ABSTRACT
An anecdote told by David Foster Wallace concerns two young fish swimming along, suddenly encountering an old fish. 1 The old fish says to the youngsters, “How’s the water?” The young fish keep swimming along; then one young fish asks the other, “What’s water?” The point of the story is that we exist in culture, just as fish exist in water, to the degree that we barely notice it. We spend much of our time not engaged in self-conscious reflection, but acting by instinct or whim, and by relying upon personal or social habit. Instinct and whim can lead to destructive folly. Habitual behavior can make daily life better, if those habits are substantively good. Good habits must consciously be recognized and materially realized. The quality of that which we think affects the quality of that which we do and make. So culture is the conscious realization of qualitative cognition and action. But can we understand the qualitative state of our habits and thus the degree to which we materially realize what is true and good?
