Tom Bissell's NYT Book Review essay about David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon College commencement address made me think back on -- and want to write an addendum to -- my blog post about Foster Wallace from last month. Interestingly, in his commencement address, Foster Wallace expounds on exactly the issue I discussed in my blog post: the limitations on human compassion.
In particular, Foster Wallace focuses on the work necessary to cultivate compassion. Advising graduating seniors on the imperative of seeing multiple perspectives and taking the trouble to imagine the motives of people who are annoying us, or who are in our way, Foster Wallace cautions, "it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to . . . . It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out."
But if you don't at least try? Foster Wallace has another word of warning, to the effect that if you don't buoy yourself with ethical principles, the world will erode you: "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."
I read Foster Wallace's commencement speech for the first time today and, frankly, I was surprised that his words echoed my own thoughts -- that our hard-wiring isn't well suited for compassion, that compassion requires cultivation, that that, in turn, requires hard work, that any other course basically leaves you fucked, and that drudgery sacrifice for people we love is as close as we get to the meaning of life. I hasten to add, lest my surprise sound arrogant (which is not my intent or feeling), that I wasn't surprised because I thought my own ideas were so original or refined, but because in general I don't relate to Foster Wallace's writing, or to his overall conclusions about America and American culture. Foster Wallace's commencement address reminded me that people who share fundamentals can nonetheless go in completely different directions with those basic concepts.
I was also interested to experience in Foster Wallace's commencement address an illustration of another point I'd raised in my previous blog post: our tendency, when generalizing about others, to project ourselves onto the people around us. As I wrote previously, this bent impairs our ability to empathize with others. Even when we exert our wills, determined to see multiple perspectives, and expend the energy to listen or imaginatively embody another's position, what we hear (regardless of what's said) and what we imagine (regardless of the facts that form the springboard for our imaginative leaps) are determined by our own identities.
Knowing this limitation has not freed me from its constraints.
For me, the worldview that I've adopted -- that correllates with the framework Foster Wallace outlines in his commencement address -- has been a comfort, a resource and a wellspring of strength. When I have wanted to die (and there have been times in my life, more than I hope anyone experiences), I have received succor from believing in the basic tenets that Foster Wallace articulates in his speech. As a result, I've basically assumed (very broadly speaking and oversimplifying for the sake of illustrating my point) that people who adopt a similar worldview get similar results: that if you can accept that worldview, then it puts to rest existential crises.
Obviously, I was wrong. Given my current (limited) capacities for compassion, I'm having difficulty relating to Foster Wallace. I'm surprised that the man had a similar worldview to me because I have been generalizing about others based on myself, and so my default assumption was that a suicide must have a different set of values. But the relationship between any individual's (cerebral) world view and (visceral) drives is no doubt more complicated than my assumption allowed. And, in the absence of any basis for understanding that relationship, I'm still groping for an entry point for understanding an existence that is beyond my experience.
What I wouldn't give for Foster Wallace to be able to elaborate on his ideas in another commencement speech.
In particular, Foster Wallace focuses on the work necessary to cultivate compassion. Advising graduating seniors on the imperative of seeing multiple perspectives and taking the trouble to imagine the motives of people who are annoying us, or who are in our way, Foster Wallace cautions, "it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to . . . . It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out."
But if you don't at least try? Foster Wallace has another word of warning, to the effect that if you don't buoy yourself with ethical principles, the world will erode you: "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."
I read Foster Wallace's commencement speech for the first time today and, frankly, I was surprised that his words echoed my own thoughts -- that our hard-wiring isn't well suited for compassion, that compassion requires cultivation, that that, in turn, requires hard work, that any other course basically leaves you fucked, and that drudgery sacrifice for people we love is as close as we get to the meaning of life. I hasten to add, lest my surprise sound arrogant (which is not my intent or feeling), that I wasn't surprised because I thought my own ideas were so original or refined, but because in general I don't relate to Foster Wallace's writing, or to his overall conclusions about America and American culture. Foster Wallace's commencement address reminded me that people who share fundamentals can nonetheless go in completely different directions with those basic concepts.
I was also interested to experience in Foster Wallace's commencement address an illustration of another point I'd raised in my previous blog post: our tendency, when generalizing about others, to project ourselves onto the people around us. As I wrote previously, this bent impairs our ability to empathize with others. Even when we exert our wills, determined to see multiple perspectives, and expend the energy to listen or imaginatively embody another's position, what we hear (regardless of what's said) and what we imagine (regardless of the facts that form the springboard for our imaginative leaps) are determined by our own identities.
Knowing this limitation has not freed me from its constraints.
For me, the worldview that I've adopted -- that correllates with the framework Foster Wallace outlines in his commencement address -- has been a comfort, a resource and a wellspring of strength. When I have wanted to die (and there have been times in my life, more than I hope anyone experiences), I have received succor from believing in the basic tenets that Foster Wallace articulates in his speech. As a result, I've basically assumed (very broadly speaking and oversimplifying for the sake of illustrating my point) that people who adopt a similar worldview get similar results: that if you can accept that worldview, then it puts to rest existential crises.
Obviously, I was wrong. Given my current (limited) capacities for compassion, I'm having difficulty relating to Foster Wallace. I'm surprised that the man had a similar worldview to me because I have been generalizing about others based on myself, and so my default assumption was that a suicide must have a different set of values. But the relationship between any individual's (cerebral) world view and (visceral) drives is no doubt more complicated than my assumption allowed. And, in the absence of any basis for understanding that relationship, I'm still groping for an entry point for understanding an existence that is beyond my experience.
What I wouldn't give for Foster Wallace to be able to elaborate on his ideas in another commencement speech.
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