What do the words 'look', 'understand' and 'person' mean?
Isn't it a sign of pride to look at the people in front of me as if they weren't people? Yes, of course yes. But how can we expect others to understand? Understand, observe, look. Does wanting to understand others not require this proud attitude? Knowing what it is to be a person, I need you to understand me, but if it were a person I would already know him.
So, before we understand others as non-people, shouldn't we consider myself as a person? To say what others are, to express them, I have to know my identity. They, we, I… Who are they? Who are we? Who am I? Am I the person who understands people as if they were non-people? So, me in front of them and them in front of me? And what about us and ours? What does it mean to be “us”? What defines us? Otherness or equality, that is, that we people are against them, against people, or that we are all people. In the latter case, what would it matter if all of us were people or non-people, would not do the same, would not be the same? Isn't that the important thing, that we're all the same, that no one is different?
The problem, on the other hand, does not have us (who are we?) I left them quiet. People and not people, what's the difference? Isn't it the same to say that we're all people to say we're non-people? No, it is not. We, the people, are not them, we are not people. I, person, I'm not him, I'm not person. We, not people, are not them, we are not people. I'm not a person, I'm not a person. What is this mess? How many of me, how many of us, how many of them… I will put the question again, who are we? Who is that “I”? If we are people, and I am also within that, I know what I am, that is, “person,” “prosopon,” actor, mask holder, a fixed identity, a secure identity. On the contrary, what does it mean to be non-person? I don't know ... I am a person… Attention! Not so soon, am I really a person? Many times it is the only certainty I have and I always fear that my mask will break, that my personality, my fragile self, will not be called into question. Apparently, I'm not what I thought, I'm not a person, not a person, because I'm not my personality for longer, I'm my fears, my doubts, my wounds and my cracks.
Are you sure you're a person? The next time you go out into the street, where will you look around you, how will you understand it? What does this word mean, understand it, maybe it's synonymous with looking?
And the one I'm a part of, that group of people I'm a part of, what's going to be about them? I am no longer part of them, now we have become ourselves. Are they, then, what they, me and ours were before? Beware, we go fast, maybe because we see that our identity is threatened... They, from the beginning, were not people, but I, person. We have just recognized, or I already have, I don’t know… My personality, my personality, that person, that is, I’ve always been non-person, we’ve always been us, I’ve always been part of them. Have we turned the problem around? Is it possible that we know who we are? We are not people, they, people. However, this leaves us in a situation of departure, against them, not against people, the sense of the struggle does not matter. In any case, when people were looking at us proudly, when they were trying to understand, to inquire about them, what were they looking for in us? Wouldn't you be looking for your identity? Trying to understand their personality?
To finish, to end this mess and to stop once and for all those coming and going, the writer, from his pride, wants to tell him, dear reader: behind all those questions and among those absurdities, there is a real reflection (trust me and us)... If you've read it all, ask yourself why you've done it. Why have you tried to understand my jokes and see these lines? Are you sure you're a person? The next time you go out into the street, where will you look around you, how will you understand it? What does this word mean, understand it, maybe it's synonymous with looking? How do you look at it, how do you understand it? Reading isn't looking, isn't it trying to understand you? And writing, isn't it asking and investigating my doubts and wounds, of you, of us and of them? So, I want to apologize, dear reader, because all of this has been a self-research job of a person who believed that he was a person.
Andoni Tamayo Arrizabalaga, philosopher
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