The Book of Gaze

The watcher believes they hold the truth; the watched believes they are the truth.

Yet truth is never stable.

The mind blends memory, knowledge, and expectation into everything it sees. Truth, then, is a mental construct — sometimes as convincing as illusion. In Foucault’s Panopticon, individuals regulate their behavior out of fear that they may be watched.

Discipline operates not only through surveillance, but through the anxiety of visibility.

Quantum physics echoes this: to observe is to interfere.

In Anatolia, this force already has a name: nazar.

A gaze filled with love, envy, or quiet comparison — its source uncertain. More than belief, nazar is not just a cultural notion — it is a disciplinary mechanism, deeply embedded in daily life.

Whether it's a newborn, a wedding, or a new car — to be too visible is to be vulnerable. And so a sacrifice is made — because goodness must never arrive without a cost.

Cultural codes, the brain’s instinct to interpret, and science’s insistence that observation alters realityall meet at one shared conclusion: The gaze does not watch — it governs.