Burning Man - Pro and Con
September 8, 2012
Is it a genuine step forward or "a tail gate party with ten principles? "
"Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September, which coincides with the American Labor Day holiday. The 2012 Burning Man Festival took place from August 27 to September 3. 47,000 attended.
The festival takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.". Wikipedia
For an account of this year's event, with many more pictures, see the Daily Mail story.
Burning Man Pro - A Statement of their Faith
THE TEN PRINCIPLES: BURNING MAN'S RULES OF THE ROAD (WHICH INCLUDES LEAVING NO TRACE)
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
DecommodificationIn order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Con: by Kirk A. GuardeBurning Man is a big deal to me only because of its self-righteous hypocrisy. It masquerades as 'spiritual', 'enlightened', 'evolutionary'. It's a tail-gate party -- with 'Ten Principles'.
This is what Céline was talking about; the hypocrisy of the Bolsheviks; "swinging incense; they have been intoxicating man with the sense of his own importance, with all manner of rigmarole. Man has been made the whole Church... He believes anything that is told to him, just so long as it is flattering to him."
I don't hold it against the useful idiots attending. As usual those we see on camera are the lemmings, the props. I was wandering around in blue body paint tripping through two phases - the 70's and the 90's. I know this business from the inside looking in as well as the outside looking in as Leary put it. Just like a Nuremberg Rally, the entranced ranks haven't a clue what's really behind it.
What's the purpose of the gathering? Indoctrination into a prescribed way of thinking. The location of Burning Man assures that the 47,000 in attendance are of the affluent class of youth, entrepreneurs or high tech engineers, all with their own networks and able to spread the indoctrination when they return to their own spheres of influence.
Carl Popper's Open Society and It's Enemies exposes what Burning Man and 60 years of hippie parties are really for.
Popper: Collectivism is motivated by the Totalitarian's desire to return to Tribalism.
Popper realized this by getting inside Plato's head to understand his motives. He realized that Plato was probably sincere about wanting to fix the world and make everybody happy. Of course the problem with totalitarian happiness runs like, "be happy or I'll kill you". The totalitarian wants to see a sea of smiles in his Utopia.
Further, Popper draws a clear connection between the totalitarian's obsession with Collectivism and Tribalism. (pgs 9, 171-174)That never had occurred to me before, but now that I get it; it explains a lot. I was aware since all the Woodstock hype in 1969 of the 'New Age' push toward a mentality of global tribalism in the first world countries. At that time I did not see a connection between 'liberated' hippies and Collectivism. The word invoked the Orwellian vision of Stalin's collectivism.
I had always thought the only motive of collectivism was to make the herd easier to manage, but Popper adds that there is a deeper psychological motive of nostalgia for the Tribe. That explains why Rousseau's wet dream of returning to the ' noble savage' state was so popular with mass murdering collectivists like Robespierre and Pol Pot.
Neo-Tribalism comes at it a different way. They introduce collective (un)consciousness through sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Once everyone is permanently numbed comes the Hive.
That's what Burning Man is all about. A new Tribalism. It's 'grooming' to accept the One World totalitarianism.
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Related - The Mythology of Burning Man
Marcos said (September 8, 2012):
Collectivism has been the basis of the every revolutionary utopia. Absolute freedom (do what thou will) to sin without consequences, absence of greed and conflict, total equality.
The elite uses these displays of collective "everything-goes" events in order to challenge the old order, to make it look boring, restrictive and unnecessary. After all, free people can get along together with only 10 simple laws (opposed to the harsh 10 Commandments).
However, in real life, morality, fair laws and tradition have always been responsible for keeping civilization together. Take them out, and this collective fiesta dream can't last for more than a week, or even less if food and money run out. Inevitably, conflict, violence and greed will rule. That's when the elite comes with total control from the government. Collectivism always leads to authoritarianism. The bait of freedom turns into the fishing hook of slavery.
In the Burning Man event, we see this proven social control strategy linked to occultism. Its founder, Larry Harvey, used to perform solstice rituals and is associated with new age, gay militant and apostate Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The Burning Man itself is a model for the wicker cages where the druids burned their human sacrifices. It is another "in-your-face" occult ritual.