The commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace in the autumn of 2005, is a very deep speech that examines the whole idea of a Liberal Arts education at an extremely deep and intellectual level. In the 22 minute long speech Wallace talks about how higher education not only teaches you to think but “how to exercise some control over how and what you think.” (Wallace). Wallace later in his speech stresses the importance of this level of thinking by saying “if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed” (Wallace) What he means by saying this is that if you cannot think at a higher level and make sense of real world problems your life will become meaningless and you will become dead inside your head. …show more content…
Wallace stresses the idea that all people really can think about in their day to day lives is themselves. To explain this Wallace uses the story of people in rush-hour trying to shop at the grocery store and getting aggravated when there aren’t enough registers open to check out their purchases. He uses this example to describe how people make themselves the center of the universe and how their own needs should be met before anyone else’s own. Wallace is trying to describe how higher education helps people think more clearly, and how the knowledge obtained also helps to make your mind more capable of evaluating situations and how they affect more than just one’s own …show more content…
This has come after years of being raised in a close minded environment. I have also had many life experience that make me step back and try to look at the bigger picture and consider that I am not the only person on earth and I am not the only one with problems and issues. My default settings are growing, I am and have been learning to look at the large problems in life, such as when I deal with a rude person in line to get gas I try to understand that even though they are being rude I do not know their whole problem or what they are dealing with in their lives. It often is easy to get upset given a situation like this but when you start to look at the world with a mindset such as Wallace’s the world really will seem to open up to
The way a person is taught from a young age often times affects his or her values and perceptions throughout their life. A person is taught how to think and what to think about but is rarely given the choice of how to perceive this information. This can be seen in Plato 's “Allegory of the Cave,” “Learning to Read and Write,” by Frederick Douglass and the speech, “This is Water” by David Wallace. Each of the three pieces talks about characters being born into enslavement either hypothetically or literally. Being born into enslavement resulted in each of them to seek for freedom in different ways. Only knowing one way to see and think due to the environment arises self-centered thoughts by the protagonist.
It is common for human beings, as a race, to fall into the comforts of routine – living each day similar to days before and days to come. Unfortunately, it is often too late before one even realizes that they have fallen into this mundane way of living in which each day is completed rather than lived, as explained by David Foster Wallace in “This Is Water”. This commencement speech warned graduating students of the dangers of submitting to our “default settings” of unconscious decisions and beliefs (Wallace 234). However, this dangerous way of living is no new disability of today’s human race. Socrates warned the people of his time: “A life unaware is a life not worth living” and who is to say he wasn’t completely right? A topic of long debate also includes the kind of influence that consciously-controlled thoughts can have on the physical body. A year after Wallace’s speech, neurobiologist Helen Pilcher, published “The New Witch Doctor: How Belief Can Kill”, which explains the influence of the mind and individual beliefs on the quality of one’s life. Together, both authors illustrate how detrimental a life lived unaware of one’s own thoughts and beliefs can be on the body and spirit. And though it is easy to live by
In today’s society, one of the most natural human traits is selfishness. David Foster Wallace incorporated this idea in his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. Wallace aims to persuade his audience that, “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.” Although the intended audience of his speech is the graduates and staff, along with their friends and family, the piece has become quite popular since its delivery. Wallace offers, “nothing less than the truth” and captivates the listeners with his complete honestly. His personal tone lets the audience feel like they are a part of the conversation, rather than just receiving it. Wallace successfully conveys his message that society is blind to the world around them through the use of logic, humility and emotional appeals.
Have you ever read something and thought “What a bunch of crap”? Well that’s the reaction I had to reading Fareed Zakaria’s book, In Defense Of a Liberal Education. Over the course of the book, Zakaria makes the argument that attending college with the specific intention to get trained for a job is “Short sighted and needlessly limiting”. Zakaria also breaks down the differences between the United State’s education system with other countries across the globe. By attending college with the intention of receiving critical thinking skills and being able to express our ideas, rather than just going to train for a job, Zakaria believes that the average student would be much better off in the world after they graduate.
...old, xenophobic white men don’t want just anyone off the street joining them for intellectual discussions over Sunday tea . This is why Wallace advocates for students in high school and college to learn SWE; if students are able to present themselves in a more erudite and intellectual manner by using SWE, it can provide them with more opportunities to ascend the “social ladder” as they will have a stronger foundation for academic and professional success. Using SWE will not guarantee that a student will become a doctor or a lawyer, however, they will have the opportunity to expand their education and achieve that ranking if they wish.
Liberal arts education produces analytical thinking, and professions are looking for that as an alternative to just specializing in one subject. “Who wants to hire somebody with an irrelevant major like philosophy or French,” but in reality, everyone is finding it harder to find a job in this economy, not just liberal arts majors. He then answers the question about “being a low income, or first generation college student,” and Ungar begins to state that it is ignorant to consider that just because an individual is the first generation that they cannot be given the same kind of education as someone else who is not a first generation. Some may believe that liberal arts does not take part in the mathematical and scientific side of education, but it does in the broadest parts. Sanford Ungar has the right idea that more people should major in the liberal arts, and I definitely like how he put his essays into the “seven misconceptions.”
In This is Water, Wallace effectively uses logical reasoning and the parable of the religious man and the atheist man to explain how consciousness is a choice, not an unalterable state. To do this, Wallace states that in many cases, “A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.” Using logical reasoning, Wallace’s own admission reminds his audience that they are also often wrong, as, logically, humans are not perfect and make periodic mistakes. Once he establishes that people can be wrong, he returns to the parable of the two men and claims “…the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience.” This idea is familiar to his educated audience, as he claims it is one of the primary foundations of a liberal arts education. Thus, Wallace uses his audienc...
