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I won't pretend I grok the underlying spirit of Burning Man. But I find it deeply fascinating to see the interaction between desires for counterculture, anarchy

I won't pretend I grok the underlying spirit of Burning Man. But I find it deeply fascinating to see the interaction between desires for counterculture, anarchy, free spirit, etc. and the benefit and ultimate necessity of organization, planning, rules... governance, essentially. And where there's those things, there's always maps and data.

quux 6mo ago
The natural tension between chaos and order is one of the things that makes Burning Man so interesting.
- DonHopkins 6mo ago
  More like the natural tension between what you say and what you do.
Jarwain 6mo ago
Honestly, that contrast is what draws me in. In the same way ultralight hiking forces you to think about and let go of extraneous weight, going to Burning Man and doing the whole camp thing and seeing the city work showcases the "dead weight" of "making things happen".
throwup238 6mo ago
It’s fun to read everyone's preconceptions about Burning Man. Its ten principles are published [1] and include stuff like “radical inclusion” and “civic responsibility” and “gifting” (the latter of which is taken very literally, there is almost no currency use on the playa and everything is gifted except ice and coffee at center camp). Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists, but it’s hardly representative, especially when you include the family zone and all the specialized camps. [1] https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/
- niwtsol 6mo ago
  FYI - Coffee at center camp was canceled as of 2022
- realo 6mo ago
  Don't get me wrong, but on one side you have the gift culture, and on the other side the exception that one of the only things sold the the community in one of the hottest, most arid deserts in the world is ... ice ... Got a chuckle out of me there.
  - oldandboring 6mo ago
    They also sell fuel.
    - warrenmiller 6mo ago
      Not to any old so and so, only to mutant vehicle and art camps
    - leptons 6mo ago
      I actually got to buy fuel there once. They were absolutely surly about it, too. Why didn't you plan ahead and bring enough gas??!? Well what happened was, we stopped at the gas station in Wadsworth where we usually fuel up the RV before heading to the burn. I put the gas nozzle into the RV and flipped the nozzle auto-shut-off thing up while I went inside to buy some last minute stuff. I came out, the auto-shut-off thing had popped and I thought the tank was full. But no, it wasn't. The scene there was a bit chaotic, I was distracted. So we only got about 4 or 5 gallons into the tank, and that's only enough to get the RV about 40 miles, so we roll into BRC with an almost empty tank. I did not notice this until we were actually inside the gate and the fuel tank was really low. Give me a break, I was driving for 14 hours, I just didn't notice the fuel level. So we had some fuel for the art car, which I was hoarding, but when I heard they were selling gas for the first time ever at BM, I dumped all the art car gas into the RV and then got on the art car and headed over to the gas station with every available gas can we had.
  - martinwilly34 6mo ago
dizhn 6mo ago
It's actually pretty compatible with "capital a" Anarchy.
- gghh 6mo ago
  Right. "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion." From: "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!", David Graeber, 2009, https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-maysurprise-you/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-a...
  - hallole 6mo ago
    That's one of those definitions that's so broad as to make the word being defined meaningless. It's always silly when one re-phrases their position into something trivial that no one would disagree with.
    - wredcoll 6mo ago
      I agree 100%, but it makes a mildly interesting jumping off point. My first question is: but what if they don't?
      - gghh 6mo ago
        As the person who posted the quote, gonna be direct: no idea. I have to say, I don't identify myself as a anarchist (maybe a bit of a sympathizer), yet I'm middle aged and finding myself a little dissatisfied by many things I see around me, so if I see people making the equation anarchist = degenerate, my immediate reaction is "yeah let's slow it down shall we."
      - wccrawford 6mo ago
        Exactly. Of course they're capable of it. That doesn't mean they will. They have a lot of incentives to behave badly, and there's no way to eliminate them all.
nathan_compton 6mo ago
People think of anarchism as against organizations and rules, but its just against hierarchy. Western people in particular are so used to hierarchical thinking that its difficult to even imagine an organization that isn't hierarchical in nature.
- simonask 6mo ago
  Hierarchy is “Western” now?
  - r14c 6mo ago
    Western culture is hierarchical, hierarchy isn't inherently Western. Lots of cultures do it.
- lukan 6mo ago
  And "eastern culture" is largely not hierarchical by heart? Also, I have been to quite some anarchist places, but I did not found one without a hierachy. It is usually just informal. (But at times even formal and everyone pretends it is still not hierachy)
  - nathan_compton 6mo ago
    No comment on whether anarchists achieve this goal.
foolfoolz 6mo ago
there’s an interesting side to this that better cell coverage, starlink, and others have made burning man more phone friendly. purists will say don’t bring a phone. or the event only works because no one has phones that work but the event isn’t possible to run without internet. DPW has wifi at every station. internet has become a core planning and organization tool
- borski 6mo ago
  It’s obviously possible to run without the internet. They did it for many years.
elif 6mo ago
Trashing the planet is mainstream. Taking care of it is counterculture.
- contingencies 6mo ago
  Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
- block_dagger 6mo ago
  I like this but doesn't Burning Man itself constitute a hugely inefficient use of fossil fuels and unsustainable material use? The name has "burning" right in it. The climax is a bonfire. What about the air pollution? Perhaps it would be better for the planet if Burning Man didn't exist at all.
  - elif 6mo ago
    I doubt the amount of generators running constitute some sunstantial fossil fuel use, at least not more than 70,000 people sitting at home in air conditioning doing "nothing". I would welcome your math though.
    - bunnie 6mo ago
      I've run power for a 100-person theme camp in the past. According to the logs, we burned an average of 36.8 gallons per day, or 1.4 liters/person/day (we ran the generator for 9 days total) in 2025. The camp has air conditioners (iirc ~20 units), lighting, freezers, etc. although not everyone has all of the above. The average household consumption of electricity per day in the US is about 28kWh, which would take around 7-9 liters/day of diesel. Assuming an average US household of 2.6 persons, that's about 3 liters/person/day for electricity alone - does not include gas/electricity spent driving. So, at least for this camp, the average person is using less electricity at the burn, than if we weren't at burning man. The fossil fuels spent getting to and from the event are more substantial than those burned at the event, but this is a separate discussion I think as to whether or not people should be flying to conferences, events, or taking vacations. COVID was great for reducing travel-related fossil fuel consumption, so we have the data and the experience on how to reduce that, but probably not the will. The power logs are pretty interesting to look at. On average the generator is lightly loaded, so a lot of energy is going towards idling the generator, but batteries are expensive and these generators are not made to be stopped and started repeatedly.
saltyoldman 6mo ago
Yeah, well it's all fake really. Still filled with people that are terrible, from the organizers to the goers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4
- jamal-kumar 6mo ago
  Ah yeah I've seen that video. What blows me away is that in the end all the accused did to get suspected for sexual assault was somehow made contact with her thigh Seeing stuff like that makes me glad I left the anglosphere
zabzonk 6mo ago
People that don't mind SF might want to look at these for some examples of anarchy in fictional action: The Day Before The Revolution, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution The Dispossessed, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
- libraryatnight 6mo ago
  The Dispossessed has one of my favorite quotes, “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”
  - Waterluvian 6mo ago
    I love this quote. It reminded me of a quote I heard recently: "what a privilege to be tired from the work you once begged the universe for" I'm not sure about the intent of the quote and its provenance. But for me the meaning is: To have wanted meaningful purpose and to get to look back and see that you have achieved that.
mbesto 6mo ago
Burning Man forces you to really think hard about social contracts. For example - you won't get kicked out for leaving trash all of the ground but you will absolutely be shunned and shamed by everyone around you for doing so. That notion simply doesn't scale to a place like the US with 350M people with varying cultures, values, etc. because the social contracts are simply all over the place and inconsistent.
Jtarii 6mo ago
It's a week long party for rich people. I don't think it's that deep.

