I’ve never been to the actual burn, but went to a regional one once. And I agree wholeheartedly with you; it was the complete opposite of 1984. I was invited be

I’ve never been to the actual burn, but went to a regional one once. And I agree wholeheartedly with you; it was the complete opposite of 1984. I was invited because of a dude I sat next to at a coffee shop once in a while and had some occasional good chats with. The event was absolutely mind blowing, and I wasn’t really part of the “altered” crowd (I had some beer and a bit of weed, but no psychedelics or anything like that.) Within an hour of our arrival, I was helping a group of people I’d never met who were building a very large structure (that we burned to the ground on Saturday night, naturally.) The biggest takeaway, for me, other than making friends that I still keep in touch with a decade later, was that the reality and social systems we take for granted every day are truly just systems we constructed and don’t have to be how they are. Sure, burner life probably isn’t sustainable as a long-term societal structure, but it was really amazing to take a vacation from normal life and drop into a completely different paradigm. Everyone just pitched in and did whatever needed to be done to make it a great weekend for everyone. We built things, we shared food and drink, we sang ridiculous songs at Jerk Church on Sunday morning, we danced and didn’t care how stupid we looked, and we popped up a temporary community for a weekend. It really stuck with me.