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Borough of Manhattan Community College

OUR DEFAULT SETTINGS

A Discussion of Automatic Thinking versus Making Choices

Text: “This is Water” By David Foster Wallace

Questions, Writing Assignment, and Sample Paper by Andrew GottliebThe Writing Assignment is on page 13 of this handout.

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Write about the following question:What are the shortcomings and potential dangers of going through life without examining your assumptions and beliefs?

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“This is Water” By David Foster Wallace

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

If at this moment, you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude —but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

What is the meaning of the fish story? What is Wallace telling us about ourselves?

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A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our brains at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real —you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue —it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

Do you agree with Wallace’s assertion that “There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of?” How might this idea apply to you and the people you know?

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People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being “well adjusted,” which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphal academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default-setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. Paying attention to what's going on inside me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head.

According to Wallace, what is the most dangerous thing about a college education? Do you agree with him?

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: “Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of

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these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull-value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

Do you agree with Wallace that “ “Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think?” How much control do we have over how and what we think?

That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in, day out” really means. There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home —you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job — and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently

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lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: You have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the ADHD kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day-rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.

Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your check or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn't fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etcetera, etcetera.

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid god-damn people.

What, according to Wallace, is the source of people’s anger? Can you relate to what he says?

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Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default-setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks, and so on and so forth...

Look, if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do — except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: It's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am —it is actually I who am in his way. Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do, overall.

According to Wallace, we can change the way we feel about situations by counteracting the “automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world” and realizing that “there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations.” What do you think about this assertion?

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Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're “supposed to” think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line —maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible —it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important —if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars —compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship...

Wallace affirms that it is the way we look at things that determines how we react to them and that we have the power to make choices about the way we see things. Do you agree with him? Do you think you have the ability to choose the way you look at things and, as such, can alter the way you react to them?

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Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship —be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles —is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things —if they are where you tap real meaning in life —then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart —you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Wallace believes that what we worship has a lot to do with how we live our lives. Our beliefs have consequences. Can you think of examples that support this idea?

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Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

According to Wallace, what is dangerous is not so much what we worship but the fact that we worship without awareness. How could believing in something without reflecting on what you are believing in be dangerous? Cite examples from history.

And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.

How do people in positions of power and influence benefit from people operating on what Wallace refers to as their “default settings.” Give examples from history.

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The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

Wallace says that the freedom to “truly care about other people” is more important than the freedom to be the “center of all creation.” Why might this be true? Do you agree with the idea?

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I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

In Wallace’s closing thoughts he refers back to the fish story at the outset of his address when he affirms that capital-T Truth is about simple awareness and that we need “to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.” What is the metaphorical significance of the water in relation to the idea of staying conscious day in and day out?

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Writing Assignment:

Many of us go through life without examining our assumptions and beliefs. Discuss the shortcomings and potential dangers of living this way. Make reference to David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College Commencement Address “This is Water” along with whatever insights you have gained from your own experiences and observations. Also, explain the meaning of the title and the fish story.

The paper must be 4 double-spaced pages and satisfy all of the specifications and formatting requirements on the following pages of this handout to receive credit.******************************************************************************

Topic: The shortcomings and potential dangers of going through life without examining and questioning our assumptions and beliefs.

Thesis: Much of our thinking is automatic and, since the way we think influences the way we feel, so too are our emotions. Unless we are willing to challenge our assumptions and beliefs, we are likely to re-enact patterns of thought and behavior that defeat our chances for growth and contentment.

All arguments in the essay will be evaluated in part to the degree that they are thesis-centered, meaning that the instructor will grade papers in part on the basis of how well the arguments support the thesis statement. Other considerations will be coherence, organization, and general proficiency with the language which includes the ability to write grammatically correct sentences.

Essay Outline:

Introduction: Discussion of the idea of automatic thinking. Make reference to David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College Commencement Address “This is Water.”

Body:Summary and Interpretation of “This is Water.”

Conclusion:Reconsider the ideas raised in the introduction and add whatever insights you have gained from your discussion of Wallace’s speech.

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Key Lines:

1. THE FISH STORY:“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” If at this moment, you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude —but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense”(Wallace, 1).

2. CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE – OUR DEFAULT CENTING“A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our brains at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of ” (Wallace, 1).

3. LEARNING HOW TO THINK:“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: “Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth” (Wallace, 2).

4. ALL ABOUT ME:“I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way” (Wallace, 3).

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5. OPERATING ON AUTOMATIC“Look, if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do — except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations” (Wallace, 3).

6. YOU CAN CHOOSE TO SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY:a. “Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're

“supposed to” think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line” (Wallace, 4).

b. “…it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important —if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars —compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true…(Wallace, 4)

7. CAPITAL-T TRUE:The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship... ” (Wallace, 4).

8. THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT WE CHOOSE TO WORSHIP:a. “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There

is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship —be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles —is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things —if they are where you tap real meaning in life —then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you” (Wallace, 4).

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b. “Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing” (Wallace,4).

