Resisting the Allure of Webbed Feet.

I’ve recently gotten an earful of Atlantean nonsense, and I’d like to make a little statement here.

I’m weird, sure. Crazy, maybe. But I am not irrational.

Atlantis doesn’t make sense — at least not the way it’s portrayed in classic “In Search of” episodes. It’s not the lack of evidence — there’s plenty of ignored evidence of advanced stone building cultures long before the standard archaeological time line fits them in. And yes, we can say with some authority that the continents have drifted around. But that’s not usually what people are talking about when they bring up Atlantis.

I reject Atlantis (and Mu, and all of those other “lost” continents) because they are just the goofier side of our regular cultural programming.

The myth of Atlantis originated with a few lines in a fragmented manuscript written thousands of years ago by Plato. He placed Altantis’s time around 9400 BCE, which puts it into the pre-history of pre-history. Any idea Plato had about about places or events 9000 years before his own time would probably be about the same as ideas we have about things that took place in 7000 BCE. Think about it — we are closer to Plato’s time than Plato was to supposed Atlantean time.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that Plato was not talking about a well-remembered historical time, but something fanciful and possibly allegorical — something going on in Plato’s current time that needed to be spoken about in veiled terms.

Keep that in mind. Atlantis began as an allegory, and the modern interpretation of Atlantis is something in the same vein.

Most people who talk about Atlantis (or Mu or Lemuria) mean an island populated with “star people” or alien/human hybrids — the civilization which “fell” due to technological misuse. These are completely modern interpretations — mostly inspired by Madame Blavatsky’s writings in the 1880s. The Atlantis tale gives a warning, true — and possibly a good warning in light of our current planetary predicament — but this Atlantis narrative places humanity as something apart from and above nature.

And I think that’s the point. Culturally we are supposed to believe that humans aren’t part of nature — that we’re super special, and not just the smartest monkeys. Saying that Atlantis was populated by star people is just another way of saying that we’re made in god’s image — but nobody else is. Being descended from Atlanteans seems just a new age way of perpetuating that old cultural message: humans aren’t like the other animals, and we’re clearly bad or evil because of it.

This Atlantis is the new age’s version of Original Sin.

At least it’s not Eve’s fault this time. It’s those pesky aliens (or those pesky fallen angels who bred with human women, depending on your take of the mythos). But still…

I’m so tired of the Atlantis thing. I mean, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you’re probably still dealing with a duck — even if the duck in question is some sort of allegorical tool. It’s tempting to mistake your duck/allegory for something else — particularly if it serves your needs — but let’s give it a rest and talk about something with teeth.

Like this, for example.