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Why do they burn a man at Burning Man?
- ajay-b 5y agoI am very surprised that there has not been a Burning Woman movement, figuratively at least.
- Retric 5y agoI think feminists are perfectly ok with burning a man in effigy. But that’s ok, we can get some masculismists behind this quest for equality! But what about children and the elderly... Hell why limit it to humans, dolphins in there wet little world are getting off light here. Lets burn them, let’s burn them ALL! HA HA HA!!! Which hopefully answers that one.
- bredren 5y agoThere big change recently is that the Man design is no longer only designed by one white man in collaboration with the now deceased founder. Presuming an “official” BM goes forward again, I would not be surprised if the man design changed to to include female features
- throwaway1777 5y agoThis has been discussed ad infinitum in the burning man community. Burning man is totally inclusive of all genders.
- xwdv 5y agoIf that’s true why not change the name then to Burning Person or something gender neutral, maybe just Burning?
- Zababa 5y ago"man" can be used in a gender-neutral way.
- rcoumet 5y agoNot in the LGBT... community
- chokeartist 5y agoBecause it doesn't matter. Troons will ruin everything if you listen to their endless babble.
- throwaway984393 5y agoInertia.
- rendall 5y ago... Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe in which there had been no Burning Man. One day, you read an article about people who gather in the middle of the desert and burn a woman in effigy and call their event Burning Woman. The article neutrally describes the event: gift economy, participatory culture, light art, costumes, shirt-cockers, maybe drugs. It's Burning Man, but in this universe, the exact same event just happens to be called Burning Woman. Would there be accusations of misogyny, credible enough to shut down the event, or no?
- ajuc 5y agoThere is a somewhat similar tradition in Poland (without the gitf economy art and drugs). People burn an effigy of winter god called Marzanna on the first day of astronomical Spring (and/or throw it into a nearby river). It's common in most Slavic countries I think, but in some of them it vanished because catholic church was fighting it at one point. There are accusations of misogyny because that's the world we live in, but mostly nobody cares cause it's fun for kids. Ironically this pagan tradition comes from a religion that was much more woman-friendly than catholicism that replaced it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gremloni 5y agoThere was in Salem a few centuries ago. Good times.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoNo (alleged) witches were burned at Salem. They were all hanged, except one who was pressed to death.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nonameiguess 5y agoThat was way more interesting than I expected. Apparently, ritual sacrifice of humans in which music is played, probably to drown out the cries of the victims, goes back millennia to many ancient cultures in every continent that almost certainly had no contact with each other. And the author speculates there is a "Purge" like thing going on with continued violence at rock concerts and violent deaths of musicians themselves bringing a sort of collective catharsis to stave off even worse violence if we didn't let our ya yas out somehow. I was just expecting to hear whoever originally organized this festival watched Wicker Man one too many times or something. But I suppose Wicker Man itself would be a manifestation of this older tradition.
- warent 5y agoI don't get it. What are our ya yas? In what way is injuring or killing a person cathartic?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fossuser 5y agoI agree - I found the writing to be the kind of thing that makes me immediately skeptical. A lot of fanciful connections that seem “smart”, but without much to back it up - it’s possible there’s truth to some of it, but someone could similarly argue a different reason and make it sound just as good. I suspect it’s overconfident in what the causes are and drawing more of a conclusion than what’s there.
- nonameiguess 5y agoTo be perfectly clear, I am not in any way intending to advocate for the position that we should feel catharsis from injuring or killing people. But it's there. We are all descended from violent predators that got by in the world by killing other animals. A lot of people still do that for sport. Even just with human sport, perhaps you've never played a contact or combat sport where you directly hit other people. Whether or not it's right that it should be this way, I can assure you that it feels really good. I used to be a tank commander, and I guess I was lucky as hell to never have to kill someone myself, but I'll never quite forget my first commander at the armor school who would get us pumped up talking about when he graduated, he'd gone straight to Ramadi to replace a platoon leader who'd just been killed in action and how it made his dick hard to think about blowing up hospitals. The man was an absolute psychopath, but there is no denying a lot of people like that exist. The commander of my lead 2 tank had once shredded a man with a .50 cal from less than a hundred feet away and found it the most addictive thing he'd ever done. As the war started to wind down and normal units no longer got real combat assignments, he was determined to move into the Special Forces to stay in the game. That guy was never going to be normal again. Whether it is sports, actual combat, sexual dominance and sado-masochism, or even just extreme endurance athletes and alpine mountaineers putting their own bodies through hell, pain inflicted on others and pain inflicted on yourself can be quite addictive, and it is definitely better for society if we can find some way to do this ritually rather than by actually starting wars. Ideally not via human sacrifice, but you know, somehow.
