In some of the recent work I’ve done recently a certain phrase features frequently: “the medical gaze.” By which I mean the way in which in the field of medicine we conceive of, think about, examine, and regard the subject of medical care. For those unfamiliar with the term it can strike us as variously abstract, overly philosophical, critical-theory-stuff, etc. It is, however, an incredibly helpful phrase to describe the way in which how we see things is shaped over time —is discipled, if you will. Even the simple act of me telling my son that “he papaya in our yard is “not ready to be picked because,” as I point to the hue of its skin, “it is not ripe yet” is helping to shape the way he perceives the world. Far from being a abstract philosophical concept, to speak of “the gaze” is to name one of the most modes of human formation.
Looking at things is not a neutral act.
The way we look at things matters just as much as, if not more than, the thing we are looking at. You can think of several anecdotal illustrations: the optical illusion (“is it a chalice or two people about to kiss?”); the Rorschach test (“what do you see in this inkblot?”); the fight between rivals (“he looked at me funny”); the offense between strangers on a bus (“hey, what are you lookin’ at?”).
The list goes on.
This is a huge piece of technical training in any job in which a certain way of seeing is necessary: x-rays, microscope slides, jewelers, chefs, sommeliers, surgeons, surfing, artists, film-makers, truck-drivers, farmers, etc., We notice that others see things differently than the way we see them in those moments where they see something we can’t: “If you look at this x-ray,” the doctor says with a mundane confidence, “you’ll clearly see the significant fracture points…” We nod like we see it too, shivering on the gurney, not wanting to be found ignorant. But we don’t. The doctor sees things differently than we do. He or she has learned how to see things in a particular way.
These differences in seeing draw large consequences in their wake— both good and bad.
I’m glad, for instance, that the jeweler sees the diamond in a particular way; glad the ultrasound tech sees the womb in a particular way, glad the pilot sees the technics of the cockpit in a particular way; etc. But I am not glad when our ways of seeing bring death: when the passages of scripture are seen only as out-of-context ammunition for the next sermon and not as a small piece of a integrous and living whole; when not all human life is seen as fully human, but only these humans who are like this; when the poor family’s struggle to pay does not factor into the gaze of the one who holds the mortgage and whose eyes are set on some other bottom line; when infirm humans are seen by a hospital less as individual patients and more as nodes in some Healthcare Interface Technology navigable by codes and abstract metrices.
The lesson here is that seeing is not merely technically disciplined, btu also morally and aesthetically disciplined. When I see something that makes me go “oh that is a desirable thing” that is an ethical estimation about that things goodness or badness that has been shaped —though not wholly begotten— by a process of formation. When we are discussing the appeal of colors of a dress the implications are not so ethically loaded. When we are discussing the appeal of something sinful or unjust, the stakes are higher.
Our response therefore to this condition must be to make sure we are seeing things rightly –to make sure that our ways of seeing are shaped by the one who made the eye.