Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Athenians vs. Visigoths
Posted by Zach in Art News

 

 

More than any time in my memory, it seems that Americans are interested not just in political or cultural labels, but rather in the mindsets that provoke them.  As the culture divide widens, more and more people try to justify why they find themselves on a particular side of the crack.  Perhaps the differences have always existed, but the discussions concern behavior less than they concern the precommitments that inform behavior.  Some see morality as a limited thing that minimizes harm (Don’t kill; Don’t steal).  Others see morality as a wider transcendent category that also defines a noble life (Be ye kind; Honor thy father and mother).  Some see the family as an indivisible societal unit that transmits cultural norms and diminishes selfishness.  Others see the family as a hierarchal structure that inhibits expressive morality and erodes the possibility for an egalitarian society.  American presuppositions about a moral order are no longer assumed.  They are now in a state of constant attack or assertion.  More than ever (in my memory) the values of self-control compete with the values of self-expression, and not just in practice.  The contest extends to the theoretical plane where people debate whether one ought to bend truth to one’s will, or whether one ought to bend one’s will to truth.

Though there are many good pieces of ideological analysis, I thought I’d dust off one from the late Neil Postman.  This is from a commencement speech he prepared in case he should ever be asked to deliver one.  Ladies and Gentleman, I present Mr. Neil Postman.

 

“… I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.

The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens…. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.

About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago…

… The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics….

… Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us–in this hall, in this community, in our city–there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.

To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.

To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind’s most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth’s language aspires to nothing higher than the cliche.

And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.

Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths….

… I can wish for you no higher compliment than that in the future it will be reported that among your graduating class the Athenians mightily outnumbered the Visigoths.”

 

Go be an Athenian!

4 Responses to “Athenians vs. Visigoths”

Matt comments:
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

I find it curious that Postman depicts the Athenians as the peaceful, thoughtful dudes and the Visigoths as the warmongering bastards, and yet you chose the imagery of an Athenian warrior. Did you have a specific reason for choosing that image, or am I reading way to far into this?

I loved the write-up, and am a huge Athenian fan now! Although I’m thankful that they’ve added clothing to the hundred yard dash these days.

Zach comments:
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

The reason I chose to include an illustration of an Athenian warrior is that it happened to be laying on Justin’s desk.

From History we know that the Athenians weren’t pacifists, and I doubt that Postman objects to war per se. I think the big division between the Athenian and the Visigoth isn’t war, as much as it is the idea that meaning exists somewhere outside ourselves. The Greeks strove for self-fulfillment through the pursuit of eternal ideals. Visigoths, according to Postman here, strove for self-fulfillment through the pursuit of temporal appetites. The pursuit of self equals destruction. The pursuit of ideals equals construction. The war question asks what each fought to preserve. I think the answer might illumine further differences.

jen comments:
Thursday, November 20th, 2008

It’s interesting to think of Athenians vs. Visigoths in terms of the two media heavy-weights themselves…Postman vs. McLuhan. Ideas vs. applications. Kinda the same thing?

Zach comments:
Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I don’t know. It might be, but it seems hard to say which one is about ideas and which one is about applications. Postman and McLuhan both construct ideas about the unobtrusive ubiquity of media. In my opinion, they both apply their ideas, but Postman paints with a wider moral brush. Postman once said, “I don’t see any point in studying media unless one does so within a moral or ethical context.” I think this is why his conclusions seem much more passionate. Crying out loud, he sounds like an Old Testament prophet when he writes about the deadly cocktail of politics and media. So in a way, I think they’re both men of ideas, and they each apply their ideas, but McLuhan serves sociological interests sort of dispassionately, whereas Postman sermonizes. For example, he suggests that a visual mode of communication changes the essence of information “from discursive to nondiscursive, from propositional to presentational, from rationalistic to emotive.” But then he applies a moral view, “Sesame Street, Sixty Minutes, and Survivor all share the same ethos. Amusement. The media environment of television turns everything into entertainment and everyone into juvenile adults.”

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