Charles Fort: Dogma be Damned
by Skylaire Alfvegren
Continued...
The cult of Fort is a cult without dogma. Those who call themselves Forteans entertain the notion that anything is possible, until proven otherwise. They are neither gullible nor pompous. Due to their bemused, balanced approach to the world and its mysteries, Forteans are pariahs to both "true believers" and CSICOP-style skeptics alike. You could be a Fortean, and not even know it.
“This is a country where nuance is a dirty word. People don’t like someone who is open minded. They’re looked at as someone who just ‘hasn’t made their mind up yet,’” notes Skinner. When trying to explain Fort to the man on the street, “It usually comes down to ‘do you believe in weird stuff or don’t you?’” he says. “How often are we asked questions like 'Do you believe in UFOs?', 'Where was Atlantis' and 'What are ghosts?' There are no simple answers and in many areas we don't even know the right questions to ask,” says Rickard.
There are things which exist between our mundane reality and the great unknowns, thereby connecting them. Fort explained, "We are not realists. We are not idealists. We are intermediatists--that nothing is real, but that nothing is unreal: that all phenomena are approximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness. So then: our whole quasi-existence is an intermediate stage between positiveness and negativeness or realness and unrealness. Like purgatory, I think."
In Daimonic Reality, a brilliant Fortean assessment of ‘the unexplained,’ author Patrick Harpur posits that contemporary UFO sightings are but a modern variation of the fairyfolk of bygone eras, that it’s all connected by more than a thread. “Investigators of apparitions are often frustrated by the way that no apparition exists in isolation. One leads to another. We cannot investigate [phantom black] dogs without [mysterious big] cats; cats without fairies; fairies without Bigfoot and lake monsters; any of these without UFOs and aliens.”
“Forteans are often accused of sitting on the fence,” Rickard continues, “but considering the drop on either side to be philosophically untenable, the fence-top can seem a mile-wide ideological rampart. ‘I will find out for myself,’ said Fort, implying that it is our own responsibility, for those of us who also want to know things, to decide on our own criteria of validity.”
“If you’re not locked into a belief system, you can’t condemn anything. Fort was essentially about freedom of the spirit,” says Benjamin. She considers Fort to be America’s leading philosopher. “Fort didn’t believe in censorship, he believed in keeping an open mind. As a Fortean you keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
