Visigoths v. Athenians--the Visigoths Are Winning

The other day, I wondered aloud if BYU graduation was this week. I discovered today that it is. So the Y on the mountain will be lit up at night-- Always a stunning sight!




It will be 10 years ago in August that I graduated from BYU. The commencement speaker in 1999 was billionaire, Jon Hunstman, Sr., whose wife is the daughter of David B. Haight. As I recall it, Huntsman advocated charitable-giving and service in his address.

One year later, in 2000, Neil Postman was the August commencement speaker at BYU. I listened to his speech via the radio in my kitchen in Orem. Enviously, I lamented that I hadn’t had Postman as my commencement speaker. After all, I had read everything that Postman had ever published. And I, perhaps more than anyone sitting in the Marriot Center on the BYU campus, knew the heart and mind of Neil Postman. I had even read his “My Graduation Speech” several years earlier. I wondered if he would give the one I had read or if he had altered it for his BYU audience. ( It was essentially the same.)

Postman wrote his graduation speech before he was ever asked to give one. The reason he gave for composing an unasked for graduation speech was, “Having sat through two dozen or so graduation speeches [he was a professor at New York University], I have naturally wondered why they are so often so bad. … Here I try my hand at writing a graduation speech, and not merely to discover if I can conquer the form. This is precisely what I would like to say to young people if I had their attention for a few minutes.”

The essence of Postman’s graduation speech was a description of the characteristics of the ancient Athenians versus the Visigoths. It was not merely a recitation of history. The reason for telling the graduates about these people? “ . . . because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.” He hoped, of course, that the graduates would choose to become Athenians rather than Visigoths. Since Visigoths are polar opposites to Athenians, I have omitted what Postman said about Athenians, and instead give you what he said about Visigoths. I thought it might be useful to ask ourselves if we resemble Visigoths or their opposites:


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 a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence indistinguishable from another. A Visigoth's language aspires to nothing higher than the cliché.


The modern Visigoth cares very little about [tradition or social restraint]. The Visigoths think of themselves as the center of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday's newspaper.


A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.



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. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. 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.

Postman died slightly more than three years after his commencement address at BYU. I would like to commend whoever it was who recruited him to be the speaker. I hope the BYU graduates of 2000 have taken to heart Postman’s challenge. And I hope all of us who honor his memory are actively conquering the Visigoths that lurk in our own characters and actions.

"Spock," Berlinski, Postman, and Me

I was barely out of my childhood (lol) when the original Star Trek TV series (1966) became an overnight sensation, and “Spock” became an instant audience favorite with his dry, emotionless, one-word quip: “Illogical.” For a cool-headed assessment of tricky situations, Captain Kirk always consulted Spock, who could be depended upon to think rationally in any crisis. Spock made logic cool. And where his perfect logic wasn’t sufficient to handle the situation, his “Spock Pinch” could save the day.

When I studied logic in college, a vague uneasiness would wash over me as I attempted to identify some “fallacy of logic” in a written argument. Labeling someone’s argument as fallacious, faulty, false, or a deception seemed brashly impolite and tactless. Possibly even dangerous. I had spent my whole life avoiding confrontation; I certainly didn’t want to insult or embarrass anyone by branding their views illogical, false, fallacious, or deceptive. It was “nicer” (and safer) to beat around the bush and pretend to not notice their affront to logic, never mind that their affront was an insult to my intelligence and an embarrassment to my feelings. Sadly, I don’t know that I will ever master the art of dispassionate disagreement. Besides that, I wouldn’t know how to administer a “Spock Pinch” if someone became violent after I pointed out their fallacies of logic.

Now, enter one David Berlinski [photo at left]. I realized the other day that he is the real life embodiment of Spock. He’s cool-headed and emotionless. Logic, to him, is second nature. He doesn’t go around looking down his nose muttering “illogical,” of course. He deftly sizes up a questionable assertion and says something that exposes the faulty thinking or deception for what it is. He is the proverbial thorn in the side of those who are dressed in the intellectual equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes. He has no compunction whatsoever in stating for all to hear, “The Emperor is naked!” – OR—“The ‘science’ here is flawed, and the ‘scientists’ are charlatans who will not ‘allow’ anyone to question or dispute their assertions!” He merely expects “scientists” to hold to the scientific method. (Image that!) When they don’t, but nonetheless claim that their views are “scientific facts,” he exposes them for what they really are; thus he calmly, matter-of-factly, and dispassionately, dispatches them.

At least, calm and dispassionate describes how he looks. After reading several of his articles and his latest book, The Devil’s Delusion, Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, I now know that his cool, thoughtful, solemn, Spock-like demeanor is an outward pose which just barely conceals his satirical wit. I don’t know how he keeps from laughing out loud. He makes me laugh out loud. Maybe he gives himself a hard Spock Pinch, when necessary, to squelch his own gales of laughter.

