The Look

The Look is a central concept produced by Jean-Paul Satre’s Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, which in one of its chapters identifies and explores the experience of being seen.

Sartre makes the point that as individuals we understand the world to be filled with objects.

These objects are seen by oneself (the subject) who assigns values and fixed attributes.

But when someone else gazes into you, one can become self-aware and realize that they are being seen as an object.

Whatever ideas and beliefs we had about ourselves originally or whatever built up ego we hid behind are now dissolved in that moment through our objectification.

Sartre explains that being the object of someone's gaze is a sort of confinement or imprisonment to the fixed beliefs or ideas that someone else holds about you.

This realization can create the collapse of self and creates the feeling referred to by Satre as shame when it is a negative inference about ourselves.

Shame in this sense, can be described as a sort of discomfort, anxiety or fear.

The extent to which we feel this shame is determined on the level in which we feel objectified and judged by our observer.

If we believe that we are objectified in a positive sense, we may experience this as pride.

Whatever the case may be, I believe both to be a form of delusion we experience yet recognized by others.

It's important to understand that this feeling is a phenomenon that occurs completely and only in our subjective experience yet can be expressed through our actions and seen by our observer.

In essence, it's in our own heads but people can tell.

How do we avoid being the object of someone's gaze? Or better yet how do we overcome the feeling of objectification within ourselves.

Through the recognition that we all have our own subjective internalized experience which has value in of itself and that the heaven and hell we live in is the one we create.

In Satre’s play No Exit, he writes “Hell is other people!”

I disagree.

Whether we feel shame, pride or unrecognized by what may seem like others, in reality it is ourselves that creates the delusion we live in, not others.

Often we are preoccupied by the attention and judgment of people we admire or despise. This preoccupation only serves to feed or deprive the ego of its own self-worth. A never ending battle and torment.

There are those who attempt to resist, deny or attack this feeling of shame or uphold the feeling of pride through inauthentic acts of virtue, status and self righteousness.

Each internally and externally only causing further delusion, harm, shame, narcissism and the sinking feeling of meaninglessness.

Instead of coming to the assumption that the look or gaze of someone else is an act of judgment or objectification, see it as the recognition and connection of two different worlds and perspectives coming together in a shared experience.

Instead of coming to the assumption that the look or gaze of someone else is an act of judgment or objectification, see it as the recognition and connection of two different worlds and perspectives.

In reality, our worth is predisposed through our being and the meaning we strive to find is created through our actions in service to a greater good. That greater good is other people.

We must act from a place of authenticity and to be a servant not to ourselves.

The best cure for the delusional shame or pride is one of transcendence through self-understanding, higher purpose and meaning through connection to the world.