“I come as the possessor of the book of Destiny to banish political and moral darkness and to erect the theory of universal harmony upon the ruins of the uncertain science,” Charles Fourier proclaimed two centuries ago to a deaf world.
But after the peculiar Frenchman’s passing, America, if not the world, listened.
Fourier offered a complex theory that sought to direct humans toward their interests. According to his calculations, precisely 810 passional combinations existed. So, each of his communal phalanxes would house 1,620 people — a man and woman for each passional combination — that could pursue cooking, constructing, cleaning, cobbling, i.e., each doing what his or her internal compass, uncovered by science, directed them to do.
Upon the launch of millions of such communes, a sort of millennium on steroids would arrive. The realization of Fourier’s communistic theories guaranteed not just world peace, the perfectibility of man, and heaven on earth, but giant humans living for centuries, friendly sharks and lions, oceans resembling lemonade, new moons, and the aurora borealis forming a crown upon the earth.
When Fourier shared his writings with the American embassy in Paris, a diplomat judged them “either a genuine curiosity or the emanation of a disturbed brain.”
But fashionable people, particularly around Boston and New York, thought otherwise. Those converted to Fourierism included Unitarian minister George Ripley, newspaperman Charles Dana, and novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose Blithedale Romance provided an honest look back at the Brook Farm folly where they all lived as communists. Prominent people in American society, including, especially, future Democratic Party presidential nominee Horace Greeley, fell for the prophecies of a madman.
Fourier immediately invaded thoughts when encountering another failed Democratic Party presidential nominee’s rather incredible remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum earlier this week.
Al Gore compared the dail...
No hoodwinking or hornswoggling here.
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