Daniel Pinchbeck, How Burning Man Failed, Daniel Pinchbeck's Newsletter, Aug. 29, 2023.
I've known about Burning Man for a long time. When I read about it in Pinchbeck's first book, Breaking Open the Head, I wanted to go, but didn't. Now...?
Pinchbeck notes:
As some readers may recall, I love Burning Man and consider it a massive disappointment. When I first visited back in 2000, I was overcome with enthusiasm, inspiration — many people still feel this, today, when they go for the first time. I still recall that wonderfully intoxicating sense of arriving at a “free” or liberated cultural zone where, in theory, you can recreate yourself in any way you want, express yourself in any way, as long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. [...]
Burning Man seemed to reveal how society, as a whole, could (and, I believed, eventually would) be reconstructed around the psychedelic anarchist vision. The festival showed me it was possible to deprogram people, en masse, from the economic shackles, blind ambitions, and incessant status-seeking of normative culture. In my naive excitement, I saw Burning Man as a porto-revolutionary model for the future— in How Soon Is Now, I joked that the festival was my version of the Paris Communes (1848), a short-lived worker-run experiment eventually crushed by Napoleon III, which inspired Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
But now, he goes on to say:
Over time it became clear — particularly after the death of Larry Harvey, its founder — that the dominant ethos underlying Burning Man was a kind of occult-tinged free market Libertarianism, influenced by transhumanism and the technological Singularity. Back in the early 2000s, Burning Man mocked itself vigorously. It had a hard, Terence McKenna / Robert Anton Wilson edge. We felt we were exploring Chapel Perilous, awaiting the Eschaton.
As Burning Man expanded and became more popular, it lost its self-parodying humor, its self-critical irony, and its encompassing social vision, to a great extent. It started to feel increasingly hollow, shallow, and narcissistic. Much of the art now seems designed to provide a fitting backdrop for Instagram selfies. The outfits and hats became copycats of each other. Burners no longer explore much originality of self-expression. They follow the pre-set script, the round-the-clock EDM schedule. [...]
There was always an innate beauty hierarchy at Burning Man; over time, wealth started to play a greater role in determining the festival’s focus. Wealthy Burners raised millions of dollars for their art cars, sculptures, and mega-domes.
Crank it up, rich tech bros!
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This just in (73.23):
God, i love Pearlman 😂 Here is his take on the burning man situation and it's spot on.
— 🥀_ Imposter_🥀 (@Imposter_Edits) September 3, 2023
Back in the 90's that festival was a different experience. Now it's been taken over by rich people LARPing as hippies for a week. pic.twitter.com/6WyKDNiLam
Thousands of attendees at the Burning Man festival in a remote stretch of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada were told on Saturday to conserve food, water and fuel after heavy rainfall trapped them in thick mud.
The event, which takes place in Black Rock City and began on Sunday, was interrupted by heavy rains on Friday night, and organizers directed attendees to shelter in place as rain poured over the area.
The festival site received more than half an inch of rain overnight on Friday, organizers said. While it had stopped for much of Saturday, more was expected in the evening and into Sunday morning, with a slight chance of thunderstorms, they said.
Except for emergency services, vehicles have also been prohibited around Black Rock City.
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