In David Foster’s essay ‘This is Water’ he argued that “true freedom acquired through education is the ability to be adjusted, conscious and sympathetic”.
Breaking down this main argument that he puts forward during a commencement speech, he seems to have come to this conclusion through the observations he might have made of the population in general; in accordance to how people act, social norms and maybe through personal accounts. David Foster specifically refers to traits or perhaps qualities of great importance in human nature that people are lacking today’s society (adjusted, conscious and sympathetic) through the change our world has gone through since these qualities seems to have been overlooked by the modern day society.
The fact that this essay was originally made for a commencement speech played an important role in forming David Foster’s thesis and that is where he really develops his thesis and explains the meaning behind it by using real-life examples and evidence that everyone understands. To put things into context, commencement speeches are spoken to university or college graduates as they say it in America on their graduation day, and there are many different messages conveyed through these speeches depending on the speaker, but usually it is to provide graduates small insights on the upcoming challenges of life or even (if you’re lucky) tips on how to deal with these challenges.
So based on his thesis, David Foster really emphasised freedom through education and that this freedom is meant to be achieved after going through all the years of study in school and university but real freedom, according to David Foster is different. To explain this he uses the example of a day-in day-out middle class worker’s life where a person might go through their day according to their personal schedule, personal necessities and personal view of the things going on around them and that this could develop the protagonist disease where one thinks that he/she is the centre of the universe (as if he/she were the main character to every story). Foster then quoted,
“But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.”
Basically, where he is getting at is that people need to be more open to perspectives in this world, embrace the reality that they are situated in through the freedom they have acquired through education with the ability to be adjusted, conscious and sympathetic.
This relates to our inquiry question ‘How can literature develop empathy and emotional intelligence’ since literature enables us to take the role of different perspectives other than ourselves and help us to be more conscious and sympathetic.
