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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

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 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 and personally unfair this is. [...] If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic 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 centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities. The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. DFW, 2005

germinalphrase 4y ago
For anyone searching, this is from his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. It’s also been reprinted with the title “This is Water”.
- pugworthy 4y ago
  And if you're searching for who DFW is, it's David Foster Wallace.
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    - trwhite 4y ago
      Where is the downvote button?
      - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
        Why so much flak? Whenever I have considered suicide (I will never do it, just considering the options) one of my first concerns was to not create additional pain to the ones I love or witnesses. Leaving your blue headed corpse hanging for your wife to see sounds like an asshole move to me.
  - wawjgreen 4y ago
    didn't DFW kill himself because he was suffering from mental illness?
bigDinosaur 4y ago
I always disliked this 'insight' because what he was describing were features of life that we choose to make terrible: commutes and draining office work due to excessive work days as two examples. Working remotely and being able to take more breaks has dramatically reduced my fatigue, for example, and obviously has eliminated my commute and has been a major improvement to not having a 'dead-eyed' look by 5pm ever work day. He makes the assumption that my selfishness, if applied generally, would be bad for everyone, but I disagree: if I eliminated (or dramatically reduced) everyone's commute tomorrow, I think far more people would be happier than not, even though it stems from my own 'selfish' preference.
- etherael 4y ago
  I think the biggest problem with the observation is that it equates "the world" with "my world" and does not allow distinction between the two. We each individually, are the center of "my world" and expect "my world" to be organised around my wants, needs, desires and standards. And expectations like that allow us to do things like individually decide to forego commuting in favour of alternative options that vastly increase our individual quality of life, and simultaneously trickle that benefit down into being a more acceptable general option across "the world" in kind, which exactly as you say is hard to describe as any other way than a net benefit to the entire species. But if we believe and behave that way without understanding the distinction between "my world" and "the world" that is indeed a problem, and we have a word for this old problem that is fairly used as a constant criticism of this increasingly prevalent modern affliction; Solipsism. While it's hard to argue that solipsism is not a massive problem with the world today and something that is in dire need of being addressed, it's kind of a neat trick if you can convince people that merely optimising their own personal experience of the world by focusing on that experience and acting on their wants with personal autonomy is that exact kind of solipsism, and they should instead constantly defer to everybody else. If one person could do that for the entirety of the rest of humanity, they'd effectively be a permanent ruler by being the only agent in play with actual personal autonomy. Not that this kind of thing happens, or anything, mind you.
- satori99 4y ago
  My takeaway from this passage is the simple reminder that we don't have to always assume the worst about people -- and if we consciously choose not to, then even mundane experiences can become generally more pleasant for yourself.

germinalphrase 4y ago

For anyone searching, this is from his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. It’s also been reprinted with the title “This is Water”.

pugworthy 4y ago
And if you're searching for who DFW is, it's David Foster Wallace.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  - trwhite 4y ago
    Where is the downvote button?
    - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
      Why so much flak? Whenever I have considered suicide (I will never do it, just considering the options) one of my first concerns was to not create additional pain to the ones I love or witnesses. Leaving your blue headed corpse hanging for your wife to see sounds like an asshole move to me.
- wawjgreen 4y ago
  didn't DFW kill himself because he was suffering from mental illness?

bigDinosaur 4y ago

I always disliked this 'insight' because what he was describing were features of life that we choose to make terrible: commutes and draining office work due to excessive work days as two examples. Working remotely and being able to take more breaks has dramatically reduced my fatigue, for example, and obviously has eliminated my commute and has been a major improvement to not having a 'dead-eyed' look by 5pm ever work day. He makes the assumption that my selfishness, if applied generally, would be bad for everyone, but I disagree: if I eliminated (or dramatically reduced) everyone's commute tomorrow, I think far more people would be happier than not, even though it stems from my own 'selfish' preference.

etherael 4y ago
I think the biggest problem with the observation is that it equates "the world" with "my world" and does not allow distinction between the two. We each individually, are the center of "my world" and expect "my world" to be organised around my wants, needs, desires and standards. And expectations like that allow us to do things like individually decide to forego commuting in favour of alternative options that vastly increase our individual quality of life, and simultaneously trickle that benefit down into being a more acceptable general option across "the world" in kind, which exactly as you say is hard to describe as any other way than a net benefit to the entire species. But if we believe and behave that way without understanding the distinction between "my world" and "the world" that is indeed a problem, and we have a word for this old problem that is fairly used as a constant criticism of this increasingly prevalent modern affliction; Solipsism. While it's hard to argue that solipsism is not a massive problem with the world today and something that is in dire need of being addressed, it's kind of a neat trick if you can convince people that merely optimising their own personal experience of the world by focusing on that experience and acting on their wants with personal autonomy is that exact kind of solipsism, and they should instead constantly defer to everybody else. If one person could do that for the entirety of the rest of humanity, they'd effectively be a permanent ruler by being the only agent in play with actual personal autonomy. Not that this kind of thing happens, or anything, mind you.
satori99 4y ago
My takeaway from this passage is the simple reminder that we don't have to always assume the worst about people -- and if we consciously choose not to, then even mundane experiences can become generally more pleasant for yourself.