- Lammy 5y ago> That is one of the key learnings we draw from René Girard (1923-2015), a pathbreaking thinker who life’s work focused on the importance of ritualized sacrifice in human culture. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care
- throwawaybutwhy 5y agoYeah, was disappointed there were no other references to the Bohemian Grove in the comments.
- Lammy 5y agoThey liked tiki torches before it was cool https://i.imgur.com/AHeJtqK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AHeJtqK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/6I3pIl0.jpg https://i.imgur.com/6I3pIl0.jpg
- lanevorockz 5y ago80k is not a huge crowd by any accounts .. it's not even one trump rally
- dghlsakjg 5y ago80k people for a few hours in a stadium surrounded by infrastructure purpose built for it is a completely different matter than 80k people on a featureless, waterless, hot desert plain for a whole week.
- danachow 5y agoIsn’t this like half of central Africa?
- rbanffy 5y agoThis is an event where 80K people go to the desert for a week for no practical reason, then clean up after themselves and go back to where they came from.
- throwaway984393 5y agoMore specifically it's a Trump rally where people show up out of nowhere, sleep at the rally for a week with no facilities of any kind, and then leave absolutely no trace that they were ever there. Most humans couldn't pull that off with just 10 people, much less 80,000.
- gremloni 5y agoIt’s quite hard to get to and depending on how you prepare a bit of a survival experience.
- tosstoyevsky 5y agoThey’ve been burning Zozobra in Santa Fe since the 20s. Not a music thing per se, but a symbolic burning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra
- ericbarrett 5y agoIn fact the annual burning of Zozobra took place last night! Around 27m in: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WpGpa_nLTEs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WpGpa_nLTEs
- transfire 5y agoI miss Zozobra. Been some 20 years since I lived is Santa Fe. Don't recall it being covered on TV like this back then. Seems like more attending too. But yeah, I suspect the idea for burning man must have originated with Zozobra.
- prpl 5y agoWell it goes quite a bit further than that, and it’s celebrated in other parts of the state (I remember burning of Zozobra in Farmington in early 90s)
- waprin 5y agoThe author talks about linking it to human sacrifice, which is definitely an angle worth considering. But there are some others- 1. Immediacy is one of the ten principles of burning man, and burning the art when finished forces people to appreciate it in the moment while it still exists. It’s worth noting a lot of art is burned, not just the man. 2. Fire is aesthetically pleasing . A huge percentage of the burning man crowd is into fire dancing and fire arts 3. They burn the Man because that’s what they do - similar to abstract art you can just accept how that makes you feel rather than needing to cognitively analyze it. 4. It connects to both eastern and western religion. Impermanence is a pillar of Buddhism and a man publicly dying is a pillar of Christianity Of course I don’t think drawing a connection to human sacrifice is outlandish as a ritualistic burning of a symbolic man during a large semi-spiritual gathering is easy to connect to human sacrifice. But it’s worth considering a few other ideas.
- chrononaut 5y ago> a man publicly dying is a pillar of Christianity OT, I am not deeply familiar with any particular religion, but do you have more information on this, or perhaps why it is a pillar? Do other religions not have something similar in their [historical/current] practices?
- WJW 5y agoHe's talking about Jesus being crucified. The whole religion is named after the guy.
- jhgb 5y agoBut why is it not a pillar of ancient Celtic religion, for example? They were literally burning people in wicker cages for religious reasons. When you say "burning man", I certainly imagine druids much more readily than Christianity.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoI expect most Americans are much more familiar with Christianity than with ancient Celtic religion.
