The Transformative Power of Thought

by Alec Abarro

13 June 2013
Discussed text: David Foster Wallace, "This is Water"

The two fishes have been immersed in the water since, well, forever. So when they are asked, “How’s the water?” They are baffled. They haven’t been on land, or at least felt the air. How can they be aware of the water when it is so constant? It has always been there, engulfing them. The older fish must have experienced jumping out of the water, and felt the breeze. Or perhaps, he had been washed ashore once upon a time, and felt the soil. Whatever it is, the older fish had been exposed to something that is not water. Hence, he became aware to that something he has been immersed in since forever.

“This is water.”

When we are so absorbed in a paradigm, we involuntarily overlook other ways of seeing the world. The younger fishes aren’t even aware of the water they are stuck in. But the older fish does. More importantly, the older fish knows that there is something other than water. He has seen the sky and the earth. His world is that much bigger.

What about us? What are paradigm are we immersed in? David Foster Wallace calls this “default thinking” and our default thinking is the Me, Myself, and I paradigm. We view the world in our perspective. We literally don’t see the world through another person’s eyes. To us, everything happens in a first person point of view. This I paradigm is our water. Now, the I paradigm is not necessarily bad. But what is does is that it made us more self-centered, more selfish, self-interested, self-involved, self-seeking, self-serving. Self. Consequently, we have, more often than not, overlooked the paradigm of you, of us, of togetherness, of community, of fellowship.

But we are better off than the fish, because humans are gifted with empathy. We have the ability to see ourselves in the place of others. As we distinguish the I from the non-I, we start gaining our own identity. We start to become aware of what we do and who we are by differentiating ourselves with other people.

This non-I thinking partnered with the differentiating of the I from the non-I help us gain a new perspective, another framework to see the world and in turn, the self acts differently as it redraws horizons that transforms the space which it lives in. As we put ourselves in the place of other people, we try getting inside their thoughts and feelings to see what they see and in turn, we identify ourselves with another way of experiencing the world. The ability to empathize not only gives us the capacity to recognize another way of experiencing reality but also gives us the opportunity to objectively judge ourselves from the outside, and this shapes the narratives of our lives.

This is the value of a liberal arts education, as emphasized by David Foster Wallace. It’s about the choice of what to think about, of how to think. But what he really means is “learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” Liberal arts free us in the default way of thinking we are stuck in, opening our mind and seeing the world differently. When we change “default thinking,” we gain awareness of the self. We learn how to think. But the most important thing is thinking in order to live fuller.

As we transform from within, the activity for the body changes too. Its actions manifest the inner simulation of the perspectives we have and gained. Simply put, another way of thinking produces another way of acting. It allows us to reach an understanding about the self that causes us to change it and bring about a self-transformation. In the end, an Us paradigm benefits the I, the way I thinks, and acts in the community. The I has changed, but this single individual impacts not only the self but others around him. This is the power of thought.