“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

David Foster Wallace, This is Water, Kenyon College Commencement Address, 2005

David Foster Wallace’s opening to his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College elucidates one of the most important insights on human nature that I have discovered: we are often oblivious to that which is obvious. It is said by many that we live in a rapidly developing technological world, always changing and difficult to understand. While it is difficult to understand such new technologies, it is also true that it is difficult to understand what is ever-present. Humans can get used to virtually everything, good and bad. Thus, unless something is new or we have developed a new way to interact with it, we will become blind to it.

In the presence of our extreme powers, such as nuclear weapons, gene-editing technology, and artificial intelligence, this blindness is not just unfortunate. This blindness is dangerous.

“If technology gives us something like the power of gods, we have to have something like the love and wisdom of gods to be able to rightly wield it. Otherwise the misapplication of that power self-terminates.”

Daniel Schmachtenberger

After his opening parable, David Foster Wallace assures his audience that he does not believe that he is the wise old fish and they are the young, ignorant ones. He instead tries to provide his young audience with a recognition of the boring, frustrating, and seemingly meaningless water they will swim through for the rest of their life and the dangers of the cessation of attention to this water. The swimmer needs to repeat to themself, “this is water… this is water,” in order to regain their attention.

The goal of my work is to similarly reorient our attention to and develop an understanding of the water which surrounds us. Water that we spend so much time swimming in yet understand so poorly. We encounter this water in the minds, bodies, schools, workplaces, cities, nations, political systems, belief systems, and universes that we have existed in for so long that we stopped paying attention to them. This water could be seized upon by our newfound technological powers to exterminate our species.

This blog is better thought of as an exploration rather than an exposition of our world. I am not the wise old fish. I do not know where most of the water is. Rather, this blog is my attempt to discover water and, more importantly, how you and I should swim through it.