In recent years, many have debated whether or not a college education is a necessary requirement to succeed in the field of a persons’ choice and become an outstanding person in society. On one hand, some say college is very important because one must contribute to society. The essay Three Reasons College Still Matters by Andrew Delbanco shows three main reasons that students should receive their bachelor’s degree. On the other hand, many question the point of wasting millions of dollars on four years or maybe more to fight for highly competitive jobs that one might not get. Louis Menand wrote an article based on education titled Re-Imagining Liberal Education. This article challenges the main thought many americans have after receiving a secondary education. Louis Menand better illustrates the reasons why a student should rethink receiving a post secondary education better than Andrew Delbanco’s three reasons to continue a person’s education.
Similarly, in This is Water, David Foster Wallace argues a real education as offering people the choice of what to think about in life. He states that “a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about ‘teaching you how to think’, but rather about the choice of what to think about” (1). After getting educated, students obtain the basic knowledge among many subjects, but with all the information and facts being offered, people may lose conscious of what to think about. Schooling may cause students over-think things which are unnecessary because it may take over what you actually notice and care. Wallace insists “learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and
Within the first couple of chapters alone, Huxley describes the conditioning process and the abilities to manipulate the thinking, feeling, acting, and genetic makeup of all processed children within the World State, as well as expresses the ironic nature behind the World State’s motto: “Community, Identity, Stability” (Huxley 3). The emphasis behind the motto connects to the overarching idea of the importance of the group and the unimportance of the individuals; furthermore, the motto screams the inference of freedom, but contrasts due to the lack of community as a whole, lack of individuality, and lack of stability in one’s self. The continuity within the perpetual “lacks of” grasps hold of not just the World State, but America. Government holds restrictions on what classes students can take in schools, what lunches they are served, etc., connecting to the control within the World State as it determines the thought processes and education given to every child. The conditioning of the children and the lack of choice in present day society within education systems creates a lack of understanding within the idea of freedom and what it truly means to be
The "Emancipation Proclamation" speech was actually intended for most of the people that would free the slaves, not to the slaves. According to Rollyson the proclamation was not intended for the slave, blacks, or former slaves. The “Emancipation Proclamation” speech was during the Antislavery Movement or what some people call it the Abolitionist Movement, during the 1960's. The main leaders of the abolitionist movement were Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas. The point of Lincoln writing the speech about emancipating the slaves was to free the slaves and win the civil war. Lincoln had written a speech named "The Emancipation Proclamation". He wrote this speech and signed it in January of 1863, in Washington, D.C. The theme of the speech was to teach everyone that everyone, no matter what race should be treated equally. In the "Emancipation Proclamation" speech, Abraham Lincoln motivates his intended audience during the Antislavery movement by using pathos and rhetorical question.
The philosopher is presenting complex image with many aspects to illustrate relatively simple problem which makes his writing appealing only to narrow circle of people usually enough educated to find an absolute truth by themselves. His style is too complicated to be appropriate for masses; complicated vocabulary and syntax that is not used anymore. Plato’s relating to the real problem right in the end of his work giving no time to think about it throughout his argument. Basically what he is doing is explaining the problem and then presenting it. In the end he just leaves the reader all alone without further explanation. David Foster Wallace has also tried to convince people that there is something more to the world that can be seen. However, Wallace’s Commencement Speech is very different from Plato’s allegory. I his speech Wallace is presenting his ideas in a simple manner by short stories that anyone can relate to and because of this it makes him more convincing and persuasive. Right in the beginning of the speech he relates to the main topic by story about fishes that allows his audience to think about the main problem along his speech. This move is undoubtedly more effective because it lets audience focus and contemplate on what is important, on what relates to the main topic during whole
After listening to David Foster Wallace’s speech, “This is Water”, which is a speech about liberal arts education’s meaning, a lot of thoughts, opinions and review come into my mind. In the speech, he described what is the reason for the education and how people think and see things different with several examples and stories. First of all, it could be seen that he explained about the point that different people think in different ways based on their knowledge, belief, perspective and their angle of view on a case. He contrasted the point with a story about two guys which one of them is religious and other is atheist. According to the source, these two people’s belief are completely
It should not be a surprise that many people believe that a college degree is a necessity in today’s world. We are taught to believe this at a young age. The average citizen will not question this statement due to how competitive the job market has become, yet does graduating college guarantee more success down the road? Peter Brooks is a scholar at Princeton University and publisher of an essay that questions the value of college. He obviously agrees that college can help securing a job for the future, but questions the humanities about the education. He uses other published works, the pursuit of freedom, and draws on universal arguments that pull in the reader to assume the rest of his essay has valid reasons.
Ask any parent, they will tell you that teenagers think they know everything even though they are usually wrong. So why do we let these mostly incorrect know-it-alls choose their paths in life? American novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace, in his 2005 commencement address “This is Water,” states that adult life is completely different than what graduating seniors imagine it to be. The author provides personal anecdotes and uses imagery to convey the unmentioned, annoying, and boring aspects of adult life. Wallace’s purpose is to explain that many of these students will feel unsatisfied with their adult lives but they must power through the “day in, day out” frustrations in order to be successful. But what makes his speech so relatable;