After reading, "This Is Water" by David Foster Wallace and "Noble Lecture" by Toni Morrison, I believe both reflect more differences than similarities than we thought. In Wallace's speech, he talks and mentions how people can be so selfish by making themselves the "absolute center of the universe" and focusing only on their own perspective and not others. "There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of." He also states though, that that kind of attitude is considered our "default-setting" and only we have the choice to either focus on only ourselves, or to be considerate of other people's problems and needs. If we choose to focus only on ourselves, it seems like people are in OUR way but if we think about it from another person's point of view, WE may be in THEIR way. David Wallace explains this in his example of the Hummer cutting him off in traffic.
Toni Morrison's lecture by the way, describes the importance of language. She denounces the quality of language, of words that can be used to hurt people. From her point of view, language was too important to humanity to abuse it in that way. "We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." We must use the power of language for good and change the way it has been used throughout the past.
The main similarity between these two speeches are that we have the right to make choices on how we see things and use our language to either help or hurt people.
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