quux 6mo ago

The natural tension between chaos and order is one of the things that makes Burning Man so interesting.

DonHopkins 6mo ago
More like the natural tension between what you say and what you do.

Jarwain 6mo ago

Honestly, that contrast is what draws me in. In the same way ultralight hiking forces you to think about and let go of extraneous weight, going to Burning Man and doing the whole camp thing and seeing the city work showcases the "dead weight" of "making things happen".

throwup238 6mo ago

It’s fun to read everyone's preconceptions about Burning Man. Its ten principles are published [1] and include stuff like “radical inclusion” and “civic responsibility” and “gifting” (the latter of which is taken very literally, there is almost no currency use on the playa and everything is gifted except ice and coffee at center camp). Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists, but it’s hardly representative, especially when you include the family zone and all the specialized camps. [1] https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/

niwtsol 6mo ago
FYI - Coffee at center camp was canceled as of 2022
realo 6mo ago
Don't get me wrong, but on one side you have the gift culture, and on the other side the exception that one of the only things sold the the community in one of the hottest, most arid deserts in the world is ... ice ... Got a chuckle out of me there.
- oldandboring 6mo ago
  They also sell fuel.
  - warrenmiller 6mo ago
    Not to any old so and so, only to mutant vehicle and art camps
  - leptons 6mo ago
    I actually got to buy fuel there once. They were absolutely surly about it, too. Why didn't you plan ahead and bring enough gas??!? Well what happened was, we stopped at the gas station in Wadsworth where we usually fuel up the RV before heading to the burn. I put the gas nozzle into the RV and flipped the nozzle auto-shut-off thing up while I went inside to buy some last minute stuff. I came out, the auto-shut-off thing had popped and I thought the tank was full. But no, it wasn't. The scene there was a bit chaotic, I was distracted. So we only got about 4 or 5 gallons into the tank, and that's only enough to get the RV about 40 miles, so we roll into BRC with an almost empty tank. I did not notice this until we were actually inside the gate and the fuel tank was really low. Give me a break, I was driving for 14 hours, I just didn't notice the fuel level. So we had some fuel for the art car, which I was hoarding, but when I heard they were selling gas for the first time ever at BM, I dumped all the art car gas into the RV and then got on the art car and headed over to the gas station with every available gas can we had.
- martinwilly34 6mo ago

dizhn 6mo ago

It's actually pretty compatible with "capital a" Anarchy.

