David Pastor, philosopher: “You prevent others from being happy with you if you don’t share the problems of others”
The thinker has explained in ‘Aprendemos juntos BBVA’ the social key that explains the difficulties that many encounter in their search for happiness.
Some people spend their entire lives searching for happiness through countless tangible, measurable goals that, little by little, prove insufficient. The idea that this state of bliss can be reached through a shared or collective mindset is often undervalued. The notion that individual well-being depends on a collective factor, beyond the inherently social nature of human beings, frequently goes unnoticed. This is precisely what David Pastor Vico, a philosopher who recently devoted a talk on Aprendemos juntos BBVA to unravelling the age-old enigma of happiness, insists upon.
He likes quotes. “Aristotle says in one of his books that ‘knowing oneself means knowing what you are good at so that you can help others’,” he says, using it as the starting point for a deeper reflection. “But first, how do I know myself?” The answer, he argues, is a seemingly circular one that ultimately leads to a clear conclusion: “You cannot know yourself alone.”
The idea is simple. “You know yourself through the gaze of others.” Pastor repeatedly stresses that “you need others to know yourself” and that “no one knows themselves alone”, which is why, he concludes, “you cannot know yourself by looking in the mirror”. The reason, he explains, is straightforward: “Who is going to tell you that what you feel is one thing or another? Who is going to place a dilemma in your mind or help you resolve it?”
From classical Greek thought, he jumps forward in time to Lope de Vega and the famous final verse of Sonnet 126. “That great poem says: ‘this is love, and only he who has tasted it knows it’,” he recalls, before adding his own interpretation. “Only the person who knows it can explain it to you, because otherwise you do not understand what is happening to you.” As with love, he argues, “in almost all the important things in life we need someone to explain what they are, or at least to see them reflected in the eyes of another”.
Returning to Aristotle, Pastor asks, “Why do we need to learn what we are good at in order to help others?” What the philosopher was really saying, he suggests, is that one should not trust someone who has no friends, because “a person without friends cannot possibly be happy”. In the end, he concludes, “no one can be happy alone”.
This is where he lays out his central thesis. “If you do not share in the problems of others, if you are not part of the solution to those problems by contributing what you are genuinely useful for, what you are doing is preventing others from being happy with you.” And yet, there are people who spend their entire lives searching for happiness elsewhere.
@aprendemosjuntosbbva “Necesitamos a los demás para conocernos a nosotros mismos”, afirma el filósofo David Pastor Vico. No te pierdas este y muchos más contenidos nuevos en @aprendemosjuntosbbva_mex. #DavidPastorVico #Filosofía #Psicología #AprendemosjuntosMex
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