recently read: fragility

02: “An algorithm does not navigate and select on the basis of empathy and meaningfulness.”

Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they most resonate with can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. Personally, I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better or gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book. 

Book no. 19 of 2022

Fragility by Marlies De Munck

To be frank, it’s a pass. A few good nuggets, but overall I wouldn't recommend it. I found it in my favorite bookstore in London and thought it’d be interesting as it makes the case for vulnerability and compassion in this digital age.

Highlighted quotes:

• “But if I retain that image for too long, it’s as if I become alienated from myself. It feels as if I’m erasing myself, exchanging myself for an ideal image. With my digitally packaged version becoming my new self… But if it lasts too long, I feel trapped.”

• “An algorithm does not navigate and select on the basis of empathy and meaningfulness.”

• “I must learn to appreciate what I have never before heard, seen or read. To understand why my taste differs from that of others… If I wish to be critical and create things myself, I must dare to take risks. Take a stance. Also, if I want my criticism to be heard and possibly have an impact.”

• “When I admit my own vulnerability, the other person has the opportunity to identify with it… To reveal its own fragility subtly in order to touch on our universal connectivity.”

• “So show mercy. To boomers and Sunday shoppers, to blood-and-thunder preachers, to the work and not-so-woken. Have mercy on puritans and doomsayers, on specialists and improvisers, on leftists and rightists. Mercy even on politicians and managers, calculators, sweet talkers and opinion markers. They are all united by the simple fact that, inevitably, most people blunder.”

• “...in spite of our great differences, we might indeed share a common fragility. That sometimes we possess the same demons and desires. It all depends on our cautiously admitting them to one another. Breaking open the protective casing at the right moment.”