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P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat
Why The Rich Love Burning Man
- Thread starter thujone
- Start date
"...feel smug in the righteous indignation."
check.
nice side-step.
alasdair
check.
nice side-step.
alasdair
perpetualdawn
Bluelighter
What's wrong with a drug-fueled party? All the normal US and Nevada laws apply there, so substances are banned btw, and it is very much enforced. Drug use is very discreet at burning man, or at least it's discreet for people who like to avoid being arrested. There are lots of cops, undercover and non.
But anyways, I'm not defending burning man at all. On the whole I believe it's a positive force on this planet, but there is a lot of hypocrisy around it, it's super wasteful, and pretty easy to see it as a frivolous exercise in opulence. I mean, parties by definition are like that, and burning man is sort of like the mothership of all parties... oh sorry "transformational festivals" (gag)
Nothing at all. As I said, if that's your bag it's all good. The thought was more to do with the pretense of BM doing something significant rather than drug use itself/or the party being a problem. Don't have anything against people using or having a party.. it's the idea that BM is more than that which is the point I would like to express. It's a kool idea for a party I will say that, but is it anything more than a slightly technologically more advanced version of a hippie fest? I can't see how it can be. Which again is fine, but it's the idea that it's somehow going to change things or people that I take issue with. Have we not learned anything from the folly of the hippies? You don't dream a better world, you have to build it. It all seems far too similar to what the hippies tried, and failed, at doing.
so true.
burning man is doing that through, for example, year-round, regional events. i often find that people criticising burning man from a place of ignorance focus on the single event in brc in august. tens of thousands of burners are demonstrably not just dreaming. they're doing.
alasdair
perpetualdawn
Bluelighter
That's exactly what burning man is all about. I was being half-facetious in saying "what's wrong with a drug fuelled party" earlier. BM is definitely a pro-psychedelic space, but much more than being a drug-fuelled party, it's a work-fuelled party (and maybe a few beers too). The whole point of burning man is building challenging shit in a challenging environment with rad friends. It's hard to explain how huge the repercussions of this are into the "real world" - I'm not talking about some airy-fairy paradigm shift or something, I'm talking about the communities that form between hard working people across the globe that get shit done on and off the playa.
I could go on and on about this, but don't forget: burning man sucks and you shouldn't go.
actually there are other possibilities but you can't see them. not because you're not capable of doing do, but because you automatically exclude them out of bias.
sound familiar?
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
alasdair
Really.. show me what you've built then, beyond networking with people.
perpetualdawn
Bluelighter
Sorry I'm not going to show you anything I built. I'm not comfortable with revealing any specifics about myself on here.
I really don't have anything to prove to you about burning man.
I see you're from London, I love your city.
SKL
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 14,632
ali said:
Yeah, I am almost certain I wouldn't enjoy it. The weather would be enough to put me off, not to mention the ideology and the "participatory art." To paraphrase Mark Twain's aphorism about Heaven and Hell, I don't think I'd like either the climate or the company. But I am a cynical, misanthropic, right-wing drug casualty, so what do I know? About drug scenes generally, quite a bit actually. About hippie stuff, probably more than I'd like to admit. I do admit that I am speaking of Burning Man without direct experience but one can draw conclusions from available information. The transformative immediacy and transcendence of the experience of wandering around with a bunch of hippies in the desert, creating weird art, taking drugs and burning some effigy (again, cultic overtones and shades of Bohemian Grove!), yeah, I'm not buying it. "You haven't been there, you just wouldn't understand" is kind of thought terminating and denying other people's analyses. Imagine a Scientologist telling you, "You've never been hooked up to an e-meter and 'audited,' you wouldn't understand."
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I was referring to all burners, not just you personally. Please show me or point me to something burners have done outside of BM.
