David Foster Wallace on a "Real Education" and our "Default Setting"

In his 2005 Commencement Address at Kenyon College, you may recall that David Foster Wallace spoke about our "default setting" as a metaphor for our "unconscious" thinking - and our real education is to be aware.

With humility, he introduces this "default setting" as self-centeredness that is natural and understandable in this paragraph:

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
When a baby cries, the baby is fed or changed - the baby learns how to receive attention - and gets what it wants - training parents to provide comfort, food, or a clean diaper.

Wallace concludes - that not much may change for many people - you can survive and be relatively successful, especially in our American culture today.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

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.

Some day, you may wake up and ask yourself, "Now what?"

That may be a midlife crisis after being "successful" or achieving a goal. What's really important?

Money? Power? Fame?

Significance? Connection? Legacy?