[This word, from the Greek for navel-gazing, is sometimes used in a pejorative sense to mean excessive focus on oneself or self-indulgent introspection. The second example given is an instance of this sense of the word.]
The point [of Paul Goodman’s philosophy], as near as I can make it out, is to achieve a kind of perpetual omphaloskepsis, repeatedly examining yourself and your motives and connections with the world around, and thus achieving health, or at least avoiding neurosis, by putting forth, as much and continuously as possible, the authentic self. (Talk about the examined life!). (Kirkpatrick Sale, Crazy Hope and Finite Experience: Final Essays of Paul Goodman [book reviews], Nation, 4/10/1995.)
The alternative [to the relative lack of horror in America to the recent terrorist attacks in the U.K.] is that a dedicated group of [Islamic] killers will react to the blasé omphaloskepsis of the West by doing something so horrible that we will be shocked out of our torpor. (Jonah Goldberg, “After the London Attacks,” The New York Times, 6/6/2017.)
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