American Enterprise Institute
In this month of college and university graduations, I often like to revisit one commencement speech which struck a nerve many years ago. Back in 2005, the late David Foster Wallace spoke at Kenyon College and delivered an address entitled “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” Today, I recommend all of my incoming first year students read or listen to his words at the start of, and throughout, their collegiate careers.
Foster Wallace’s words are so critical today because he makes a centrally important point about human nature that many on campus often forget: We have choices about how we choose to react to the world around us. In his words, “. . . our [natural], default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth” is that we are “self-centered” and operate far often “on the automatic, unconscious belief that [we are] the center of the world, and that [our] immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.” This leads people to “see and interpret everything through this lens of self” and, by extension, be habitually angry and aggressive toward others and the world around us. But, Foster Wallace argues, if we choose “to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting” of selfishness, we can find not only meaning in life but also connection to others by “being able truly to care about other people.”
Foster Wallace argues that we as individuals have control over our reactions and behaviors; specifically, we can choose to become more empathetic and understanding of others. While this idea is not entirely new and, in fact, appears in many religious teachings, an increasing number of students claim no religious affiliation. Foster Wallace offers this idea outside of a traditional religious framework with the potential to serve a countless number of students. Yet, it is practiced by far too few.
Consider the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement that has deeply impacted campus culture over the past decade. While DEI exists theoretically to improve the lives of all people, the way DEI is practiced is inward-looking. Students and professors are not taught to build bridges, but to instead focus on harm, power dynamics, and reparations for past injustices based on particular immutable characteristics through the simplistic and dangerously reductionist lens which deems some groups forever oppressors, while others are endlessly oppressed. Inward narratives of damage and oppression are omnipresent, groups are balkanized, and polarization increases. This is what happens when students default to a worldview rooted in negativity.
The recent protests in response to the October 7th massacre in Israel illustrate this perfectly. So few students or groups could condemn the actions of Hamas to empathetically support their Jewish peers, instead choosing to immediately twist the narrative into a larger fight about colonialism and oppressive groups. Rather than organizing to help displaced or struggling Palestinians and showing kindness to their grieving Jewish friends, the protesters blamed and demonized Jews while focusing on the needs of the protesters themselves. Actually helping Palestinians was marginalized in so many cases.
At Princeton University, after setting up an encampment, against school policy, and actively disrupting the educational environment, student protesters staged a hunger strike intended to bring attention to their demands that the “school meet with them to discuss divestment and drop the criminal and disciplinary charges” against them. With this “strike,” the students placed attention on themselves and their purported “pain” and helped no one. After Princeton failed to immediately capitulate, one student exclaimed, “This is absolutely unfair. My peers and I, we are starving. We are physically exhausted. I am quite literally shaking right now as you can see.” The student continued focusing on the protesters by screaming, “We are all immunocompromised, and based on the university’s meeting yesterday with some of our bargaining team, they would love to continue physically weakening us.” This is petty, embarrassing for these students, and a clear example of Foster Wallace’s warning about selfishness.
Regrettably, Princeton is only one of so many more examples of students turning inward nowadays on collegiate campuses. With our politics poisoned by polarization and narratives of harm, Foster Wallace’s ideas are essential today. Students are not learning that a better life is lived when we choose the good and try to overcome the default negative. Being angry and blaming others is easy and the backbone of DEI; it takes work not to default to this thinking. We should be trying to find more meaning outside our narrow selves by making real connections with others. We will need these connections as we head into another bitter election season that will focus little on building others up. We will need an outlook rooted in positivity and regard for each other.
