Although Paul Bloom argues that empathy is overrated, David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech, “This is Water”, argues that simple awareness for the world/people around us is essential in having the ability to choose a life with more love and inner peace.
To some degree, I see these articles as somewhat of a dichotomy. On one hand, Bloom is arguing against empathy as it lacks sufficient advantages towards others. On the other hand, Foster Wallace argues that empathy is advantageous for one’s own self.
Nonetheless, one clear contrast between both author’s viewpoint is the value of empathy to understand the lives of a greater amount of people. Although Bloom argues that empathy is narrow and can only be applied to a small number of people, Foster Wallace submits that empathy is actually about understanding your place in this world in coexistence with all the others around you. He continues to argue that with the understanding that everybody else lives with emotions and complexities like ours, we can choose to live without the arrogance that situations are about me, and everybody is just in my way.
One parallel that I draw from both pieces is the difficulty of possessing empathy. Both Bloom and Foster Wallace express that proactively thinking about others is hard. However, Foster Wallace differentiates himself by arguing that we should still do our best to maintain this level of consciousness, and not instead abandon it all together.
The idea that interests me most about this piece was the value of empathy in our own lives. On the surface, Foster Wallace’s argument seems to be one of altruism. However, with further consideration we reveal he is also arguing that possessing empathy is actually egoistic altruism. Wallace outlines the importance of thinking about others as a way to break from our unconscious default settings of selfishness. As Foster Wallace states, “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”. In other words, empathy enables us to open our minds and hearts giving us freedom to think and believe, and without it we subconsciously become prisoner to our own minds, and possessed by the world only as we see it.
One section of Foster Wallace’s speech that I am particularly drawn to is the parable about grocery shopping. I thought this section was not only engaging and relatable, but also a fantastic way of displaying his central argument. Through reading that section, I am able to relate to the idea of selfishness in my own life. I think back to my daily tasks, and how I think about myself as the center of my world, and not myself in relation to this world and the people around me.
