Caring curiosity/Outward inward lookingness: The focus is on the external world, where one is driven by a purpose beyond oneself, with a strong concern for the other that becomes the foundation for caring for one’s own self. It is a perspective whose thoughts and focus look outward, away from our inner selves. It is a curious gaze that seeks the good life in an experimental way. It is outward, looking in the sense that individual problems are situated outside the individual with sociological awareness. Above all, it is a politicizing gaze where the focus is directed toward the political and situated within the struggle of citizens rather than the private struggle. Looking outward is about seeking out the greatest challenge one can currently take on as part of an adventure. This is a way of understanding love as a focus outside of ourselves.
Introspection is part of life, for example, experiencing our thoughts, feelings, and inner world. Looking outward serves as a counterbalance to an excessive inward focus on monitoring one’s thoughts, which can easily become a solipsistic and isolating activity that disconnects us from the social world. Looking outward allows us to open ourselves up to being moved by the world, which Rosa captures with the concept of resonance (Rosa, 2019). Balance is the goal: that we look both inward and outward, and that these perspectives inform one another. A phenomenologically aware insight in which we “bracket” (Husserl) ourselves and go with our experiences, not dismissing them, our embodied cognition. The outward gaze should also become something through which we can reflect on ourselves, for example through literature, enabling us to learn about ourselves through others. This Outward inward lookingness becomes a way to strengthen a curious dialogue with the outside world, rather than an isolating and controlling inner monologue. This outward perspective is linked to existential sociology, where the search for, or the will to, meaning is a key starting point. A purpose beyond the individual is what makes one more whole (Frankl, 2006). Here, there is a balance based on Camus’s insight that many people compulsively seek meaning in life. Outward inward lookingness is strongly linked to curiosity in the spirit of Foucault, who draws an etymological connection between the words “curiosity” and “care” (in McCall, 2011). I wish to highlight this by calling it, specifically, “caring curiosity.” Foucault views curiosity as a foundation for self, transformation and for an ethics of care, a care for the self that differs from the care for the self that prevails in the individualized neoliberal order of late modernity (McCall, 201 1).
Imbalances
Below are various imbalances in this dimension.
Non caring gaze
A narcissistic perspective is one focused on the self, a gaze into the mirror. This is supported by cultural narcissism and a focus on profility as an identity technology, in which one attempts to establish various profiles (Lasch, 2018). Care begins and ends with the self, and the surrounding world becomes a means to the self. Happiness is sought for oneself. The narcissistic gaze inflates one’s own pleasure, which can fade in the face of others’ suffering, suffering that one may even be the one inflicting. The pleasure of one’s own self makes it difficult to see what effects one has on other people. Here, there is neither care nor curiosity in the outward gaze; it is a gaze of harshness and indifference. This gaze may be characterized by a blasé attitude (Simmel, 1971) as a means of protecting oneself from overstimulation. One looks out at the world with cynicism and detachment. This is a distancing from both one’s own self and the outside world; one observes the world from nowhere.
The Indifferent, Non, Curious Gaze
The reifying gaze is the process by which social relations, human actions, or ideas appear as objective, impersonal, and self, evident things, rather than products of human creation. This gaze takes everything for granted and regards everything as established facts. It is a gaze shaped by the status quo. Opportunities for change have disappeared. Attempts at change by others are dismissed as utopian and unrealistic. Closely related to the reifying gaze is the fetishizing gaze, an imbalance that leads us to view tools and artifacts as things beyond human control, a reification of what humans have created.
“Artifacts are invented by humans, but then we let them take control over us. We delegate the destiny of world society and the biosphere to these things and ideas of ours…. Our tools become our masters.” (Hornborg, 2019, 5).
Careless curiosity
This imbalance involves intense observation and gazing. One form of it is hyper, attention rather than deep contemplation (Han, 2015). It is a gaze that has lost its connection to the inner self. Gadamer describes curiosity as a form of “gaping,” in which one stares fixedly at the outside world without seeing oneself in it as an actor (McCall, 2011). This gaze is when one observes something happening without seeing oneself within the whole; it is a form of “bad faith,” in Sartre’s words. This theme of intense observation and an inability to tear one’s gaze away has, for example, been described by the Norwegian sociologist Mathiesen as a “viewer society” (1997). Another important form of non, caring curiosity is the spectacularized or simulated gaze. Guy Debord argued that the spectacle is the medium that conceals the social power relations, exploitation, and domination inherent in capitalism. The spectacle causes us to watch television alone in our private sphere, separated from others, rather than encountering one another in reality. Debord argues that this is what technologies generally create today:
The prevailing economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender “lonely crowds.”
The pornographic/voyeuristic gaze
The pornographic/voyeuristic gaze is another form of thoughtless curiosity. “Voyeurized” refers to a culture of watching and observing, in which people continuously watch and are watched. According to Barber (2007, p. 190), this act of watching has become a dominant phenomenon in our everyday lives. Lyon links this to the “culture of surveillance,” in which technological advances have normalized surveillance and made it part of our social culture (2001, Lewis, 2018). Celebrity fixation is another expression of the voyeuristic gaze, which intensely observes certain individuals and can create strong emotional engagement, elevating their private dramas to events of significance for one’s own life and that of society.
Another form of thoughtless curiosity is the scrutinizing gaze directed at one’s own behavior. It is a critical and harsh gaze. It monitors the self so closely that it leads to a reluctance to make mistakes in social contexts, which in turn leads to shyness. Some people who are considered shy are not so because they are actually shy, but rather because they are unsure about the cultural and symbolic capital required by a particular context. The person may also have a reluctance to learn that specific cultural capital because they do not agree with the values and worldview that come with it.
Telescopic philanthropy/altruism (Dickens)
focusing solely on altruism that is far away or at a distance, in the abstract sense of humanity or a specific group from which you are spatially and socially distant, while simultaneously neglecting similar or identical problems closer to home. This can also be an imbalance linked to time, in that future generations dominate the well, being of those living today.
Myopic/overly localized philanthropy
focuses solely on caring for those closest to you, a limited and often group, specific form of altruism.