Stamford Writer Publishes First Book on Ethics and the Cost of Speaking Up

A Stamford writer has published his first book, an examination of how people lose their principles without ever deciding to.

The Cost of Being Human: Ethics, Power and Conscience in a Performative World went on sale August 24th. Its author, Paul Gerardi, has spent thirty years in data and direct marketing — most of it inside the kind of organizations the book describes.

"Ethical erosion rarely arrives as a single dramatic decision," Gerardi said. "It happens by degrees. Reasonable compromises, pressure to perform, a reluctance to be the person who introduces friction."

The book runs eighty pages across ten chapters, drawing on philosophy, history, film and music to work through courage, empathy, judgment, and what happens when people become convinced they are the exception to the rules they'd apply to everyone else.

Gerardi, a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, points to a Jesuit education and its principle of "People for Others" as part of what shaped the argument. He also grew up with a speech impediment, which he says taught him early what it costs to be the quieter voice in a room that rewards volume.

"Not fitting in was not a failure," he said. "It was a signal."

Gerardi publishes essays at PaulGerardi.co and serves as bookkeeper for the Loft Artists Association in Stamford. The Cost of Being Human is published under his own imprint and is available in paperback and ebook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and other retailers.