, and desire, and choose to pause without guilt, is the triumph of personal agency over gamification. You are not a slave to a six-year streak; you are a person who walks because it is good for you, but who is also the master of your time, your rest, and your priorities.

Choosing to rest when the body or mind calls for it—even if for a minor reason—is not a failure; it is the necessary space for the habit to remain sustainable in the long run, without becoming a rigid burden.

 

Wikiloc link: https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-senderismo/walk-through-palermo-caba-planetarium-292600671