Thinking is one thing that we as humans do all day every day for the entirety of our lives. The way in which we think can lead to both positive and negative outcomes for every event we may find ourselves in. The graduating class of 2005 from Kenyon College, to whom David Foster Wallace’s speech is being recited to, have learned to think for the past four years while pursuing their Liberal Arts degrees. David Foster Wallace argues that we as human beings have a natural default setting that unconsciously rules our thought process and the way we think throughout the day to day of life.

The author uses parables throughout his work to show meaning of real life experiences through a new easy to understand perspective. The first parable he recites is about a few young fish swimming past another elder fish when asked, ‘How’s the water?’ The young fish are stumped by this question. This is the speaker’s opening hook which primary objective is to get his audience’s attention and make them begin to actively think on a deeper level about what will be discussed. The author really never ties up the loose ends of this first opening parable. He only gives his audience information and new perspective on thought to drive his audience into interrupt the meaning on their own. He never truly gives an explicit greater meaning to this parable because he is giving his listeners a chance to practice what he is discussing and concluding their own ideas for what is meant which is one of the overall ideas of the speech: thinking in a way to draw new meaning for themselves.

David Foster Wallace goes on to tell another didactic story. This second tale is about two men in rural Alaska having a drunken conversation about their religious beliefs. One man is religious while the other is atheist. The atheist reveals a story of a past event where he prays God will protect him and save him while he is lost in the wilderness and bad weather. The religious man is shocked by his story and says that he must now believe because he is alive and well in front of him in at the bar. But the atheist man goes on to say that he was not saved or protected by God; but that he was only shown the way back to camp by a few passing Eskimos. After telling his crowd this story the speaker goes on to tell that every human has a natural, hard-wired, default setting. This setting is what makes some human’s thoughts come more immediate than others. This setting, he says, is in everyone and is the way most everyone thinks especially in routine day in and day out experiences. He also says that because the atheist is still an atheist after such a monumental experience, that his default setting has created a, “blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total the prisoner does not even realize they are locked up.(xii)” When thinking about something and being so certain that the truth is one certain way, that no matter what the close mindedness will completely take over and they are now imprisoned with that thought completely unconsciously. The speaker uses this as a plea for his listeners to adopt a more open minded thought process which is not possible while one’s natural default setting of thinking is active.

David Foster Wallace continues on to tell why this natural default setting is not necessarily the best way to think all of the time. He uses an allegory about inevitable events of everyday routine life that are not the least bit exciting. Events like traffic jams and crowded grocery stores where being stuck in it is inevitable but not at all enjoyable. He tells this story to show how something as simple as one’s own thought process of the event can completely alter the experience he or she has during that inevitable obstacle of life. Switching off the default setting will show that most likely every single person in both the traffic jam and in the grocery store are in the exact same boat as they are. Only thinking about getting done and out of the hectic public and back home to peace. Also, that chances are someone if not more than one individual is in a much more urgent hurry than they are. David Foster Wallace speaks about this to show how negative thinking naturally in the default setting can be. Wallace goes on to say, “One event or experience can mean two different things to two different people given their different belief templates and two totally different ways of constructing meaning from an experience. (xi)” One’s own experiences and their own life is what completely constructs the way they thing and feel after an event. Two people could be in the exact same spot of the same event but because of past events of their life gather two completely different feelings and ideas from that same exact moment. In the super market scenario one person using their natural default setting is going to hate all of the crowdedness and hate all the time they are in line and then ultimately completely overtaking their entire experience in a negative manner. While someone in the same super market line thinking more openly and freely will think about how there are far worse things that could be happening and that they are probably nowhere near as in a hurry as someone else in the same line causing their overall experience in this unjoyful event so much more enjoyable and occur so much quicker than the first person caught up in their natural thought process.

Within David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech titled “This is Water”, Wallace shows that all humans have a natural default setting that if let can rule their entire thought process for the worse. Wallace achieves this goal by using parables and other didactic stories to give examples for why what he is speaking of makes logical sense.