'there is evidence but you won't see it. i can not fill in the gaps for you, i can not give you foresight and the ability to make the connections between the pieces. you will simply deny it all as non-evidence; as is always demanded you will expect the person to fill in the gaps for you, which is not possible without guiding you through a shift in perspective. i reserve the energy involved in that process for close friends and family, not strangers on the internet who 9 times out of 10 are not really interested in changing their perspective anyway.'
right?
alasdair
right?
alasdair
perpetualdawn
Bluelighter
Oh good that's super easy.. I can find projects much more impressive than my own this way too. You might have heard of some of these projects that burners have done outside of BM, off the top of my head:
-http://www.spacex.com/
-https://www.google.ca
-Tony Hsieh is transforming vegas' downtown with art, education, fostering small business
You might not like those ones, because these are all examples from the ultra-elite silicon valley types. You might say that those projects have nothing to do with burning man. You might be right, or you might not be.
I could dig up some humbler projects that are more obviously related to burning man, art and stuff.
I don't know why I'm getting sucked into defending BM.
The OP was actually really thought-provoking and I have some responses I'm going to collect and post later.
perpetualdawn
Bluelighter
I think almost all of the replies in this thread have been basically off topic, so here's my attempt to look at what the OP brought up:
It's a really interesting idea, and I think it does speak some truth.
It's a cynical take on BM for sure, and I don't think the writer accurately describes BM when he/she says "the lower caste of Burners who want to partake in the festival are dependent on the whims and fantasies of the wealthy to create Black Rock City." While some of the impressive projects at BM are funded by the tech uber wealthies, at least as many are crowdfunded, or funded by grants from BMorg, or just funded by regular folk who have decided to do the crazy thing of sinking their lives and money into some art. For all of the most exciting, spectacular, BM projects that I've been involved in or around, funding came from a variety of sources, but never from a rich psychopathic (or otherwise) demagogue.
But you can't really ever encapsulate BM in a short piece of writing anyways, so I'm not going to spend any more time nit-picking it apart. The piece does point to some truth about burning man, and like the OP picked up on, a certain current in our society's trajectory.
Actually, I think BM is a good arena for dealing with this issue. I feel a lot of words coming on, so I'm going to leave it at that for now and complete the thought later.
PS the photo on the OP's link is priceless:
It's a really interesting idea, and I think it does speak some truth.
It's a cynical take on BM for sure, and I don't think the writer accurately describes BM when he/she says "the lower caste of Burners who want to partake in the festival are dependent on the whims and fantasies of the wealthy to create Black Rock City." While some of the impressive projects at BM are funded by the tech uber wealthies, at least as many are crowdfunded, or funded by grants from BMorg, or just funded by regular folk who have decided to do the crazy thing of sinking their lives and money into some art. For all of the most exciting, spectacular, BM projects that I've been involved in or around, funding came from a variety of sources, but never from a rich psychopathic (or otherwise) demagogue.
But you can't really ever encapsulate BM in a short piece of writing anyways, so I'm not going to spend any more time nit-picking it apart. The piece does point to some truth about burning man, and like the OP picked up on, a certain current in our society's trajectory.
Actually, I think BM is a good arena for dealing with this issue. I feel a lot of words coming on, so I'm going to leave it at that for now and complete the thought later.
PS the photo on the OP's link is priceless:
NSFW:
Alasdair, this sounds like when I try to explain to you about God or the spiritual world.
Right?
it's something ss told somebody in another thread that i felt he could tell himself here. unfortunately, he does not hold himself to the same standard to which he holds others...
ymmv.
alasdair
ymmv.
alasdair
I know you think quoting that post of mine is relevant in this context, but it isn't. Even if I attended BM my opinion would not change, in fact it would most certainly cement the opinion I already hold. There's nothing you can show me or tell me that is going to sway my opinion of BM at this point. Go ahead and accuse me of close mindedness, I don't mind. I would love to believe an event like BM could actually make a tangible difference, a younger me certainly would have believed it were possible. Unfortunately I've seen too much at this point. Cynical bastard before 30, checking in.
swilow
Bluelight Crew
I feel like we should all just try and discuss comments made in this thread rather then referencing other unrelated topics. That's just confusing for people reading it who have no interest or awareness of the other topic/s.
That is very inflexible SS. There is a huge difference between saying you don't see the value in Burning Man to saying you will NEVER see the value. There's very little utility in such thinking.
SS said:
That is very inflexible SS. There is a huge difference between saying you don't see the value in Burning Man to saying you will NEVER see the value. There's very little utility in such thinking.
indeed.
to me, this is a spoon and nothing you can say will make me change my mind:
alasdair