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The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

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Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#151

Post by c22 »

kiliantics wrote: post #141
alevskaya wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is claiming that BM is a replacement for local civic involvement! But I also don’t like the moral tone of claims about what other people -should- be doing with their time. Sure, some people just go out there to party - who cares? I recall H. L. Mencken: “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” As much as we’d like to make it more accessible, it -is- a weird art event in the remote…

Many people talk about burning man as if it is an experiment for a new kind of alternative society and your comment was reminiscent of that kind of talk - "we’ve become divorced from the act of creation and civic participation... it’s worth trying to address that". This rhetoric always sounds to me like burners believe they have found the cure and if only everyone would see the world as they do we would live in harmo…

It is different than a party because of how participant driven it is combined with the scale. Sure you can see your friend's band at a house party, but most parties the size of Burning Man are entirely controlled by a single large entity, like Budweiser. When people talk about the fall of Burning Man they are really lamenting a trend to more centralized control and less participant interaction.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#152

Post by c22 »

kiliantics wrote: post #37
alevskaya wrote: post #23

I started and ran a science-oriented theme camp out there for over a decade as an impoverished academic, and a lot of my friends in the Bay Area help build or manage the event. I’m neither rich nor a hippy. To me, the fundamental idea of the event is that we’ve become divorced from the act of creation and civic participation due to being enmeshed in a highly commodified, transactional society and that it’s worth tryi…

You may not be rich, but you are not poor. How can these projects be about civic participation if they're not inclusive to the kinds of people that can't afford to take time off work and trek across the country to go camping in the desert? There are lots of ways people try to address the problems of our "highly commodified, transactional society" within their own communities, where everyone is capable of participatin…

For what it's worth I managed to attend Burning Man for $500 all inclusive one year while I was between jobs on a low income ticket, admittedly, though, using camping gear I already owned. I also attended multiple years while working at a slightly-above wage retail job, but I did have to make Burning Man a financial priority for myself those years.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#153

Post by thiswillis »

Our open-borders globalist world is built on the premise of "differences without distinction." Nothing about that inspires idealism in the long run. Burning Man is another example of a Leftist celebration that only really mattered to it's adherents when it was still exclusive.

Hypocrites!

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#154

Post by wavefunction »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #35

I recall reading an article a few years ago about how every year, people declare burning man “dead” or dying. People write articles about how it’s not how it used to be. How the message is lost. Every year. When I talk to people who go, most of them seem to suggest it’s still an amazing place. I guess it largely depends on who you are. I really dislike the society we’ve built. It feels too focused on work (I live in…

You can find much of what you might find at Burning Man in other places in the world. I think it's amazing primarily to people who've never been or aren't regularly exposed to those things.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#155

Post by c22 »

the_af wrote: post #150
erikpukinskis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was kind of shocked at that number, people getting 0 days of vacation? But no, the figure in your reference is paid vacation. These people ostensibly take non-paid days off. I expect most Burning Man attendees are not getting paid to attend, and that's a strange bar to set.

A lot of "able bodied" people in many countries simply cannot afford to take time off to go to some party in the desert. They don't have the money, they have problems, their jobs can easily be lost, they have families (maybe spouses or kids who do NOT want to go to the desert). Plenty of real-world reasons to be able-bodied and NOT being able to attend some desert party on a whim.

Unfortunately the culture of Burning Man requires the excess resulting from thousands of people with the resources to over-prepare. Without this dynamic it's doubtful the event could exist with many of its core principals. There are people in our society that are stretched too thin to visit art museums, but this doesn't mean that art museums don't provide an immense benefit to the community as a whole.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#156

Post by c22 »

barbs wrote: post #88
eanzenberg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but this is such a toxic mentality. Yes any able-body person that wants to can work and take a week off if they wanted to. Most don't, and many can't because of responsibilities such as having kids.

You can bring your kids

And they're free under 12...

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#157

Post by peterwwillis »

beaconstudios wrote: post #148
peterwwillis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, this isn't all the attendees, but for the repeat ones, yeah. It is sad. They say things like they're "home" when they're at a burn, and they literally get depressed for a week back in the "default world". The fact that these people seem completely incapable of understanding how to live the life they want more than 1 week a year is astounding. If you want to be naked, spin fire, drink and do drugs with your f…

> They say things like they're "home" when they're at a burn, and they literally get depressed for a week back in the "default world". That's probably the MDMA comedown, to be honest.

Not exactly. It's a different kind of chemical comedown, similar to what's called "drop" in the bdsm world. People get so excited about finally doing what they love with people who accept them, and then the actual excitement of doing those things spins off lots of natural chemical highs. When they have to leave they're both depressed in general that they have to leave those things/people behind, and then also have a drop off of those natural "high" chemicals. It's common for people who leave non-drug-related conferences or weekend-long parties to be affected by it, for up to a week or more.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#158

Post by c22 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #130
rednerrus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't one of the issues that many of the people who come now don't bring their own experiences? Are they there to consume experience rather than creating it?

Is that an issue?

To some extent it is because the extra participants still bring all the negative impacts of extra people, like lines and overflowing porta potties, without offering something back in kind (more experiences to alleviate the lines, more rusted bike repair, whatever). Also people who are less participatory are less invested in the event and more likely to carelessly vandalize the works produced by others.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#159

Post by c22 »

zasz wrote: post #135
astura wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its possible the event only feels meaningful merely because its only one week a year. If it were all the time if would be just "part of the daily grind."

Oh, I think it's a lot bigger than that. The woman was the leader of a known, established Burning Man camp. I'm pretty sure the friendships she developed there are more meaningful than the ones she has outside of Burning Man, and it's a bit sad the rest of her life doesn't give her the same social validation. I think we've failed a bit as a society if we can't give people what they need to feel happy on a _slightly_…

I don't know about this woman, but a lot of my current real-world social structure is currently comprised of people I met while forming a burning man camp around an art project. The fact that Burning Man ends each year does not negate these people or relationships from the world on some magical 51 week suspension.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#160

Post by c22 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #28
fiter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things you can only reasonably do once a year, and I think it'd be a disservice to them to not do some planning. I like to think of it like a harvest festival: we've worked all year, let's enjoy some of the fruits of our labor.

But it would be like judging people who work in the field, spending the entire year on the centerpiece and then burning it to the ground after the festival.

All art, like all things, is ephemeral. Burning Man just makes this explicit.
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