David Foster Wallace nonfiction story “This is Water”published in 2009, starts out by explaining how everyone has a “Default setting” and then giving us an inside look of a scenario from a random person’s perspective and opinion on how they should or would see the world and others. The main theme of this story is developing your default setting and making decisions that would impact others and yourself, to show that you don’t have to be stuck in the default setting, that you have the power to make a choice in life. Wallace shows his understanding of consciousness and how you can construct and develop meaning from experiences which shows how the theme “Awareness” can develop a cause and effect on his and other people’s life.
“This is Water ” was a commencement speech but was published by Little, Brown and Company in 2009 and shows the theme of awareness. The story gives us a scenario where the average person works an 9-5, comes home tired and hungry, but then comes to a realization that they have no food in their fridge. So, they head to the supermarket and start to over analyze everything around them, whether it’s the people’s facial expressions, their body language, or even the way they act, they start to notice everything. Wallace explains that in order to break out of your “Default setting” shell and start consciously being aware, you need to first get an education to start understanding yourself and others. He says this because he believes that someone with a “Default setting” is going to find this task a tid bit difficult and frustrating , due to the fact that it takes mental effort to be consciously aware of how you view the world and the types of lessons you learn and experience along the way.
In “This is Water” Wallace shows the audience that you have a choice to consciously be aware and open minded because at the end of the day it’s up to you whether or not you consider the possibilities of opening your eyes, upgrading your default setting and actually seeing reality for what it really is. He states that “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”(Wallace 6). Basically stating that you have a choice if you want to be the type of person to be self aware or the type of person to rather have “your head stuck in the gutters”.
Another theme that is shown in Wallace “ This is Water” is conscious vs unconscious. The reason that I’m stating these terms is because Wallace talks about how you’re able to experience more in life if you’re consciously aware but if you stay unconscious it makes it a bit harder to mentally and physically move on from the default setting. Wallace states “But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk 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 7 and 8). The reasoning behind this is that Wallace is telling you that you have a choice to make these decisions, you just have to try and put in the effort whether you want it or not. We all have a choice to make, it all depends on whether we want to make that choice or not.
I think that David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction story “This is Water” demonstrates the importance of being able to paint a bigger picture in a way where you can be conscious and be aware of other people and yourself. I believe that breaking your shell and moving on from the default setting is considered a benefit. When you start opening your eyes and start seeing what reality really is you start to develop a mindset where you tend to be aware of everyone and everything. You start to see everything differently and begin to develop some type of critical thinking which can create ways for you to develop an opinion on a topic or a person. These ideas can affect your perspective in all types of ways because if you pay attention and listen to what other people have to say, then you start developing ideas from different sources and start coming up with your own ideas that can benefit you later on in life. These ideas are relatable to our course of “ self and other” because Wallace shows us what it really means to be involved by portraying scenario where we have a choice to be.
In “This is Water” by Wallace, he comes up with ideas and scenarios that give us a better understanding of the “Default setting”. He tells us that he’s not forcing us to move on from the default setting, he’s just encouraging us to find other options and possibilities where we can develop. He believes that being self aware can help see us paint a bigger picture and be consciously aware of what’s happening around us. Also how other people and yourself are affected due to the decisions we are making in life. We need to stop staying in the dark and come out to light, where we can grow as a person and develop in this world we call “reality”.
