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August 31, 2006

How FAKE is Burning Man. . .

This is going to take a while, and you still might not get it. . .my apologies in advance if this is the case.

Oh what has become of my beloved Burning Man. Ok, for starters, that's a bit much, even for me. So let's back up.

I've been to a couple of Burning Man celebrations in the Nevada desert. People who are familiar with me generally find this to be a shock. The festival is a moonbat carnival to most people, it's really not, but that's what people portray it as. Let me be straight though, Burning Man IS a moonbat carnival, it's a hippy freak show, it's a bunch of leftist morons sitting in the desert talking about how great Communism is. It's about raw unadulterated sex and violence, it's about free-love and all that jazz.

Burning Man is a lot of other things also. It's about showing up in the middle of nowhere and creating a city, on the fly, on demand. It's also about destroying that city and dancing around it in glee as it burns. It's an oxymoron wrapped in an enigma obscured by camouflage. In short, it's great fun.

Some people have called Burning Man "Mardi Gras on steroids." Let me assure you it's not. It is, but it's not. The night of the burn is like "Mardi Gras on steroids with some blotter acid and an IV drip of tequila". I could talk about the Burn night, but that's not the intent of this post.

The "Community of Burning Man" is a special thing. It's spontaneous, friendly, open, loving and accepting. It's also EXTREMELY judgmental if you're. . . say . . . religious (but only mainstream religion, trying to organize a traditional Canonical Catholic service wouldn't make you any friends, but a hippy dippy worship ceremony with actors playing out the Moon and Sun having intercourse will get you lots of play from the "spiritual" among Burners.) Religion is just one example, if you were to seriously show up with a Pro-Bush, Pro-War or Pro-Israel viewpoint, you'd also most likely be ostracized if you admitted so publically or loudly. Likewise if you had anti-homosexual viewpoints, or a number of other views. Burning Man is tolerant, but it's also intolerant.

Personally, I love Burning Man, I don't agree with half the things other people there do or say, but as I look at, they don't agree with half of the things I do or say too, so it balances. I can say so many horrible things about Burners, each paired with a great thing. It's a brief glimpse of a "possibility for Community" that I can certainly agree with and accept. I could live in a year round Burning Man, I would probably be successful and thrive while generally being pretty happy.

95%+ of Americans and 99%+ of other inhabitants could most certainly not write that above paragraph and mean it.

Burning Man is an ideal living set, it's a fantasy land where there is virtually no crime, no personal property, no income, no expenses, a barter economy based on gifting rather than trading, environmentally friendly (apart from the massive burning destruction at the end of course), tolerant, safe, secure and a haven for personal liberty.

Simply put, most human beings can't handle that. That's not an insult, it's just an examination of reality. Most humans want and need a sense of structure and order, they need to know that there is a "safety net" of public infrastructure (non-Westernized nations less so), they need to know that their personal property and security of person is protected by an organized and capable force. They need to know that the mail will come, not because someone has created a cool art project and is playing mailman, they need to know that the mail will come regardless of whether or not the artist continues his personal commitment. Most need to know that there will be oversight of public eating facilities, clean potable water, etc etc etc. Burning Man delivers all these things, so to the supporter of Burning Man, they may not understand what I'm saying, BUT, at Burning Man, these things are FAKE, they are an illusion. Yeah, there's WiFi now at Burning Man, but it's not economically stable, it couldn't support a society. There's mail at Burning Man, but you couldn't trust it for commerce. There's so so much to see and do and touch and feel and play with and jump on and roll in and more, that Burning Man FEELS real. It FEELS like something you could get behind and support as a "lifestyle".

Alas dear reader, it's FAKE, completely FAKE.

Fake people, doing fake things, creating fake art, in a fake city. It seems real when you're wrapped up in the moment, but in reality, it's just a "vacation", it's not real, and it can't be real, because if it were real, you'd have to support it. For it to be real, people would have to make more of a commitment to it than taking a week off from work and spending evenings and weekends creating costumes.

There are some truly REAL people at Burning Man. In fact I'd suggest that almost all are REAL people. People who deep down realize that they are on vacation, at a great party, and as such, they are generally disposed to good behavior, having fun and not harshing their own or others vibe. That's what makes Burning Man fun, meeting these REAL people in a wholly UNREAL world. That's what makes something in your head click when you pass through the gates (or begin to pick up random CB signals if you've chosen to drive in across the dry lakebed from the East). That click is the "disconnect from reality", you're in the world of Burning Man now. Things are different.

Burning Man truly is a great experience, it's impossible to describe Burning Man in short form. Countless books and DVD's have been devoted to documenting and exploring what Burning Man is. None of them are right, they are just various perspectives offering a view of varying broadness, never encompassing the whole.

I highly recommend the event if you are of the philosophical worldview to "handle" it. To enjoy Burning Man you have to be able to rationally disconnect the two worlds, if you try to bridge them you will fail and only diminish the experience. You have to accept that the world of Burning Man is ordered chaos with outbreaks of Fascism and Anarchy, there is no law, although sometimes there is, and there is order, although sometimes there isn't. If you can "accept" this, if you "roll with it", and you can realize that it's FAKE. You can have a great time.

So I hope I've giving some of you a perspective on Burning Man. So let’s just shift gears here for a second and laugh at just "How FAKE is Burning Man. . . "

The Burners like to think of themselves (as a group) as being generally leftist/Democratic/Progressive in orientation. There are certainly exceptions, this is Burning Man after all. The "collective" of Burning Man embraces many environmentalist concepts and carries them off quite well. The event encourages it's attendees to use environmentally friendly products and to leave no trace (camping lingo: meaning to take everything you bring with you when you leave and leave the environment in as close to the same condition as you found it). There are groups that attend to assist with recycling and green cooking. The event puts a premium on being kind to the Earth and you're bombarded with environmentalist messages throughout. It's is after all a moonbat carnival, a "progressives" party.

Never mind that at the end a significant portion of the content of the event itself is set ablaze to burn unmitigated sending tons upon tons of unmitigated pollution into the atmosphere. Personally, I think it's a sacrifice on the altar of the cult of global warming, but that's another issue.

For years, they've been trying to mitigate this obvious hypocrisy between the conscious of a super-majority of attendees and their actions in burning tons upon tons of wood, paint, plastic, fabrics and other items in the open air.
But finally folks, today, that's all changed:

A group of "scientists" have "created" a way for the Burners to mitigate their destruction of the environment. Burners can now "buy credits" to compensate for their pollution.

Yes, now for just $5, you can burn away to your hearts content. Because someone in the background is going to mitigate your personal pollution, which you are creating just so you can have the joy of burning it.

What's the first project they will fund with the Burners money?

A windmill to provide power for a Native American casino.

See, I told you it was all FAKE.

--Jason

Posted by JasonColeman at August 31, 2006 3:09 PM

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Posted by: GM Roper at September 7, 2006 7:34 AM

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