Don Robert's Almanack

On thinking via David Foster Wallace's Kenyon College address "This is Water."  The introduction to this piece takes me back to Marshall McLuhan's remark in the sixties to the affect "that if you want to know something about water don't ask a fish."   His point was,  of course,  that the poor humanoid is so surrounded by thought and media blitzes that it may be futile to expect him or her to know anything about them … drowning in them as we are.

So it is somewhat pretentious to imagine being shown how to think better,  unless you are someone with the nerve to try,  and a good example of that person would be David Foster Wallace.  His primary focus is what he calls our "default setting,"  which indeed turns out to be very useful.  Taken,  I guess, from  computer language, but also other connexions (see Google),  his take on this is that we are  hardwired from birth with settings which then have to be changed to make sense of a radically changing world.  Most of us will simply overlay beliefs and knowledge over this hard-wiring,  and perhaps make superficial changes from time to time to make things function for us. 

Here is a quote for a start:  "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 think about this sort of natural,  basic self-centerdness, because it's so socially repulsive,  but it's pretty much the same for all of us,  deep down."  -  "It is out default setting,  hardwired into our boards at birth."   -  "Think about it:  There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of."   Now,  let us say that at one critical point one is baptized,  then confirmed after some study and potential brain washing.  There will be some potential change to the basic hard-wiring,  and one may shift the center of existence to a Judeo/Christian God and his right hand person/Son",   Jesus.  A setting has occurred,  one's thought patterns may have changed radically … but the basic hard-wiring may still underlie those changes.

Now to go back to Wallace again, which is described after he describes how the  adjustments in one's natural default setting are often "described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term."   Then Wallace goes through the various types of personal power (wealth,  belief/worship, intellect,  body and beauty, etc.) and cautions that these are unconscious default settings, and thus dangerous to any deeper work in "real world"  default setting.  

My hope is that this brief synopsis will encourage you to pursue this with Wallace,  through the little classic book which was produced from the notes used to deliver the commencement address at Kenyon College.  In the words on the jacket cover, Wallace helps us with these questions:  "How do we keep from going through adult life unconsciously, comfortably entrenched in habit?"  and "How do we remove ourselves from the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion."  And as Wallace concludes with this sentence,  I join him is saying:  "I wish you way more than luck."