In a world where we strive to maximize optionality, what if the freedom we seek through accumulation is actually found on the other side of simplicity? Perhaps freedom isn’t about having infinite optionality in everything, but rather in the things most meaningful to us.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned this on its head. Although he shared with Hobbes the view that people were generally unsociable, he disagreed that humans were inherently machines of infinite want. It was possible, he argued, for people to feel that they’ve got “enough.” Being sated is something that people can learn—and it is after they have managed t

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