Excerpt: "The simulacrum of Utopian Decay" (A.Glass 2020)



"...We have, as a whole over planned within that feverish idea that a future can be created
from a past, we have also become overconfident of that desire to want and know fate. This
might be, philosophically, the underling flaw of a society. Yet, we do not live in the opposite
of a Utopian world, which is a dystopia, rather what is being constantly duplicated, in its
multitude of layering and configuring. Is the myriad of consumer markets that have
become compressed, while they collapse and merge into each other within a confined
digital landscape. So it could be argued that Utopia is dystopia and vice versa. However
this original Utopian template, as mentioned, was maintained in its composure long after
the fall of Communism, firmly setting in place, not so much by design, but evolving into the
21st century’s digital relay loops – social media, the tantalizing idea that a celebrity and an
average person, could, in an illusionary way rub shoulders with each other, within the
cyberspace structure. In a very similar way to Saint-Simon's Utopian vision of the world
interconnected via canals, while placing the productive and industrial classes together.
This was taken a step further by the French philosopher Charles Fourier, who intended to
create multi level apartment blocks, with the rich and famous on the upper levels, with the
middle to lower classes below. Yet all living communally in their representation, that he
devised as an order of “Harmony”, that all participants in this cultural experiment would be
treated equally with the freedom of their individual rights being paramount. Merit and
achievement would be rewarded within, in similarity to Saint-Simonianism, an architectural
design – a building. As a fellow French Utopian, he also believed that the curse to a
socially minded and productive society was the idle class, the lazy and unproductive..."

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Full article:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sR4ucI2Uo_8IYkJB5AeQolVY56U6CnLC/view?usp=sharing

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