David Pastor Vico is the author of Ethics for the suspicious Y Philosophy for the suspicious, trained in Philosophy at the University of Seville and specialized in Communication Ethics. The writer speaks with life and style exclusively about his work as a writer and the relevance of integrating philosophy and ethics into our daily criteria, in addition to his books that are having great acceptance among Mexican readers.
Life and Style. Based on current events, could we think that ethics is outdated or is “mutating”?
David Pastor Vico. Ethics, by definition, is nothing more than the way in which human animals are related, other animals are related in an ethological way (ethology is the science that studies the behavior of other animals). Therefore, ethics is unique, immutable, unjudgeable and horizontal, there is no good or bad ethics, nor are there unethical or very ethical people, this is nothing more than a misuse of the concept due to ignorance, just like those who use the word “quantum” to see more cool and they invent stupid things like the coaching quantum angelic ontology… they deserve a stick in the back, don’t you think?
Quite possibly, we are experiencing significant changes in our morale, but when not?
However, it is morality, or morals, the cultural construction that structures and rules, according to each historical moment, the tradition of each people, or even its geographical location, ethics, that is; the mode of relationship of each people, culture or human civilization. Thus, far from being universal and immovable, morals change, mutate, engulf or impose one on another, expire, revalue and reinvent themselves and yes, they are vertical: they are imposed.
So it is very accurate to think that, quite possibly, we are experiencing significant changes in our morale, but when not? Perhaps, what really happens to us is that we have little memory, because these changes in the rules of behavior, in how to live our ethics, are a constant in the development of civilization. What is also very likely is that it is happening more quickly now, and the haste allows us to observe the changes after a few years, when decades and even centuries were required before.
L&S. With the world that we are facing, the common place is to see it with philosophy. Is it a clear way out?
VPD. Indeed, “seeing or doing things with philosophy” is a common place in colloquial language, such as “give it that it is mole de pot” or “there is no chili that fits you”. But far from the rapid use of the sentence, which simply invites you to take things easy, philosophy is the most powerful tool we have invented to understand and face reality. The big problem is the lousy self-marketing campaign that philosophy has waged over the last half century. Unmotivated and poorly paid high school teachers who, in many cases, taught the subject as historians or who knows what, giving the appearance of an easy ship, boring and impractical, almost filler in educational programs. To this we must add some increasingly obscure and cryptic philosophers who did not want to transcend the walls of university inbreeding, much less make their texts accessible to the general public so as not to get off their solitary pedestal, or for fear that they would discover that the emperor was naked. And then the opportunists came to occupy the place that philosophy had clumsily left empty. How are we going to take things philosophically, or how can philosophy help us to face and understand the world if where the books of true thinkers should be, are those of self-help, or worse still, those of esotericism?
The big problem is the lousy self-marketing campaign that philosophy has carried out in the last half century
And yes, although people have a hard time accepting them, for all that has already been said, the philosophy provides clear and distinct solutions, solutions and tools. You just have to lose your fear and approach the books of José Carlos Ruiz, Edu Infante or, if you will allow me, mine, to discover that philosophy is not boring when we philosophers feel like it, and it is resoundingly useful.
L&S. Among so many speeches that exist between leaders, social networks and street discussion, how to orient a compass to be safe?
VPD. With great pain we have rediscovered that it has been except that we have never been and will never be, and it is very important to internalize and understand it and, in addition, transmit it to the next generations. Something that our grandparents did with our parents, but many of these parents forgot to remind their children and so in a few decades we have become a mistrustful, narcissistic and frivolous mass, absolutely oblivious to the reality of the world in which we have had to live and the contingent nature of things. Because knowing that we are easily vulnerable forces us to strengthen ties with each other to protect ourselves, to trust that each one will assume responsibility for him in the game of life. Because here the one who goes off on his own becomes a zombie, like in bad B movies. Knowing that we are invulnerable makes us lose ground, believe that we are infallible and, like good idiots, we demand that our opinion, to which we give an almost sacred value for being ours, be taken as immovable truth.
I anticipate that we are going to have to reorient the compass among all
Now, in the throes of a pandemic that can still turn around and look us in the eye with hate and At the dawn of a war conflict that can lead us all between the legs, it is time to rethink the world. And if having been the way we are has led us to this situation, we will have to reinvent ourselves and see how we got out of similar moments in the past and see if it applies now or not. How? There are the history and philosophy books, but I’ll tell you in advance that we’re going to have to reorient the compass among all of us, and not each of us have one and look for how to save our own ass, that’s precisely what has led us to be where we are today .