The egocentric view of the world that David Foster Wallace discusses in his speech is an accurate explanation for the way that Jack Hooker lives his life. His failure to be as successful as the two neighboring hotels makes him miserable. DFW explains in his speech that we don’t have to think this way. We can choose how to look at the events that we go through.
Jack is accustomed to focusing on each event’s effect on him. His main priorities being the success of his motel and how his business compares to the competition. As DFW explains, “thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice”. For Jack, his goals and successes are all that he cares about and therefore all that he focuses on. If he could himself in his competitor’s shoes, DFW believes that he would feel differently, and maybe even happier.
Although it is much harder to think of each thing that you have to go through from the perspective of someone else, it can be beneficial in the long run. DFW says,”If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable.” If Jack could look at each situation with the perspective of Donna may be what he needs to do in order to learn to care for her and what she is doing by running her business in the same way as him.
