Navel Gazing
Navel gazing is our tendency to prefer to retreat into ourself, to take comfort in our own subjectivity, and to be disinterested in objectivity, being part of something greater than ourself, and searching for some meaning and purpose. To be self interested, self focused, and self centered is to navel gaze. When we navel gaze we do not care about objectivity and otherness, we do not try to universalize or strive to understand, and we are not concerned with our own unavailability.
There are a few versions of navel gazing. We could be selfish or self interested, caring for ourself and our own loved ones or possessions above all else. For instance, we might be in fight or flight mode where we have our own self to defend and assert. Take the example of being addicted to and absorbed by how many signs of approval are granted on social media. We might take a victimhood positioning. For instance, we might be suffering from pain and when someone challenges the merit of our excuse, even and most commonly when we challenge our own self, we pile on the excuses to demonstrate our unique position of disadvantage. We may decide we are the main character in our own story, and therefore all else fades to the background. For instance, when someone else is receiving attention and we are envious, we might “one up” the stakes of our own narrative to satiate the appetite for doting, adoring, or validating.
But most importantly, navel gazing is to indulge this self centered focus, finding some warped pleasure in our own interest and attention towards our own empirical self. When self interest becomes navel gazing is when we lean into the desires of the empirical self and refer to these desires as needs. In the story of Narcissus, the authors fail to address whether Narcissus recognizes his own reflection for what it is. But what he understands of reflections is insignificant when his reflection gazing is understood as navel gazing: he has finally found a way to admire himself the way others have admired him all of his life. The outside world melts away, there is no other, and he dies by taking this self indulgence to the ultimate extreme.
Self reflection can be a healthy habit to understanding ourself as an example of humanity; working on ideas; self improvement; articulating our wants, desires, purpose, and meaning. But self reflection for the sake of retreating into our own little being is a rejection of philosophical thinking to embrace subjectivity.