9. DEFAULT SETTINGS AND EXPLOITATION:“And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom” (Wallace, 4).

10. REAL FREEDOM:“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing” (Wallace, 5).

11. THE MEANING OF “THIS IS WATER” (A reference back to the FISH STORY at the beginning of the speach:“The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out” (Wallace, 5).

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Specifications

1. Each essay must be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Papers that are not stapled will not be accepted.

2. Each page of each essay must have typed page numbers in the upper right-hand corner. Papers without typed page numbers in the upper right hand corner will not be accepted.

3. Each essay must be typed. Essays that are not typed will not be accepted.

4. Font size must be 12.

5. Font style must be Times New Roman.

6. Each paragraph must be indented.

7. There must be no more than one double-space between paragraphs.

8. The name of the student, professor, course, and date must be flush left with a double-space between each. See example on the following page.

9. Each essay must be double-spaced.

10. For citations more than one sentences, use the following specifications. See example on page 9.

a. single-spaceb. font size 10c. left indent at 1 right indent at 5.5.

11. Quotation marks and the appropriate MLA citation for all quotes must be used. The absence of quotation marks where needed is PLAGIARISM. See example of internal punctuation on the following page. WARNING: Omission of quotation marks is grounds for an F for the paper and possibly for the final grade.

12. All sources used in the essay must be cited in a “Works Cited” page and be done according to MLA formats. See example on the page after the following page.

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FormatFirst Page This is an example of the top of the first page of a paper. Use double-spaces. The title must be a double-space below the date and centered. See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 4.3. Heading And Title. 116.

Internal Punctuation

Long QuotationsThis is an example of how to do a citation longer than one sentence.

ksfsdfsalsfdjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkks;dflkaks;fldskf;sdlllllllllllllllllwks;dlfk’safdksa;

Works Cited Page

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John Smith

Professor Abraham

English 201

May 7, 2009

Greek Tragedy

“In the very first year of our century Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams offered a famous and influential interpretation of Oedipus the King:

Oedipus Rex is what is known as a tragedy of destiny. Its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast between supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them. The lesson which, it is said, the deeply moved spectator should learn from the tragedy is submission to the divine will and realization of his own impotence. (Trans. James Strachey)

This passage is of course a landmark in the history of modern thought, and it is fascinating to observe that this idea, which, valid or not, has had enormous influence, stems from an attempt to answer a literary problem – why does the play have this overpowering effect on modern audiences?” (Knox, Bernard. Sophocles – The Three Theban Plays. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. Copyright by Bernhard Knox, 1982. 132. Print.)

When citing a source in the text do as follows: “Oedipus in the play is a free agent” (Fagles, 149).

When paraphrasing do as follows: Fagles maintains that Oedipus has free will (Fagles, 149).

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This is an example of the top of the first page of a works-cited list. Entries are in alphabetical order with second lines of each entry indented (hanging indentation).See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 131.

The Works Cited page must be on a separate page.

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. Edited by Edward Hubler.

A Signet Classic. Copyright by Edward Hubler, 1963. Print.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays – Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oeidipus at Colonus.

Translated By Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. Copyright by Robert Fagles, 1982, 1984. Print.

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Andrew Gottlieb SAMPLE PAPER for Wallace’s“This is Water”

English 101- (section number)

Professor Gottlieb

May 10, 2014

Going on DefaultA Discussion of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”

Introduction:

Many of us go through life without examining our assumptions and beliefs. We see

ourselves and others according to values which we have inherited, either consciously or

unconsciously from our parents, our peers, and our culture. The way we react to situations

depends on how we interpret them, and how we interpret them depends on our core beliefs.

A man who believes that his life is complete only if he is financially successful, married, and

with children may consider himself a failure if any one of these is lacking. His “needs” as he

understands them are relative to cultural norms and values. There may also be a mechanisms by

which we operate which predate the ones we assimilate from our environment. In either case,

whether we are talking about nature or nurture, much of our thinking is automatic and, since the

way we think influences the way we feel, so too are our emotions. Change the thinking and you

may change the emotion. In this respect, there is a possibility that we have more free will than

we may imagine. Our joy, sadness, anger, tranquility, courage, or fear result in part from how

we think. Therefore, learning to question our way of thinking is crucial to our wellbeing.

Unless we are willing to challenge our assumptions and beliefs, we are likely to re-enact patterns

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of thought and behavior that defeat our chances for growth and contentment. In his Kenyon

College Commencement Address, “This is Water,” David Foster Wallace refers to these patterns

as “default settings.”

Body: Summary and Interpretation of Wallace’s “This is Water”:

Wallace begins his speech by telling a story of two young fish who, after encountering an

older fish who inquires how the water is, wonder “What the hell is water?” (Wallace, 1). It is

apparent that the younger fish have taken for granted the very substance upon which their lives

depend. “In the day-to-day trenches of adult existence,” writes Wallace, “banal platitudes can

have life-or-death importance.” The danger, apparently is that we do not take the time to

evaluate them. The bottom line is that so many of us go through life like sleepwalkers, to borrow

Arthur Koestler’s idea, with little or no real awareness of the wellsprings of our thoughts and

feelings.

