One phrase repeated throughout David Foster Wallace’s speech, “This is Water” is “default setting.” This phrase carries significant meaning and weight as his entire speech is based off of every human’s default setting, and how to change it. His speech uses this “default setting” to explain the value of obtaining a liberal arts degree. The argument is that a liberal arts degree teaches how to adjust this “default setting” and how to see the world in a different light.

Liberal arts schools differ from large technical schools in teaching and thought. Technical school students focus in on one subject, and they study only that subject. In this way, they become extremely proficient in the selected subject. Liberal arts students are usually given a broader education, and are taught about the world around them. Because of this type of education, these students think not only of the subject they achieve a degree in, but also about how they function as a part in the world. Wallace uses this difference in liberal arts and other schools to found his argument of “default setting.” 

The first time these words are used are in the text, they are used to describe the state of human experience. Wallace states that everyone’s “default setting” is to believe that any one person is the absolute center of the universe. He says, “Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of” (Wallace). His idea is that every experience in a lifetime happens to the person going through the event. These experiences are always from the individual’s point of view. 

This “default setting” is prefaced at the beginning of the paragraph by Wallace stating anyone at the center of the universe is automatically wrong to him. He gives a negative connotation to the idea of “self” and self-centeredness. He states that we are wrong to assume we are the center of our own universe, even though we are the center of our experience. This is easier to understand later on in the speech as he describes the day to day life of someone who subscribes to the human “default setting,” and does nothing to try to escape it. These are the self-centered people who think only of themselves in frustrating situations. They do not stop to think about what other people may have going on in their lives. 

Wallace uses several annoying situations to show how living with this default setting is bland and monotonous. All of the long lines in the grocery store and traffic can make people frustrated and mad if they obey their default setting. If people could make the choice to think about others, suddenly, as he describes, they understand more and are freer. He even goes on to say this is true freedom. This quote explains it, “That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing” (Wallace). 

By putting this perspective of being self-centered as our default, Wallace’s argument of trying/choosing to think differently and think about others is made hard. His argument gives validity to his struggle of choosing to think about others. Validity is then given to his entire speech about actively choosing to think about others. Altering someone’s default setting as proposed by Wallace is hard, the change is a challenge that many struggle with. He then ties the difficulty of altering our default setting into a liberal arts education. His case being that a liberal arts education gives one the ability to adjust his or her default setting. An adjustment in the setting therefore gives the ability to change how to get through life no longer a slave to the setting. 

Another way in which Wallace uses “default setting” is to describe the things people worship. He ties this into how people can actively choose what has meaning and what doesn’t. In this way, people choose what to worship. He goes on to say everyone has to believe in something, and no one can be an atheist. This is everyone’s natural, unconscious default setting – to worship something or someone. Some examples he gives are money, religious beings, our body and power. The way he presents this is strikingly realistic. In anyone’s personal experience, there are things that have more meaning than others. He says this is another part of what a liberal arts education gives. A liberal arts schooling gives the power to decide what to worship and whether or not to adjust that default setting. 

It is interesting to see that Wallace only uses the phrase “default setting.” He does not use other phrases such as “basic human thought” or “traditional basis for human experiences” or any other phrase. He may do this specifically because the words “default setting” give a basic connotation to the phrase. There is nothing special about the phrase. The phrase is black and white. The phrase almost gives a connotation of a computer program. One could say that every human is programed to act with a “default setting.” Wallace gives a solid phrase with limited interpretations. 

The word default here can have several interpretations. The word could mean a backup, as if something had failed, and was switched back to the normal setting the are also interpretations such as a preselected option, like in a computer. What Wallace could be getting at, based off of the text, here is that the “default” that everyone faces is already preprogrammed into our being. Like a computer. The default does not alter itself. Humans have to go in and change the default that everyone is born with. 

Just as the word “default”, the word “setting” provides some different interpretations that could be substituted for each other. What Wallace points towards in the text is the type of setting that is, again, like a computer. Settings on a computer must be changed in order to affect what they control. Wallace’s “default setting” in a human is a setting that controls how they interact and see the outside world, how they are self-centered. The setting will never change by itself. By looking at the two words, “default setting,” one can see that Wallace points at a definition like a computer. The human default is like a computer setting, that must be changed after one learns to change it, via a liberal arts degree. 

Wallace’s “This is Water” hinges on the phrase “default setting.” This setting is shown by Wallace to be incredibly self-centered and to create a boring, frustrating and lonely life, for those who accept it. Those who have a liberal arts education are taught how to adjust this default and to be aware of what is right in front of them, more so than other tech and non-liberal arts schools of higher education. He argues this schooling gives them freedom to choose actively what to worship and what to give meaning. Without this “default setting,” Wallace’s speech and argument about a liberal arts degree would have no basis and would be on thin ice. 
