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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... uni

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 the service of simulating (creating if you like, temporarily) an environment best described as "plenty." Much about our culture is defined by axiomatic scarcity, from which competition emerges. The thing that made me keep going back was the recurring experience of an inverted order, in which a uniquely large scale collaborative game was being played, in which the rules were changed. Lots of rules. This created open social space and possibility. Guards went down and spontanaeity blossomed. Altruism and kindness and generosity were, quite often, emergent. This was of course highly imperfect in a very long list of ways. And there were of course as always, bad actors, bad experiences, and a shadow side. But that does not diminish the power of experiencing the potential of existing in a culture in which the competitive instinct can be harnessed to drive collective rather than individual benefit. Many aspects of the now ossified and largely ignored "precepts" attempted to define and explain the constituent aspects which made this emergent culture function. A fools' errand but an absolutely necessary one in the face of massive growth and the encroachment of the outside rules. Many (most all) cultures have some sort of time-out-of-time in which traditional norms are suspended. It's a pressure valve and a laboratory in which the culture can tinker. I consider myself unspeakably blessed to have lived in SF at a moment when my culture and generation experimented at this scale, thanks to the (at the time permanent-seeming) very temporary apex of the post-Cold War internet boom, when the Bay was still a meeting point between a lot of very creative, very iconoclastic people, and, suddenly, a f--k ton of money and resources. We still have the latter, and it shows in the preposterous scale of very cool vanity projects on the playa now. But we are in a much much darker moment historically and generally, the culture of the Bay is now within the event horizon of money and conventional rules of power. I still have fun when I go, and there is still idealism. But the safety, risk taking, collaborative play from a smaller city and the sense of fellow travelers who frankly were a lot more freakish and non-normal than attend now, lives on only in individual interactions and nooks and crannies. It's still the background radiation shows, and to the extent the "precepts" are pursued, still leads to magic. And it's still a great gathering of freaks, and celebration of potential. Still worth it IMO if you can find the right people. Never expect to see something ignite at that scale again in my lifetime. For a while Occupy had potential to be something more. Ah well.

creep 8y ago
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) something fantastic will happen, something strange that changes me and others. Other than this I really don't know what you're saying about burning man, but I think the concept as I understand it can flourish under modern city-conditions, maybe only in such conditions. There never will be a time when the dam isn't about to burst, unless it already has and we're in that moment of filling up again. That's what's wonderful, there is no permanence. That essential property underlies everything, there is nothing to worry about, no potential lost just funneled elsewhere. Maybe when people recognize this they won't go looking for love at burning man. I'm sure it's still worth it for the surrealism. edit: and you can't get by on just a feeling and a quick session of analysis.
- aaroninsf 8y ago
  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...

creep 8y ago

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) something fantastic will happen, something strange that changes me and others. Other than this I really don't know what you're saying about burning man, but I think the concept as I understand it can flourish under modern city-conditions, maybe only in such conditions. There never will be a time when the dam isn't about to burst, unless it already has and we're in that moment of filling up again. That's what's wonderful, there is no permanence. That essential property underlies everything, there is nothing to worry about, no potential lost just funneled elsewhere. Maybe when people recognize this they won't go looking for love at burning man. I'm sure it's still worth it for the surrealism. edit: and you can't get by on just a feeling and a quick session of analysis.

aaroninsf 8y ago
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...