Comments on: David Foster Wallace

By: Andrew S

Andrew S — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:23 +0000

on the other hand, djinn,

DFW (haha, that sounds like Dallas Fort Worth, I’m easy amused) does point out that we need to avoid certain things — most importantly, “power, money, things.” Because if you worship these things, you will come up short. If you worship money, you’ll never have enough. If you worship beauty, you will never be beautiful enough. If you worship power, you will be too weak.

So he wants something that transcends these temporal things…and I’m thinking he wants whatever that is to be something supernatural or spiritually transcendent. Even as he puts, “This is about life before death,” I think he’s making it an argument that the supernatural/transcendent shouldn’t just be stuff we worry about “after death.” but stuff we put our eyes on now.

By: djinn

djinn — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:52:45 +0000

Yes, there is such a thing as atheism. David Foster Wallace uses the totally scary code word “atheism” as opposite the sweet benign word “belief.” But belief, for DFW does not mean belief in God, rather, it means what we find most important–power, money, things; not a interventionist diety; certainly there is no hint of the supernatural in the speech that I read. Wallace is just extending the meaning of belief, like silly putty, until it breaks. Belive in something, he says; but the something is rooted in the dirty world we can clutch. If the speech has a thesis it is this sentence: “The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. The speech says live now, it’s all there is. Perhaps you should recommend a different speech.

By: Andrew S

Andrew S — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:43:50 +0000

How disappointing, Batman.

Wallace says there is no such thing as atheism, but then his “point” is disappointing.

The question is not if people believe in something — for everyone does — but whether certain things deserve the right to be called “gods” or whether “belief” need be elevated to the status of “worship.” And these are where the answer is “no.” Even making a minimal definition of god as something “supernatural,” you don’t *need* to worship any such thing like that. And the fact that most definitions include other added things (omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, universal, whatever) makes the case even less than one *needs* to believe in such a thing.

Again, much of this post only is problematic because people “worshipped” these various objects. This worship represents an unbending excess in belief…so the “worship” was the part that was problematic.

We have the same problem with the “hero” post earlier…why elevate people to heros? Why treat anyone as a hero? Do you even NEED a hero?

From the rest of his article, I guess I would question: so we have this choice…but why choose something like he suggests…when this too is a kind of laziness? We are simply choosing to believe in something supernatural or eternal or inviolable or something like that. I certainly agree that we should move beyond the “defaults” (and I agree with his later points — it isn’t about morality or life after death or dogma or religion — it’s about life before death), but I think people still give too much credence to certain things.