Atlantis the Metaphor

One of my students is doing a project called "Ask me why I'm mad". When she asked me to participate, I started making a very long list. I'm mad about historical amnesia and scientific illiteracy. I'm mad that we're so dumb at a time when the internet makes it so easy to be smart, well-read, informed. I'm mad about Atlantis:

2,367 years ago, Plato wrote two dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, which told the story of the Island of Atlantis. The gist was that Athens had been attacked 9,000 years previously by the powerful "Atlantics", and that through moderation and virtue, Athens had repelled the onslaught of this more powerful, but morally corrupt enemy. Athens went on about it's business, and Atlantis sank into the sea. This, according to Plato explained why the Atlantic Ocean was so shallow where it meets the Mediterranean.

In Plato's time, or when viewed within the context of the rest of his writing, this story is clearly understood as a parable promoting civic virtue and decrying greed and corruption. Plato didn't mean Atlantis to be real, just like book 7 of The Republic isn't about a magic cave where the secrets of the universe are revealed to prisoners who have been chained up since birth. Both are metaphors that Plato uses to make his point. Classics scholars know this, but somewhere along the way, the rest of us forgot the metaphor.

Today, millions of dollars have been spent searching the Mediterranean with sonar for the ruins of Plato's "fabled utopia". This isn't really about rich idiots though, it's about the millions of people who hear "Atlantis" and think "Mystery". They imagine something like this without ever managing to come across the primary source. When you tell them about Plato and suggest that they read Timaeus and Critias for themselves, they look at you like you've asked them to remove your spleen.

I'm not mad that no one reads Plato anymore. I'm mad that we don't think we know how to read Plato anymore. If we don't, or think we can't, do a bit of homework, it becomes so easy for people to separate the myth from the facts. Bottom Line: Do your homework, or else spend thousands of years searching the bottom of the ocean for a metaphor.

This isn't really about Plato though, it's about the past seven years.