As for machines and tyranny, they're terms capturing the Zeitgeist all too well.
What Zeitgeist? The spirit of this age is laziness, overeating, selfness. Everything is too difficult and... the fault of those tyrants!
But this is a good thing; if I waste a day without learning or doing anything, I feel bad about myself. And I want to feel bad! Always pushing to improve myself has helped me immensely. It's easy to keep telling yourself 'oh, I'll do better tomorrow'; it's harder to actually do better tomorrow.
That's not to say you shouldn't take it easy on yourself every once in a while. But figuring out those exceptions isn't what this article is about, and it's certainly not a 'tyrannical' article. As a society I feel we have gone way too far in this direction; sometimes life is hard! Sometimes you have to do hard things! And often it will pay off later in life and you'll be glad you put in the work.
Life is not binary. Routines are not classified into hippie XOR hardcore. Not feeling bad for not improving yourself is a good sign of having actually improved. But that's just my opinion. Take care.