The scientists who are not laughing are Richard Dawkins and his cronies who worship at the throne of Darwinism. This is not mere invective. Their belief in Darwinism has a decided religious zeal. They are fanatical about it, and scream “heresy” should anyone in their midst dare express any doubts about any aspect of Darwinist theory. They don’t want to hear about or consider any other ideas or theories. They begin screaming “religion” if anyone merely points out apparent “design” found in nature or the universe. However, to their utter fury, they cannot accuse Berlinski of religious motives, because he is “a secular Jew” and an agnostic who is more interested in the exercise of logic itself (as well as exposing those who want to deceive others) than in supplying answers to scientific questions.

Neil Postman, if he were still alive, would probably find Berlinski to be a breath of fresh air. Neil Postman long ago (1969) delivered a rollicking speech at the National Convention for the Teachers of English, with the attention-getting title, “Bull[****] and the Art of Crap-Detection.”

He explained to the teachers that the “best things schools can do for kids is to help them learn how to distinguish useful talk from ... [bovine dung]....” He then said that the four main types of crap-talk were pomposity, fanaticism, inanity, and superstition. Fanaticism, he said, “has almost no tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.” He went on to criticize “isms” saying that “those most enmeshed in it hear no ... [bovine dung] ... whatsoever in its rhetoric, and as a consequence are extremely dangerous to other people.” Postman hoped that somehow the teachers would help their students acquire a “knowledge of how to ask questions, how to validate answers, and certainly, how to assess meanings.” (Skills obviously still needing to be taught.)

Postman would commend Berlinski for his ability to see through the Darwinists’ "bull." And for helping the rest of us have confidence in the face of fanaticism.

Our Kind of Guy (Philo T. Farnsworth)

An article appeared in Time Magazine ten years ago, written by Neil Postman (one of my heroes--he's the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death), telling the story of one of my (and also my children's and my grandchildren's) relatives. The article began:

" For those inclined to think of our fading century as an era of the common man, let it be noted that the inventor of one of the century’s greatest machines was a man called Phil. Even more, he was actually born in a log cabin, rode to high school on horseback and, without benefit of a university degree (indeed, at age 14), conceived the idea of electronic television — the moment of inspiration coming, according to legend, while he was tilling a potato field back and forth with a horse-drawn harrow and realized that an electron beam could scan images the same way, line by line, just as you read a book. To cap it off, he spent much of his adult life in a struggle with one of America’s largest and most powerful corporations [RCA]. Our kind of guy. "


Postman goes on, telling the story of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the television. Please let me know if you'd like to read the rest of the story--which is engagingly told, and not too long.

Now I am going to tell you how I am related to Philo T.--and how you are related to him if you are one of my children or grandchildren.

One of Philo T's grandfathers (also named Philo Taylor Farnsworth) was one of the original settlers of Beaver, Utah, in 1856. As it happens, my 3rd Great Grandfather, Andrew Patterson, was also one of those original settlers of Beaver. Andrew Patterson would become inventor Philo T's Great Grandfather. Andrew Patterson was baptised in Scotland in 1847. A year later, he and his wife and his four children, Margaret, Robert, and twins, Agnes Ann and Mary, crossed the ocean to gather to Zion. The children's mother died of cholera in Missouri in 1848. Twins, Agnes Ann and Mary were only 4 years old.

Mary would grow up to become my 2nd Great Grandmother. Her twin sister would grow up to become a polygamous wife of the original Philo Taylor Farnsworth, pioneer in Beaver, and would become the grandmother of Philo T--inventor of the television. My grandmother (Agnes Ann Bradshaw Edwards) was Philo T's 2nd cousin. My mother is a "2nd cousin once removed" (he was only 16 years older than her).

Therefore, TV inventor Philo T and I are "2nd cousins twice removed." My children are "2nd cousins 3 times removed;" my grandchildren are "2nd cousins 4 times removed." [The "removed" term refers to generations.] If Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the television, ever comes up in a conversation, you can say, "Philo and I are 2nd cousins."

Incidentally, Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, discusses the impact of TV on viewers. Understandably, he concludes the article about Philo T, with the following:

" . . . His attitude toward the uses that had been made of his invention was ... ferocious. His son Kent was once asked what that attitude was. He said, “I suppose you could say that he felt he had created kind of a monster, a way for people to waste a lot of their lives.”

He added, “Throughout my childhood his reaction to television was ‘There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet.’”

So we may end Farnsworth’s story by saying that he was not only the inventor of television but also one of its earliest and most perceptive critics. "