gghh 6mo ago
Right. "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion." From: "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!", David Graeber, 2009, https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-maysurprise-you/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-a...
- hallole 6mo ago
  That's one of those definitions that's so broad as to make the word being defined meaningless. It's always silly when one re-phrases their position into something trivial that no one would disagree with.
  - wredcoll 6mo ago
    I agree 100%, but it makes a mildly interesting jumping off point. My first question is: but what if they don't?
    - gghh 6mo ago
      As the person who posted the quote, gonna be direct: no idea. I have to say, I don't identify myself as a anarchist (maybe a bit of a sympathizer), yet I'm middle aged and finding myself a little dissatisfied by many things I see around me, so if I see people making the equation anarchist = degenerate, my immediate reaction is "yeah let's slow it down shall we."
    - wccrawford 6mo ago
      Exactly. Of course they're capable of it. That doesn't mean they will. They have a lot of incentives to behave badly, and there's no way to eliminate them all.

nathan_compton 6mo ago

People think of anarchism as against organizations and rules, but its just against hierarchy. Western people in particular are so used to hierarchical thinking that its difficult to even imagine an organization that isn't hierarchical in nature.

simonask 6mo ago
Hierarchy is “Western” now?
- r14c 6mo ago
  Western culture is hierarchical, hierarchy isn't inherently Western. Lots of cultures do it.
lukan 6mo ago
And "eastern culture" is largely not hierarchical by heart? Also, I have been to quite some anarchist places, but I did not found one without a hierachy. It is usually just informal. (But at times even formal and everyone pretends it is still not hierachy)
- nathan_compton 6mo ago
  No comment on whether anarchists achieve this goal.

foolfoolz 6mo ago

there’s an interesting side to this that better cell coverage, starlink, and others have made burning man more phone friendly. purists will say don’t bring a phone. or the event only works because no one has phones that work but the event isn’t possible to run without internet. DPW has wifi at every station. internet has become a core planning and organization tool

borski 6mo ago
It’s obviously possible to run without the internet. They did it for many years.

elif 6mo ago

Trashing the planet is mainstream. Taking care of it is counterculture.

contingencies 6mo ago
Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
block_dagger 6mo ago
I like this but doesn't Burning Man itself constitute a hugely inefficient use of fossil fuels and unsustainable material use? The name has "burning" right in it. The climax is a bonfire. What about the air pollution? Perhaps it would be better for the planet if Burning Man didn't exist at all.
- elif 6mo ago
  I doubt the amount of generators running constitute some sunstantial fossil fuel use, at least not more than 70,000 people sitting at home in air conditioning doing "nothing". I would welcome your math though.
  - bunnie 6mo ago
    I've run power for a 100-person theme camp in the past. According to the logs, we burned an average of 36.8 gallons per day, or 1.4 liters/person/day (we ran the generator for 9 days total) in 2025. The camp has air conditioners (iirc ~20 units), lighting, freezers, etc. although not everyone has all of the above. The average household consumption of electricity per day in the US is about 28kWh, which would take around 7-9 liters/day of diesel. Assuming an average US household of 2.6 persons, that's about 3 liters/person/day for electricity alone - does not include gas/electricity spent driving. So, at least for this camp, the average person is using less electricity at the burn, than if we weren't at burning man. The fossil fuels spent getting to and from the event are more substantial than those burned at the event, but this is a separate discussion I think as to whether or not people should be flying to conferences, events, or taking vacations. COVID was great for reducing travel-related fossil fuel consumption, so we have the data and the experience on how to reduce that, but probably not the will. The power logs are pretty interesting to look at. On average the generator is lightly loaded, so a lot of energy is going towards idling the generator, but batteries are expensive and these generators are not made to be stopped and started repeatedly.

saltyoldman 6mo ago

Yeah, well it's all fake really. Still filled with people that are terrible, from the organizers to the goers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4

jamal-kumar 6mo ago
Ah yeah I've seen that video. What blows me away is that in the end all the accused did to get suspected for sexual assault was somehow made contact with her thigh Seeing stuff like that makes me glad I left the anglosphere

zabzonk 6mo ago

People that don't mind SF might want to look at these for some examples of anarchy in fictional action: The Day Before The Revolution, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution The Dispossessed, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

libraryatnight 6mo ago
The Dispossessed has one of my favorite quotes, “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”
- Waterluvian 6mo ago
  I love this quote. It reminded me of a quote I heard recently: "what a privilege to be tired from the work you once begged the universe for" I'm not sure about the intent of the quote and its provenance. But for me the meaning is: To have wanted meaningful purpose and to get to look back and see that you have achieved that.

mbesto 6mo ago

Burning Man forces you to really think hard about social contracts. For example - you won't get kicked out for leaving trash all of the ground but you will absolutely be shunned and shamed by everyone around you for doing so. That notion simply doesn't scale to a place like the US with 350M people with varying cultures, values, etc. because the social contracts are simply all over the place and inconsistent.

Jtarii 6mo ago

It's a week long party for rich people. I don't think it's that deep.