On May 21, 2005 at the graduation ceremony of the Kenyon college, David Foster Wallace gave the speech then became famous as "This is water."
The name is due to the first story with which David Foster Wallace begins the speech:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
I do not want to talk about DFW's speech in its entirety, nor about what DFW says about this story.
I would like to talk about this little story in itself.
How difficult is it to realize the very existence of water, of the concept of water if you are always immersed in the water itself?
It seems a trivial thought, but the ability to abstract from one's own context is fundamental to understanding one's own context.
And it is a damned difficult thing, also because our brain always tries to do exactly the opposite, that is, it tries to take the water in which we swim for granted, because, in general, it is an enormous waste of resources trying to understand the context in which we move, if this does not change.
On the other hand, if it changes, when it changes, our very survival could be linked to how clear it is what the context we were in and how different it could become.
I will give just a few examples.
Think about how many things you take for granted if you live:
in a western country:
- elections
- freedom of speech (at least relative)
- freedom of worship
- freedom of thought
in an EU country:
- free school
- freedom of movement within the EU
- use of the same currency (if in a euro country)
- partial or totally free health system
- pension
in Milan or Paris or Berlin or Madrid, etc.:
- system of subways, buses, trams, etc. functional and at reasonable prices
- Taxi service
- municipal police
- collection of capillary waste
It can go on forever.
Framing your position with respect to the rest of the world can lead you to reconsider your situation and, therefore, to assess how much of our sea, the one in which we swim every day, we can easily lose by moving only a few steps.
A nice example can be the film with Troisi and Benigni "We just have to cry", think of how difficult it is, in the film, for the two to explain even the simplest of technologies that in their reality they took for granted, but that they didn't have the slightest idea how it worked because, in fact, they took everything for granted.
Another good example that comes to mind is that of the film, which is partly based on a true story, "Into the Wild". Even if the protagonist "voluntarily" loses himself, he soon discovers that he has taken for granted a flood of things and is, therefore, totally unprepared to face the wild nature where he thought he was living.
Think of how many things are needed to publish this post and how fragile this is.
Try to think of all the things you do every day and how many things you take for granted that allow you to do those things.
A shower in the morning requires running hot water, a house, a towel, clean and ironed clothes; think of how many people on earth have none of these things.
Think of the train, the subway, the bus, the car you took to go to work. Think of the job. Think of the fact that you had lunch.
Think about the fact that when you are thirsty you can drink drinking water.
Think of how the water you are swimming in today and think about where other fish swim.
