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Philosophy |Reading Time: 14minutes. This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) David Foster Wallace ‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College is a timeless trove of wisdom — right up there with Hunter Thompson on finding your purpose. The speech was made into a thin book titled This Is ...
Jun 5, 2016 · Below is a summary of and commentary on David Foster Wallace ‘s (1962 – 2008) famous commencement speech: “ This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. ” Its themes include solipsism, loneliness, monotony, education, and the importance of sympathy and conscious awareness.
- “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square.
- “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.
- “I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.” ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.
- “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.
Sep 20, 2008 · 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 infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” ~ David Foster Wallace […]
- David Foster Wallace on The Human Predicament
- Breaking The Cycle: Freedom, Worship, and Care
- The Revolution of Tenderness
Wallace begins with a story about two young fish swimming along. They meet an older fish, who greets them: “Morning boys. How’s the water?” The young fish swim on, and eventually one turns to the other and asks, “What the hell is water?” Wallace quickly reassures his audience that he is not the ‘wise old fish’ counselling the younger fish. Consiste...
In the course of his speech, Wallace recasts the whole enterprise of the liberal arts education. “Learning how to think,” he clarifies, “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. . . . Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choi...
Wallace comes so close to grasping what ails us, but misses entirely what heals us. The exercise of care for others that Wallace describes is indicative and preservative of our freedom from the bondage of our own self-centeredness, but it isn’t quite clear from his speech why that should be. Why is the freedom “truly to care for others” the “most p...
It is about making it to thirty, or maybe fifty, 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."
Jan 28, 2007 · Lane A. Dean, Jr., and his girlfriend, both in bluejeans and button-up shirts. They sat up on the table’s top portion and had their shoes on the bench part that people sat on to picnic or ...
