Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard PowersMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
"Technology changes what we think is intolerable."
I've stopped keeping track of how many Richard Powers books I've read. I only count the ones I have yet to read.
Reading his books needs to be spaced out between months, nay, years. Because whoever one reads afterward will ultimately suffer by comparison.
Powers' power lies in merging wordsmithing with science and technology. He blends the knowledge of a physicist by training with a humanist's eye towards the arc of civilization, and the dangerous places it can go.
In GENEROSITY, our main character is an Algerian refugee who astounds her college professor and classmates, and eventually, the whole world, with her seemingly unshakable happiness and love for life, despite going through the most harrowing of terrors.
Can we genetically code for joy? Just how much of our personhood is genetically determined?
In novel form, Powers summarizes both sides of the debate between nurture and nature, between those who would use Science to basically play God and select only good genes for future generations, and those who shrink from this frontier as annihilation of what makes us human.
Ultimately, Powers' book says, all life is already a gift we take for granted, and our generation's tendency towards despair is partly a result of the deadly yet popular practice: a performative life streamed live 24/7 on social media, numbing us to the miracle of being, already "luckier than all those who are unborn."
We all have it in us to reshape our stories, and our destinies, Powers believes. And the greatness of the human soul cannot simply be divided nor found in molecules.
Powers is no religious author, but in his faith in humanity and in our ability to use our collective knowledge to chart a better future is a bright infection well worth catching.
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