Mason & Dixon questions

[David Morris]

>From: "Saurio
>
>Well, maybe I´m misinterpreting but this scheme sounds like some kind
>of phalanstery. Is about this what Pynchon is writing about?
>

Main Entry: phal·an·stery
Pronunciation: 'fa-l&n-"ster-E
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural phal·an·ster·ies
Etymology: French phalanstère dwelling of a Fourierist community, from Latin 
phalang-, phalanx + French -stère (as in monastère monastery)
Date: 1846
1 a : a Fourierist cooperative community b : a self-contained structure 
housing such a community
2 : something resembling a Fourierist phalanstery

Main Entry: Fou·ri·er·ism
Pronunciation: 'fur-E-&-"ri-z&m, -E-"A-"i-
Function: noun
Etymology: French fouriérisme, from F.M.C. Fourier
Date: 1843
: a system for reorganizing society into cooperative communities of small 
self-sustaining groups
- Fou·ri·er·ist /-E-&-rist, -E-"A-ist/ noun

Fourier, Charles

1772–1837, French social philosopher. From a bourgeois family, he condemned 
existing institutions and evolved a kind of utopian socialism. In Théorie 
des quatre mouvements (1808) and later works he developed his idea that the 
natural passions of man would, if properly channeled, result in social 
harmony. To achieve this goal, many of the artificial restraints of 
civilization were to be destroyed. The social organization for such 
development was to be based on the “phalanx,” an economic unit composed of 
1,620 people. Members would live in the phalanstère (or phalanstery), a 
community building, and work would be divided among people according to 
their natural inclinations. Fourier was not ready to discard capitalism 
completely; basically his ideal was an agricultural society, systematically 
arranged. His writings anticipated the 20th-century social problems 
resulting from mechanization and industrialization. Fourierism obtained a 
number of converts in France, and several newspapers spread the doctrines, 
but followers failed to establish any lasting colony there. After Fourier's 
death his principal disciple, Victor Prosper Considérant, tried to found a 
colony in Texas. Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley were the principal 
figures in the sudden and wide development of colonies in the United States. 
Brook Farm was for a time Fourierist. The most successful of the communities 
was the North American Phalanx at Red Bank, N.J.

>A phalanstery, for those who doesn´t know is some sort of utopical close 
>community, something like a building-city, a huge architectonic
>structure for people to live in and never go outside because all their
>needs are satisfied within.

Sounds like Paolo Soleri:
http://www.arcosanti.org/arcology/hb/index.html

The Hyper Building is an Arcology. In an Arcology, architecture and ecology 
come together in the design of the city. Arcology is the implosion of the 
flat megalopolis, the modern city of today, into a dense, complex, urban 
environment which rises vertically.
The concept of a one-structure system is not incidental to the organization 
of the city, but central to it. Such an urban structure hosts life, work, 
education, culture, leisure, and health in a dense, compact system which 
also puts the untouched open countryside at the fingertips of the residents. 
The compactness of an Arcology gives 90 percent more land to farming and 
conservation than today's urban and suburban sprawl. This compactness makes 
an Arcology a more workable system.


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