- jlrubin 5y agoI think this article lacks an actual history of the event as opposed to the meaning people seek at the event today. It's my recollection -- from speaking with some long time san francisco residents -- that the original burning man was really a burning woman, and was an effigy of one of the founder's former girlfriends. If you look at photos of the first burn, the "man" appears more to be a woman in a hands-on-hips scolding posture https://www.presidio.gov/blog-internal/PublishingImages/then-and-now-burning-man-at-baker-beach/1986-burning-man-at-baker-beach.jpg https://www.presidio.gov/blog-internal/PublishingImages/then... . Subsequent burns shifted to a more neutral hands at sides posture. Of course, if you speak to the original burners the somewhat misogynistic roots have been smoothed over to clarify that the man is a more universal symbol. There are some decent articles https://www.trippingly.net/burning-man-musings/2019/2/14/why-did-larry-harvey-burn-the-first-man https://www.trippingly.net/burning-man-musings/2019/2/14/why... that cover the different accounts of the first burn, which is a bit more well researched that "something a SF long time resident told me".
- bsksi 5y agoHating an ex is a misogynistic act? Surely some women also hate their exes?
- michaelt 5y agoSure - but if I, a stranger, am really looking forward to seeing the burning of an effigy of some dude's ex-girlfriend, that would make me look pretty weird.
- bsksi 5y agoI think we can all sympathise with that sentiment, regardless of our sex :P
- Zababa 5y agoI don't know, burning a symbolic "ex" could be something many people would relate too. Instead of taking out your anger on a real human, you take it out on a symbolic effigy. It's better for everyone involved.
- grey-area 5y agoLots of festivals before and since burn a wicker man, it has its roots in pagan mythology, but the reasons are probably not complex; they saw others doing it and stole the idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man
- swayvil 5y agoIt's a strong symbol. Powerful poetry. Graphically lush. Ritualistically useful. Memetically energetic. Mythically resonant. Which makes it handy when your aim is to throw a big party. Much like a hammer is good for driving nails.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoBecause despite all the pseudo spiritual bullshit, most attendees of Burning Man are just extravagant people that do not care about its environmental cost. They just want to see shit burn. If you have "spiritual" problems, throwing a Halloween party in the desert is not going to do shit for you. Flying people from all corners of the planet to gather somewhere is never going to be carbon neutral. Flying from coast to coast has the same carbon footprint of burning trash for an entire year. Then, burning massive amounts of shit once you arrive has an even higher footprint. Want to connect with your inner self? fucking close your eyes and breathe. It is free.
- tellersid 5y agoYou sound like a fun guy.
- viktorcode 5y agoCorrelation doesn't mean causation. I'm sorry, but the theory is bonkers, which becomes clear after the assertion that the link between music and violence is "undeniable"
- ianai 5y agoIs there a relationship with this? https://burnzozobra.com/about/ https://burnzozobra.com/about/
- nathanvanfleet 5y agoNo mention of Wickerman?
- agustif 5y agoyou know, I hadn't made the relation before, but we've 'Las Fallas' here in Valencia/Spain Area which seem pretty much same shit sans festival ofc
- rootsudo 5y agoI do enjoy the full circle it has become, where burning man, has, in essence, became "the man."
- artiszt 5y agoquite. it became something the great LandArtist's [LandArt 1.0] probably not imagined possible -- Holt, Smithson, de Maria, Heizer, Turell, etc and nothing is left behind.
- irrational 5y agoIt’s not a man. It’s The Man.
- phkahler 5y agoA philosophical read is nice, but I'd like to hear straight from attendees capable of introspection, what burning the man does for them. I dont doubt it's got connections to things in TFA, but the personal variations are probably interesting.
- throwaway984393 5y agoAt one burn, someone very special had just died, and so people that knew him thought of it as sort of honoring his passing to another realm. The embers rising up in gusts of wind looked like fireflies or little spirits dancing upward into the night sky. At another burn, a bunch of us were just tired and angry and needed to let out all our negative energy, and were overjoyed to dance around the man howling and crying and releasing everything pent up. The fire consumed and carried it all away. It's also very hypnotic and transportive to just stare into the flames for hours. It brings us all together and helps us connect to each other. We can mentally/spiritually put anything into that fire, different for each of us, but all of us are connected in the same experience. Why is it a man? Well at regional burns it isn't. It might be a temple, a pony, something else. The form doesn't matter. At the end of the day, we just burn something big to bring everyone together.
