Graduation Speech

Neil Postman makes some very good points in his, “My Graduation Speech.” He speaks about the two paths down which everyone must travel in life. He states that there are only two ways. One must choose one of two ways in which to live his life: the way of the barbarian Visigoths or the way of the civilized, intelligent Grecians. The Visigoths, according to Postman are those of us who
appreciate art, culture, learning, and knowledge. These people are always striving to learn more and attain more knowledge. On the other hand, some people decide to go the way of the Visigoths. These people enter a life of mediocrity. They have no appreciation for the arts, learning, knowledge, or culture. On the contrary, many of them are actually out to destroy and deface these institutions of society.
In class discussion we talked about the possibility that there are more than just these two paths in life. There are possibly more paths that contain a mixture of the two types of people. For instance, some people are not necessarily out to destroy the modern institutions of knowledge, but rather, live more apathetically. They would rather not get involved. Some others constantly pursue knowledge, but this is for selfish reasons only. They do not use their vast learning in order to help and advance society.
Another discussion that was brought up was the reasoning behind the use of these particular cultures in the example Post made. Many people thought that limiting the culture to just the Greeks and Visigoths was unfair and took away form the writing itself. They claimed that there were other cultures as good or better than the Greeks, and conversely, there were those cultures who were as bad or worse that the Visigoths. We must realize, though, that Post was making an example of a good culture and a bad culture. He did not intentionally leave out other cultures of the time. He was merely using these two cultures to illustrate a point. When one makes an example, he does not make an exhaustive list of things that exemplify his point, he picks one that fits the situation and uses just that one, or in some cases, several examples. He does not “leave out” all the other cultures; he just picks situations that fit his argument.
Some others challenged that both of these cultures did not completely fill the roles that were used to describe them. This was illustrated though the knowledge that Greeks were also a warring nation. They went out and conquered other people. Another possibility was that the Visigoths were not completely savage, just that they were more imperialistic. It is true that these cultures did a have some inconsistency, but overall, they do fulfill the illustrations of the arguments of Post.