Underlying many of our convictions is the unconscious belief that we are “the absolute

center of the universe” (Wallace, 1). As far as Wallace is concerned, this belief is “our

default-setting, hard-wired into our brains at birth” (Wallace, 1). “Think about it,” he writes,

“There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of ” (Wallace, 1). In

the context of Wallace’s address, a default-setting denotes the habit of living without reflecting.

It seems, in Wallace’s view, that many of us are habituated to going through the motions

of living without really thinking about what we’re doing. The essence of a liberal-arts education

is “Learning how to think,” and what this really means, according to Wallace is “how to exercise

some control over how and what you think (and) being conscious and aware enough to choose

what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience”

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(Wallace, 2). As such, thinking means exercising a certain degree of free will and recognizing

that we in fact have the power to make informed choices.

Our ability to make such choices, Wallace points out, entail the capacity to change not

only our thoughts but the emotions they engender as well. The reason we get upset as we do

may often be the result of our default-settings. If we see ourselves, consciously or

unconsciously, as the center of the universe, we are more likely to get irritated than if we don’t.

If everything is “all about me,” it is difficult, if not impossible, to see or imagine the reasons for

other people’s behavior. It is our self-centered perspective that compels us to take things

personally.

Self-centeredness is, explains, Wallace, is our way of “operating on the automatic” but

we need not live this way. According to Wallace we can choose to think about situations

differently (Wallace, 3). If we step away from our me-oriented way of seeing others, we may be

less likely to get less upset about what they do. Our tolerance level, as such, is proportional to

the degree to which we see beyond the limits of our own needs and feelings. If we realize that

others are behaving as they do because of the problems they are facing, we may be less resentful

and more accepting of them.

Wallace continues his discussion by affirming that the “only thing that's capital-T True”

is that we have the option to choose how we see things. “You get to decide,” he writes, “what to

worship…” and goes on to say that “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody

worships. The only choice we get is what to worship” (Wallace, 4). It’s what we choose to

worship that determines how we live our lives and how we feel which is why, explains Wallace

that you’re better off worshiping some form of divinity than money, body, beauty, or sex.

Believing in material things, he affirms, will “eat you alive” (Wallace). Materialistic thinking is

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a trap. If you worship money, you never have enough. If you worship your body, beauty, or sex,

you attach yourself to things that ultimately elude you. But the most insidious thing is not what

we worship, says Wallace, but the fact that we worship unconsciously. Without realizing it,

we accept, affirm, and live by values we have never bothered to examine. These become our

default-settings. As such, we may tend to think and act less like human beings than machines.

Computer and televisions have default-settings. So, apparently, do we.

This kind of mechanical thinking is dangerous because it makes it easy for people in

positions of power and influence to exploit us. It is the worship of self and the craving and fear

that it engenders that provide a means of manipulation. Advertising depends on our desires and

our desires are derived in large part from what we value. The marketplace thus relies on

maintaining a materialistic state of mind on the part of its consumers. This is the default-setting

of the “rat race” — “the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing”

(Wallace, 5).

In affirming this, Wallace is not a pessimist. He believes that we have the freedom to

change our way of thinking. The “real freedom,” he maintains, is the ability to “truly to care

about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways,

every day” (Wallace, 5).

Wallace concludes his address by referring back to the fish story, the one in which the

young fish have no idea what the older fish is talking about when he refers to the water. The

water is a metaphor for “what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us”

(Wallace, 5). The fish are those of us who, like the cave dwellers in Plato’s Allegory of the

Cave, choose to remain shackled in the dark.

Conclusion:

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Underlying Wallace’s discussion of default-settings is his belief in the power of thinking

outside the box. We need not be prisoners of our illusions. We have the ability to make choices,

to challenge our beliefs and the beliefs of those around us. We need not think mechanistically

or materialistically. The conventional wisdom of our culture need not be a trap. We have the

power to liberate ourselves from the often self-defeating mind-set we may have adopted.

The path to enlightenment is a struggle. It can be painful and it is never complete. Changing our

default-settings is uncomfortable. Challenging the assumptions and beliefs we have valued all

our lives can be unsettling. The process of liberation, though painful in the interim, is likely to

bring us joy in the long run. Going on default is the path of least resistance and, though it may

feel safe, offers little room for growth. The greatest joy and the greatest good come not from

playing it safe but from taking chances. Consciousness, the ability and the willingness to see

beyond the norm, entails risks, but the rewards outweigh the losses.

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Works Cited

Wallace, David Foster. “This is Water.” A cleaned-up version of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College Commencement Address on May 21, 2005.

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Your name

Course number and section

Name of your professor

Date of completion

Title

Introduction: Discussion of the idea of automatic thinking. Make reference to David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water.”

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Body: Summary and Interpretation “This is Water”

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Conclusion:Reconsider the ideas raised in the introduction and add whatever insights you have gained from your discussion of Wallace’s speech.

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Works Cited