Default Setting Awareness
Your natural self-centered programming runs your life unless you consciously override it
Default Setting Awareness is David Foster Wallace's framework for the most important skill a liberal arts education can teach: not the capacity to think, but the choice of what to think about. Wallace argues that every human being operates with a 'default setting'—the automatic, unconscious certainty that you are the absolute center of the universe, that your needs and frustrations are what matter most, and that everyone else is just in your way.
This is not a moral failing—it is biological wiring. There is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world is literally in front of YOU, behind YOU, on YOUR screen. Other people's thoughts and feelings must be communicated to you, but your own are immediate and urgent. The default setting processes every frustration—traffic, checkout lines, crowded stores—as a personal affront.
The real education, Wallace argues, is learning to exercise control over how and what you think. The mind is 'an excellent servant but a terrible master.' In the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, you get to consciously decide what has meaning and what does not. You get to decide what to worship. And this choice is urgent because everybody worships something—money, beauty, power, intellect—and anything you worship other than some form of sacred principle 'will eat you alive.' This is not about morality or religion. It is about life before death: staying conscious and alive rather than unconscious and dead inside your default setting.
- The most obvious, important realities are often the hardest to see and talk about
- You have a default setting of self-centeredness that is hard-wired—choosing to override it is the work of a lifetime
- Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise control over what you think about
- Everybody worships something—the only choice is what to worship
- The really important kind of freedom involves attention, awareness, and discipline
- Notice your default setting in operationThe first step is awareness. In traffic, in checkout lines, in crowded stores, notice when your default setting kicks in: the automatic assumption that everyone else is in YOUR way, that this situation is about YOUR frustration and YOUR time. Notice the internal monologue that makes strangers into obstacles—'how stupid, how cow-like, how dead-eyed.' This is not reality; it is your default setting processing the world through the lens of your own centrality.Pro tipThe checkout line is your daily practice arena—every frustrating mundane moment is an opportunity to notice and override the defaultWarningWallace acknowledges this is 'unimaginably hard to do day in and day out'—be patient with yourself when you fail
- Consciously choose an alternative interpretationOnce you notice the default setting, actively choose a different way to interpret the situation. The SUV that cut you off might be driven by a father rushing his sick child to the hospital—and he is in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than you. The woman screaming at her kid in the checkout line might have been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband dying of cancer. None of this is likely, but it is also not impossible. The point is not to be right about others' stories but to choose interpretations that keep you human rather than dead inside.Pro tipYou do not have to believe the alternative interpretation is true—you just have to recognize that your default interpretation is not necessarily true eitherWarningSome days you will not be able to do this or will not want to. That is part of being human, not evidence of failure
- Choose what to worship deliberatelyWallace argues there is no such thing as atheism when it comes to worship—everybody worships something. If you worship money and things, you will never have enough. Worship your body and beauty, you will always feel ugly. Worship power, you will feel weak and need ever more power. Worship intellect, you will feel stupid and fraudulent. These forms of worship are not evil—they are unconscious. They are default settings you slip into gradually without awareness. The antidote is to consciously choose to worship something that will not eat you alive.Pro tipThe insidious thing about default worship is not that it is wrong but that it is unconscious—you gradually slip into it 'day after day, getting more selective about what you see and how you measure value'
Wallace describes the grinding reality of adult life: after a long day at your challenging job, you remember there is no food at home. You drive through terrible traffic to a crowded, hideously lit supermarket, maneuver through tired, hurried people, wait in an incredibly long checkout line, and get told 'have a nice day' in the voice of death. Your default setting interprets all of this as a personal affront. But you can choose to consider that everyone else is just as bored and frustrated, and some have harder lives than you.
Two young fish swim past an older fish who says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' They swim on, and eventually one looks at the other and asks: 'What the hell is water?' Wallace uses this to argue that the most obvious, important realities are often the hardest to see because they are constant and ubiquitous—like water to fish, our default setting of self-centeredness is so pervasive we do not even notice it.
David Foster Wallace, one of the most acclaimed American writers of his generation and author of Infinite Jest, delivered this speech at Kenyon College's 2005 commencement. He opens with a parable: two young fish swim past an older fish who says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' and the young fish look at each other and ask 'What the hell is water?' Wallace uses this to argue that the most obvious, important realities are the hardest to see because they are constant and ubiquitous. The speech draws from Wallace's own struggle with depression and his deep engagement with philosophy, addiction literature, and the challenge of remaining conscious in the numbing routines of adult life. He explicitly rejects the role of 'wise old fish' and presents his observations as practical survival strategies rather than moral prescriptions.