
David Foster Wallace was an intellectual and analytical writer of acclaimed and medaled works of literature, but, yet, how he perceived the world led him to take his own life at the age of 46. Three years before Wallace committed suicide, he gave the graduating class of 2005 at Kenyon University a very uncharacteristic commencement speech called “This is Water.” He emphasized mental health and exercising control over your thoughts. In his speech, he creates the idea of a “default setting” in which, he describes it as, “everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence” (Wallace XII). According to Wallace, the “default setting” turns on when you do not choose how to think, but simply allow for the unconscious self-centeredness to take over. In “This is Water,” Wallace uses the phrase “default setting” repeatedly to develop his argument that you must choose to be conscious of how you see the world.

The term “default setting” occurs in Wallace’s speech to explain the effects of selfishness when perceiving others. Wallace tells us his “natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self” (XII). According to Wallace, if you experience life through the default setting, you look at situations and people through a lens that solely illustrates how others effect you or pertain to you. Wallace argues that the default setting puts you in the center of your world with no consideration for others. If you choose to look at the world through the default-setting, your view of the world is dictated by your feeling of self-centeredness, but however, if you dismiss the default setting by consciously choosing how to think, you can dismiss your view of self-importance and, thus, your personal view of the world can be changed by what the world looks like to others. More simply put, your automatic “lens of self” becomes a “lens of others.” Therefore, by denying the “default setting” and consciously choosing to use an unselfish lens, you can experience empathy and better understand those around you. As a result of being more knowledgeable of what other people are experiencing or feeling, you can better appreciate them and the world around you. This empathetic mindset allows you to replace negative characteristics such as egotism, anger towards others, or antagonism, produced by the “default setting,” with positive feelings of unselfishness, understanding, and consideration for others. By explaining the connection between “the default setting” and its effects on someone’s mindset and perception of others, Wallace argues that how you think determines how you see the world and others around you. Moreover, choosing how to think is important because by dismissing your natural one-dimensional view of the world as it affects you, you can experience the positive emotional effects of empathy and attain a more genuine and comprehensive view of the world as it affects everyone. 

Wallace also included the idea of the “default setting” in his commencement address to explain how it clarifies to the importance of choosing what to worship. Wallace explains:

The only choice we get is what to worship…Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid…the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. (XVI) 

In this passage, Wallace says that everyone worships something and if you unconsciously worship something like power or intellect, you are living by the “default setting.” The idea of worshipping can be further understood as the idea of giving your life to something of great importance to you. Wallace asserts that if you do not consciously define what is important to you as a human being, you will subject yourself to the effects of the “default setting” and automatically worship values and ideas that the society in which you live influences upon you. Society encourages people to worship things that are incorporated into the societal, materialistic definition of perfect like money, power, fame, beauty, etc. People who succumb to the “default setting,” worship these things because they do not personally choose what is worth worshipping and thus allow society to decide for them. If you allow the environment around you to determine what to worship, you will never identify what has meaning to you as an individual. In return, you will never find real meaning in life. Furthermore, those who overcome the “default setting” consciously ignore materialism and societal definitions of perfection and seek out what is of value to them as individuals and this allows them to worship something that is of great importance to them personally. Hence, consciously choosing what to worship ultimately leads an individual to find real meaning in life.  So, therefore, Wallace acknowledges the importance of consciously choosing what to worship because if you submit to the default setting, you worship things that have little meaning and, as a result, you will find little meaning in yourself. However, if you consciously decide what to worship, you will devote your life to ideas or values that augment meaning in your life and your worth as a human being.

Near the beginning of the speech, Wallace talks about the role the “default setting” plays in everyday adult life. Wallace says, “And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.” (XIII) Wallace precedes to explain that adult life in itself involves “boredom, routine, and petty frustration.” Wallace is describing that because life can be repetitive and frustrating, submitting to your default setting will only make each day more repetitive and more frustrating and, in return, unhappier and exceedingly more difficult to live through. This effect occurs because going through every day with your natural, selfish way of thinking causes you to focus on yourself twenty-four-seven. This constant self-centeredness prompts you to focus on how each daily experience is affecting you and you mentally concentrate on how everything and everyone you encounter in each twenty-four-hour cycle are annoying you or making life harder for you. Given the fact that adult life can be tedious and exasperating in nature, these negative feelings, created by the default setting, make each day of adult life even more stressful and difficult. However, if you consciously choose how to think rather than default on your natural, self-centered way of thinking, you can allow yourself to see people and situations through a different, less-selfish way. By electing to perceive everything through a conscious lens, you can choose to accept the people and the daily experiences that you encounter in your circadian life as less annoying and less bothersome. As a result, this tolerance will make the daily adult life less emotionally deprecating and more enjoyable and emotionally manageable. Therefore, Wallace is explaining to his audience that it is important to consciously choose how to see the world around you because adult life can often be repetitive, frustrating, and emotionally trying. So, if your mind works on its “default setting,” you will have greater difficulty in finding enjoyment in your grown up lives than if you were to consciously set aside your natural self-centeredness and view others and experiences with greater understanding.

Wallace’s main goal of this commencement speech was to express to the graduates of Kenyon College the importance of controlling how you think about the world around you. For Wallace, it was depression that deprived him of power over his own mind, but he wanted to advise the graduates of the class of 2005 to experience a life different from his own. He demanded from his audience that they all must be the masters of their own minds, not vice versa. He communicated the idea that if they surrendered to the “default setting,” they would not have authority over their own thoughts; that they would be a slave to the master of the mind. The world as they would unconsciously, selfishly see it would not be of their own creation, but, more likely, hateful, repetitive, and unhappy. However, if they choose, rather than default on, how they perceive the world and its people, they would enable themselves to comprehend the world more greatly and they would not fail to become commanders of their own minds and the determinants of their own happiness. Contrary to the default setting, consciously choosing how to think is something that any one person needs to do in order to live a life that is their own. 
