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  "path": "/2026/04/06/instrumentalizing/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-07T00:29:05.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.themarginalian.org",
  "tags": [
    "culture",
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    "books",
    "love",
    "Zadie Smith",
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  "textContent": "The great paradox, the great pain of human relationships is that they are so often not relational: two lonelinesses colliding without real contact, one or both orienting to the other not as a person but as a projection, mistaking for intimacy its myriad illusions — admiration, adoration, desire. It is always dangerous and damaging, and we are almost never aware — or never willing to listen to the parts of us who are aware — that it is happening until the delirious turbine of the dynamic has spat us out with a concussing confusion and a dislocated heart. We use… read article",
  "title": "Between the User and the Used: Zadie Smith on Instrumentalism"
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