Bloomberg
October 19, 2011
Plato doesn’t live here anymore.
A pack of feral cats chases the rodents that run past the Gypsy squatters who inhabit the bleak 32-acre Athens park that masks the birthplace of Western civilization. Alexandros Stanas says what’s interred beneath the debris illustrates both a solution to Greece’s 345 billion euro ($473 billion) sovereign debt crisis and why his country roils in catastrophe.
“Economics, politics, philosophy, everything that empowers our reasoning and ability to solve today’s problems was born here at Plato’s Academy,” says Stanas, a former management consultant at the Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism who is now general director of the Art-Athina International Contemporary Art Fair.
“This is the original holy ground,” Stanas says, walking across the garbage that covers the buried foundation of the 387 B.C. intellectual incubator. “This is what we Greeks have allowed to happen to our ultimate metaphor for excellence.”
Stanas, 40, says that Plato’s Academy, discovered by a private archaeologist in the late 1920s, is one of hundreds of forlorn historic sites and destitute museums that generations of Greek politicians of all persuasions have failed to turn into attractions with the marketing clout of Versailles, the academic distinction of Harvard University or the influential draw of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“WEF sells itself as Plato’s Academy in a Swiss village,” Stanas says. “You are standing on the original WEF, the original Harvard, but I can’t envision global leaders coming here for enlightenment and inspiration.”
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