You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that modern developments, like nuclear weapons and television, magnify human tendencies and the resulting consequences.
David Foster Wallace's quote reflects on how certain advancements, particularly in technology and warfare, have heightened the ethical and moral dilemmas faced by humanity. With the advent of nuclear weapons, the potential for catastrophic consequences has increased dramatically, while television has altered our perceptions and reactions, amplifying both our fears and desires. This idea encourages a deeper examination of how our inherent tendencies are amplified by the tools and technologies we create.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the implications of modern technology, one might quote Wallace to emphasize the responsibility that comes with advancements.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes βEverything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Similar quotes
Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.
When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun.
God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.