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The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

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Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#161

Post by c22 »

lordalch wrote: post #116
wnmurphy wrote: post #60

I went 6 years in a row, and I haven't been since they screwed up the ticket system with a lottery, introducing scarcity that wasn't there before and encouraging people to over-buy tickets out of fear and game the lottery website. In my mind it's turned into a side gag from HBO's Silicon Valley, where entitled tech bros throw money at plug-and-play camps in the hopes of seeing world famous DJs play unannounced sets,…

My understanding was that BLM limited the number of tickets they could sell, and they decided to make the tickets go by lottery rather than raise the price. If I were planning to go to Burning Man, I would just plan to buy the $1,200 ticket and skip the angst.

If you become part of an established camp that contributes significant art or experiences back to the community BMorg also offers directed group sales allowing your key contributing members to skip the lottery at the regular price.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#162

Post by c22 »

jl2718 wrote: post #120

All the idealism of burning man pretty much dies as soon as you realize that everybody’s on drugs. It’s a dark path. Some people do alright. On a long enough timeline, most don’t.

While there's definitely a larger percentage of the public "on drugs" than you find in day to day life (and a lot more people drunk on alcohol), there are still many sober people at the event. I'd posit at any given time the majority of participants are sober, with the exception, perhaps, of Friday and Saturday night.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#163

Post by the_af »

c22 wrote: post #155
the_af wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not arguing against the existence of Burning Man -- it does seem silly to me, but like many things I consider silly, it has the right to exist and other people can enjoy them.

I'm arguing against the idea that "any able-bodied person" can attend Burning Man, or events like it. Lots of healthy people cannot afford to attend events like that, for multiple reasons.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#166

Post by jdietrich »

adrianN wrote: post #146
jdietrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an advertising executive or a software developer and decide that you'd be happier living in the desert and making weird sculptures from scrap, that is very much an option . Living in a cabin in the woods or sailing around the world or establishing a commune for circus artists is a thing that you can do, and you don't need to be a millionaire to do it.

Living in a shed with basically no income works okay while you're relatively young and healthy. It really kills your chances of living comfortably when you're old and can't work on your potato patch anymore.

If you're a software developer or an advertising executive, you have a lot of options in terms of freelancing, consulting and remote employment. You have more choices than just conventional employment or voluntary destitution.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#167

Post by aaroninsf »

creep wrote: post #33
aaroninsf wrote: post #20

Not going this year; have gone maybe 20 times starting in 95. There was IMO and experience genuinely something special (I won't say unique, but probably... unique) there, which is now vestigial. Still discoverable but at a time, in some strata of the event, all but axiomatic. I would describe that special thing as an emergent aspirational culture of techno-utopianism made possible by expending profound resources in t…

You'll always find the freaks in society if you're authentic about your freakish nature, to address one point in your comment. It's simple but I really do have this kind of emergent, creative, slightly anarchist experience in every day life simply by stepping out the front door. As long as I have the presence of mind to recognize myself in someone else (and empathy, and genuine other-love with that self-love) somethi…

Another way to put what I was trying to say about the genuine uniqueness of living in a culture of plenty, instead of scarcity, is that it was a particularly affecting variation the experience of immersion in a different culture.

The closest comparison I have in my own life is what it's like when you're somewhat self-aware and find yourself in a culture where the social norms and expectations are different.

In the case of my own experience at BM, I consistently found a hybrid synthesized culture which clearly emerged from the people who chose to be there and put themselves 'out', but also, transcended any particular subculture or precursor.

I used to randomly encounter and take long walks with another artist who'd started going around the same time, and a recurring topic for us was what happened when the ravers colonized.

My take was that if it was a choice between them and their MDMA-fueled energy, and the much darker FSU punk acid/speed/alcohol faction which was the primary counterbalance for a long time, I'd take the ravers.

But that changed thing and dilluted the weird equilibrium and skewed it a lot more towards "conventional" (sic) rave culture. Which is a fine thing but not the same exactly.

