1. In two healthy paragraphs, summarize the speech and show (with framed quotes and paraphrase from the text) what you believe to be the author’s three main points/arguments. Support with textual evidence and include your own initial response to the material.

He starts off talking about how other people start speeches and that he doesn’t want his speech to be like that, but instead talk about something more important to him. One point he says is that, “the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience.” This example shows that if there are two people, because they have different experiences, will think about things in completely different ways. Another example of something DFW strongly believes is about people’s feelings. He says that people are hardwired to think about them selves because everyone is at the center of their own universe, but other people need to communicate their feelings. I do not think this is fully correct because there are times it can be really easy to tell how someone is feeling even if they do not tell you. If someone looks really sad, that is something you are able to know immediately even if they do not tell you.

A third example he gives is about going to a grocery store after working for around nine hours. He uses this as an example of a routine. After work one day, you go to the store, but you will also have to go the next week and the week following. If you only think about your own feelings, you will only think about needing to go there, but if you think about other people and what they could have to deal with, it makes your life not seem as bad.

2. Do you agree with DFW’s main arguments? Why or why not? Explain.

I agree with most of DFW’s main arguments. The points about experience shaping beliefs I think is true because people will always think about things in different ways if you grew up different ways. If someone grew up in a different way. I also agree that you usually cannot immediately know how someone feels, but there are times that you can. If someone looks visibly sad, you will immediately know they are sad, but you can not know why they are sad. Also, if someone is good at keeping their emotions and feelings hidden, you will not be able to tell how they are feeling and can only imagine.

3. Do you believe DFW is referring to empathy, even though he never uses the word? Or is he hinting at something else?

I think DFW is talking about something other than because he talks about how you cant know what others think or feel. In the grocery store example, he talks about imagining other’s with lives worse than yours, but that is an imagination of how they feel, not actually how they feel.

4. Find one DFW quote that evoked a strong response. Paste the direct quote from his piece, then write a few sentences in which you challenge or support his statement.

“Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital,… force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.”

In this quote, DFW is talking about thinking in more extreme cases. I do not think people actually think about it like everyone angry has something they need to do, but I think it is true that people deal with more than you can see and you shouldn’t just judge someone because there is always more that you cannot see. Usually people just drive fast because they want to get to where they are going faster, but there are those times that someone is driving to a hospital meaning you cannot just automatically judge someone or assume they are doing it for no reason.

5. How do DFW’s main points interact with those of Paul Bloom (from our last reading)?

DFW’s main points line up in some parts with Paul Bloom’s. Bloom talks about how the world is too complicated for empathy to work. This is because there are so many people and so many people have different feelings that you can’t think about what they feel all the time. DFW said that you can imagine how people feel and think about them having worse lives than you do, but you cannot actually know how they feel that day. They could feel better than you imagine or worse than you imagine, so just imagining them feeling worse, is not actually feeling empathy.