
Imagine being blind and having to picture your surroundings from the descriptions people provide.  Your reality would depend heavily on the interpretations of others, whether it be vivid or bland, complex or boring.  However, imagine the limitations upon your mental picture if you had no descriptions from others.  You could still develop a mental picture based upon other sensory input like sounds and smell, but without descriptions of what other people can see, the picture would likely be shadowy and unclear at best.  Having others describe what they see would almost certainly make for a clearer mental image.  This idea applies, in a broader sense, to our understanding of reality.  The more we restrict our minds from considering the perspectives of other people, the more we depend solely on what we perceive and what we personally think about those perceptions, the more limited our understanding of reality will be.  In “This Is Water,” David Foster Wallace argues that failure to consider reality from the perspective of other people and failing to consider possibilities outside of our immediate ability to sense them constitute the “default setting” for people and that they are at risk of becoming close minded and egotistical as a result (12).

Wallace uses the analogy of fish who don’t know “What the hell water is” to draw attention to how the most obvious things in life are often overlooked (10).  When describing a view to a blind person, someone might overlook the color and brightness of the sky because it is obvious to them; similarly, we often overlook that we have the ability to control what we think about.  Wallace uses the image of imprisonment to illustrate how our close-mindedness, which is our minds’ “default setting,” keeps us from considering the perspectives and life experiences of others in our thought processes (10).  These considerations would be like “water” to the fish (Wallace 10).

Visually impaired people are imprisoned in darkness until they learn to use their imagination to depict a scene.  Similarly, we are imprisoned in our natural “default setting” until we learn to think beyond it (Wallace 12).  The phrase “default setting” is used to describe our ego—the self-centered mode of thinking that presumes that the world revolves around us (Wallace 12).  Wallace refers to this “default setting” repeatedly throughout his speech (12).  The repetition emphasizes the constant presence of our ego in our everyday lives.  He also uses the wording “slave to your head” to describe how people get stuck in their ego, which precludes them from thinking about others (Wallace 13).  Just like a blind person constantly has to feel their way around, we constantly have to battle our natural self-centeredness.  

In order to break free, Wallace suggests that we must learn “how to exercise some control over how and what to think” (13).  He uses the phrase “capital-T Truth” three times to emphasize the importance of getting a “real education” (Wallace 17).  This “real education” is not about obtaining knowledge, but about recognizing “water,” or the choices we have in what to think about (Wallace 17).  We must make the choice to be less arrogant and to be more considerate of others.  Wallace says that “freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over” (16).  Only after we learn to think more expansively will we become “lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms” (Wallace 16).           

Although the main argument of this speech is our need to overcome our “default setting” and to acknowledge “water,” this is not something easily done (Wallace 12).  Scenarios are used to prove how easy it is to revert back to our automatic way of thinking.  The term “day in day out” is used to describe life as a boring routine (Wallace 13).  Suffering through this boredom makes us more likely to become frustrated and slip back into our natural “default setting” (Wallace 12).  Wallace himself even gets bored by merely talking about these routines and says “et cetera, et cetera,” cutting stuff out when describing grocery shopping (13).  This use of language emphasizes the feeling of boredom.  Strong negative language like repulsive, stupid, and cow-like, is used to show how we think when we revert back to our “default setting” (Wallace 14).  Instead of acknowledging the blind person and taking time to give them a detailed description of what’s around them, we only consider our wants and needs and simply walk away.   

Wallace says that we need to look differently at the “fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kids” (15).  This use of imagery makes it hard for us to look past this woman’s dreadful appearance, but Wallace argues that that is something we must do.  He urges us to consider why this woman looks like she does.  What circumstance brought her to this point?  If we consider these things, might we then be able to empathize with her?  We should consider that making assumptions about people based merely upon what we observe in the here-and-now of life is not only too simplistic, but it is also self-centered and risks being overly judgmental and wrong.  We might consider different possibilities and give people the benefit of the doubt.  When the blind person runs into you and you scream angrily at them unknowingly, you haven’t considered all possibilities.

Lastly, Wallace asks us to consider the motivating force behind the way that we choose to think about our existence.  He suggests that if we remain in our “default setting,” if we remain in a self-centered mode of thinking, we will tend to very highly regard, to worship, those things that we believe will make us the happiest (Wallace 16).  Worshipping is something everyone does, even if we do not realize it.  When we remain in our “default setting,” we worship things like beauty, money, power or intellect (Wallace 16).  These things might bring temporary happiness, but cannot make us truly content.  Imagine how miserable a blind person would be if what they worshipped most in life was something unobtainable, like visual beauty.         

Overall, the term “teach you how to think” is not something negative (Wallace 11).  The argument in this speech is that in order to gain freedom, we must learn how to think outside of our “default setting” and be conscious of the “water” that connects us to other people (Wallace 12).  The use of the term “this is water” is used to help us understand that we need to be aware of what’s in plain sight, what’s all around us (Wallace 17).  And even though going against human nature is unbelievably hard to do, it is not impossible.  Wallace says “your education really IS the job of a lifetime” to encourage us to never stop bettering ourselves (17).  There will be days when we will not want to think about others.  However, every day we pass the blind person trying to cross the road.  This speech is challenging us to stop, wake up, and help that person cross the road.  When we become aware of others and the “water” in which we all swim in, we are able to let go of our “default setting” and finally break free (Wallace 12). 