Yet a different take would be to simply observe that never and nowhere have I experienced what it means to live in a city for a week, year after year after year, which is intentionally constructed by and for and populated by a lot of people who take their psychedelic experience seriously (c.f. Pollan's Changing Your Mind). That sounds hokey or derisively dismissible, and it absolutely meant a lot of superficial edges which were...

...but it also created a social space that is truly a foreign place, not least, when it's inhabited not for a night or a weekend but for a week or more.

Totally unsustainable, under the requirements of current civilization, and not advisable IMO even if it were.

But as a place to suspend the norms for a week and be reminded that this is all of it a collaborative consensual construction and what we assert as "normal" is merely the artifact of our own limitations and historical moment?

Unspeakably valuable and unique in my experience...

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#168

Post by aaroninsf »

nafey wrote: post #44
aaroninsf wrote: post #20

Not going this year; have gone maybe 20 times starting in 95. There was IMO and experience genuinely something special (I won't say unique, but probably... unique) there, which is now vestigial. Still discoverable but at a time, in some strata of the event, all but axiomatic. I would describe that special thing as an emergent aspirational culture of techno-utopianism made possible by expending profound resources in t…

That's very well written. As someone who has never been to BM I wonder if it also is suffering due to larger trend of increasing skepticism and hostility towards SV. Thoughts?

TLDR the expulsion from the [ utopian giddy visions of pre-first-boom-collapse internet culture ] garden most definitely changed things.

For myself I'd say that back in the day, I had the luxury born mostly of historical blind luck of going to that event and seeing it blow up, when for a brief period it really seemed both like we were over a hump, as a civilization, and things were going to get better (for all), and we in SV were right there making it happen.

That naive optimism married to the de rigeur aggressive curiosity, monomanaical focus and work ethic, intelligence, and growing affluence of the boom times, really defined how things scaled up.

Fast forward to today. SF is again in the midst of profound inequality and cultural shift; an industry which collectively seemed headed towards doing no evil is now beset by endless . scandal for ethically dubious behavior; the current boom has been defined publicly, accurately or not, as identified with a cavalier contempt for the interests of the commons...

...and the political moment is much much darker.

Not just in the industry, or the Trump years; also things like Occupy and BLM and our various neocon fabricated military excursions have reminded everyone at some deep level, things are not actually getting inevitably better, have never been getting better for _all_, are really broken in lots of ways; and now we are more divided than ever...

I think all of this inevitably translates through the preconditions into BM as much as anything.

TLDR it's only able to be a distillation of what's brought into it, which has changed.

Today I personally wrestle with whether it is "OK" to go indulge myself in escapism, when [ so much ] is going wrong.

It is, if it makes life worth living; but that's a different thing than not having to even ask the question.

(A wiser older me recognizes those questions were always there, but there was a giddy moment in which they were collectively disregarded in favor of self-serving but well-meaning optimism.)

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#169

Post by c22 »

the_af wrote: post #163
c22 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not arguing against the existence of Burning Man -- it does seem silly to me, but like many things I consider silly, it has the right to exist and other people can enjoy them. I'm arguing against the idea that "any able-bodied person" can attend Burning Man, or events like it. Lots of healthy people cannot afford to attend events like that, for multiple reasons.

I think your argument misses the point because any able bodied person can attend Burning Man if they make doing so a priority in their life. No one is arguing that people who don't care too much about attending don't manage to go, and frankly, even with a bunch of disposable income if your trip to Burning Man was "easy" you're doing it wrong.

Re: The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man

#170

Post by the_af »

c22 wrote: post #169
the_af wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing against the existence of Burning Man -- it does seem silly to me, but like many things I consider silly, it has the right to exist and other people can enjoy them. I'm arguing against the idea that "any able-bodied person" can attend Burning Man, or events like it. Lots of healthy people cannot afford to attend events like that, for multiple reasons.

I think your argument misses the point because any able bodied person can attend Burning Man if they make doing so a priority in their life. No one is arguing that people who don't care too much about attending don't manage to go, and frankly, even with a bunch of disposable income if your trip to Burning Man was "easy" you're doing it wrong.

I don't know how I can put it more simply: it's definitely not true that any able bodied person can attend Burning Man.
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