- pessimizer 5y agoI think they burned a man at Burning Man because the guy who came up with it was going through a divorce and had a kind of spontaneous inspiration/dream/vision about doing it. So if anything, it would be transition or rebirth, not scapegoating or execution. Or at least that's why he did it. The reason Burning Man Inc. does it is because they saw something authentic that was working[0], copied it, stripped everything interesting or frightening to people with money out of it, scaled it up, and turned it into a living. [0] There should be scare quotes around "working", I think some people got set on fire and somebody might have died.
- rbanffy 5y agoThe artist in me regards BM as extremely attractive. The rest of me regards it as an existential threat. If I let the artist roam free for a week, he won't go back to his place in my life without a long conversation and a lot of convincing. In other words, the me I know might never come back.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI think that's the goal. The story I heard was that the burning man represented the founder's old self, old habits and the like he wanted to be rid of.
- raylad 5y agoBack in the day I was friendly with some of the people in the Burning Man organization and someone mentioned that the original Man represented Larry Harvey's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. It used to be possible to find this info by searching too, but it seems to have been largely scrubbed from the internet.
- kleene_op 5y agoDude, you're seriously over-interpreting it. It is obviously a metaphor for Ego death, which is not even mentioned once in your article.
- 3l3ktr4 5y agothat’s the most stupid shit I ever read in this website congrats
- ddtaylor 5y agoI have full faith we can produce stupider shit given enough time.
- rlt 5y agoNever underestimate man’s ability/desire to assign meaning to other peoples’ actions.
- ipaddr 5y agoThe real reason is: spontaneous act of radical self-expression and it being copied to get the same experience.
- not1ofU 5y agoFor 10 hour romp into BM conspiracy theory: "The Shadow History of Burners"
- UncleSlacky 5y agoI thought it was pretty clearly inspired by the film "The Wicker Man": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man
- geenat 5y agoWay overthinking it. The original reason is probably as simple as someone not wanting to bring their makeshift art installation home.
- nvr219 5y agobecause he was hung like this
- bobthechef 5y agoAbortion is our child sacrifice. We sacrifice human lives for the selfish pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction of our passions to which we are enslaved. We sacrifice human lives to pay for our sins. And non-Catholics have no sacrament of penance and no sacrifice which is precisely what the Catholic mass is, the unbloody and perfect sacrifice of God Himself (N.b. Girard was Catholic). The Catholic mass is liturgically the successor of the sacrifices performed in the Temple of Jerusalem which the Jews can no longer perform since the temple was destroyed and the rite abrogated with the fulfillment of the scriptures. Without these, everyone else has no way to deal with their sins. They try to rationalize or deny or engage in weird and pointless rituals or take drugs or even double down and engage in ever greater sins to temporarily distract themselves from the worm gnawing at their consciences. All of this leads to despair and misery like drinking sand to overcome thirst. The wound will not heal as long as the arrow is lodged and there is only one doctor.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoIt’s obvious, it’s because: Sumer is Icumen in, Loudly sing, cuckoo! Grows the seed and blows the mead, And springs the wood anew; Sing, cuckoo!
- baybal2 5y agoThis is so weird
- thepasswordis 5y agoBecause it's cool.
- zhte415 5y agoIt would be a bit of an oddly named event should a man (of effigy of) not be burnt. Which goes full circle, somewhat of a line break after a paragraph of text, or <FIN> in a movie, as what's being burnt is one's self through the event, in-person or in-spirit, seeking catharsis, though perhaps best captured Sartre-esque in the words emblazoned on Patrick Bateman's eyes as he stars and realises that this is not an exit but a return to lives passively rejecting status quo, outwardly promoting radical change by words while passionately embracing the norm, tiny iterations of which are pointed to for the justification of conforming to a safe radical that maintains a lifestyle and entry to the club, a very empty club, for the unchanging monotony to maintain itself and me to maintain my place in the hegemony of our constructed rules.
- boublepop 5y agoThe real subject of this as I understand it is “How people ascribe deeper meaning to a guy burning a depiction of his ex-girlfriends new boyfriend because it became a traditional stable of a festival”
- type0 5y agoRussians burn a scarecrow on the Pancake week, which is a pagan tradition. https://bz.nationalgreenhighway.org/2064-why-is-a-scarecrow-burned-at-shrovetide-reasons-desc.html https://bz.nationalgreenhighway.org/2064-why-is-a-scarecrow-...