Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Much of our social life, our ways of making and sharing a world, orbits the face. Emmanuel Levinas, the supreme theorist of facial affairs, described our fleshy ovals as the site where ethics—his “first philosophy”—begins. This rings true when it comes to everyday behavior. The phenomenon may be hardwired: babies prefer faces to other complex objects. And, for the rest of our lives, faces seem charged by something that arms or legs, however attractive, don’t have. When you talk to me, I look at your eyes, regardless of whether you’re waving your hands. If the gaze is held too long, one of us has to look away. If I can’t see your face—say, you turn aside, or you’ve called me on the phone—I can get by, can make the conversation work, but I might feel that our connection is lacking. The face’s centrality to social life is inscribed in our language, in the metaphors that betray our world view. In English, we face up to things, or face them down; we show our faces where required; we try to save face, and should that fail we make an about-face to save ourselves…

Social media needs the face because it burns attention for fuel, and the face is where I go when I look for you. But I can’t look to these platforms. I find it all so unsatisfying: the resculpted faces, the curated lives, the naked grabbing of my gaze. Something uncertain, something human, has been drained like blood from this world. There’s evidence that Botoxed people become worse at reading other people’s emotions, because when you engage with others you simulate their expressions in your own facial musculature. It’s as if we were commodifying the face, putting it under glass, turning it into a transactional token rather than a pliable living thing.’ (from the New Yorker)