User Profile

Steven Ray

stevenray@sfba.club

Joined 1 year ago

I’m interested in a multitude of things, including social justice, socialism, history, poetry, magical realism (fiction), capitalism, race, class struggle, wine, baseball, music…

So mostly non-fiction, though I read maybe two novels per year.

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Steven Ray's books

Currently Reading

2024 Reading Goal

Success! Steven Ray has read 15 of 15 books.

Frederic Gros, David Fernbach: Disobey! (Paperback, 2021, Verso Books) 4 stars

The world is out of joint, so much so that disobeying should be an urgent …

A way to be true to ourselves

4 stars

In this age when so much is wrong with the world, Frédéric Gros seeks to convince us that by obeying others we disobey ourselves. Also, that our highest calling is to defend the community that we are a part of, our human community. By undertaking a habit of civil disobedience, we resist injustice. When we speak up for ourselves, we speak up for the whole of humanity.

He references people as diverse as Thoreau and Eichmann, Antigone and Kant, Foucault and la Boétie, finishing with Socrates and Plato. Describing the various ways we justify to ourselves the continuation of our docility, this obeisance to authority which we’ve practiced since childhood, he seeks avenues through which we can finally be true to ourselves.

I’d say he succeeds, if only we’ll take his lesson to heart.