(Originally written 9/24/12)
My perspective: worst burn ever
Be forewarned, what I’m about to say is pretty damning,
negative, and long winded. Read at your
own risk.
Okay, so I have publicly told everyone that I had my “worst
burn ever” and I felt a little sad after sharing my disappointment with
everyone and not keeping it bottled up.
I didn’t mean to be that whiny complaining guy. But since it’s now out in the open I might as
well further explain what I experienced this year and why I feel about BM2012
the way I do.
I'll start by asserting that the problem is
participant-demonstrated a sense of entitlement. Ayn Rand defined this: “A code of values accepted by
choice is a morality”. We enter the
gates of Black Rock City and are expected to abide by 10 principles, or
values. This is the code of Morality at
Burning Man, and most everything else can be left behind.
However, an insidious development is changing the vibe at
Burning Man, and it goes against it's stated morality. It's called commercialism,
and it fosters a sense of entitlement.
In the past, I'd meet all sorts of interesting participants doing their
own thing. This year, bringing and
operating a large art car, I would say (other than friends), I interacted mostly
with paid workers at the event. And
there were a ton of them.
These are the people working the event for money. Commercialism, if you will. Let me describe some interactions with the
Commercial side of the event. I
interacted with the Sheriff and BLM rangers when I needed to move the truck and
not run over countless bikes and drunk people.
In past years, these were the buzzkill bastards watching over the
Opulent Temple and we'd create a 20 foot buffer circle avoiding them at all
costs. This year, I noticed that they
were helpful, calm, professional, sober, and doing their job. In other words, I
related a hell of a lot more to them than to all the "participants".
I started to notice all the other workers who were paid to
be there. The porta-john caretakers/
cleaners. I talked with the guy who
pumped out our RV -- he had driven in from Sacramento at 2 am and had been
working till 6 pm. Ours was the last
pump-out he could manage. Why did I
bring an RV? I was told it's a lot
easier to build and handle an art car when you don't have to hassle with camp
set up. But you know what was
sacrificed? Burning Man principles of
Participation and Communal Effort. When
we took care of ourselves, we made lifelong friends. Former campmates agreed that the best memory
was when we all banded together to salvage a dome building effort (2009) and
then the next year perfect it (2010). We
paid some guy to pump our waste and a little piece of the spirit of Burning Man
went down the drain too.
You don't need to be radically self reliant when you can
rent a luxurious RV and pay someone to pump your waste and refill your fresh
water tank. It is only in the last two
years that fresh water has been available for purchase. We ought to stop allowing these services to
require people to be radically self reliant again.
There used to be a
complaint that “Burning Man is becoming too commercial” and pumping gray water
and selling fresh water aside, I think there’s more to it than that. To me, this year it really hit home that the
event has shifted to a consumer mindset.
This never bothered me before, but when I brought something big which
took a lot of my personal time, energy, and money, it struck a real nerve.
Now I'll be the first to admit this year I did the first 6
days I was at Burning Man 2012 all wrong.
I worked like a slave and it made me miserable. This is the meaning of sacrifice – to give up
as worthless things of highest value. I
had a little fun, but past years were a lot of fun. Life at Burning Man must not demand
sacrifice. The reason I say I did the
event wrong is because there is no requirement for anyone to give beyond their
generosity. Burning Man is not
communism. If you feel compelled to
sacrifice, to give away more than you can afford mentally, materially, or
emotionally, you are doing Burning Man wrong.
By days 7 and 8, I changed my reaction to it all (by saying "Fuck
it") and was having fun.
While the problem of entitlement and commercialism has been
brewing for a long time, it was magnified tenfold this year with high ticket
prices and a shortage of tickets. The
newbie people and long-time Burners who bought tickets at $1000 because they so
badly wanted to go to the best party in the universe felt less desire to
contribute. They looked around at all
the art, pretty lights, mutant vehicles, large scale sound camps, and porta
potties and thought it was still a good value at $1000. They probably had the time of their lives
seeing sights and sounds and possibly helping out in small ways, but why
contribute or participate more when they already spent $1000? Further, every single veteran who went felt
they should be entitled to go. I am no
exception. I was used to getting $210
tickets thanks to hacker friends, but that always felt like luck, not
entitlement. It used to be open to
everyone, after all, with no apparent ticket cap. Burning Man tickets are now seen like
driver’s licenses… everyone feels entitled, but really it’s a privilege. Or the “right” to vote. It’s a privilege.
The high ticket prices were like a “tax” to many
people. It discouraged less well-off
people from contributing in their own way, and forced them to contribute to a
pool of money which was then redistributed by the Burning Man Organization
according to crony-ism and an arbitrary definition of worthiness, or the excess
went to a scalper and the community didn't even benefit from the high ticket
prices.
Notably excluded from the grant process is art cars and
sound camps. This has been an issue for
years, but it never bothered me before until the prices got so high and I saw
first hand what it’s doing to less well-off Burners. I really think about half the participants
paid so much for their tickets, that they didn’t have extra cash to contribute
in a way that really tapped into their passion, skill, or desires, if they even
knew they were supposed to contribute.
There is a census / survey at Burning Man and no results are ever
analyzed and published to show where the trends are going for spending and cost
to attend. Or is that why ticket prices
go up? Burning Man Organization analyzes
the data and decides what the market can bear for tickets? If so, what happened to the core value of
“Decommodification”? I certainly
benefited from this redistribution of wealth.
The established camp I stayed with had good connections and history with
the bureaucracy and they got on the 3:00 plaza power grid which kept the art
car lit all night. We got hooked up with
scarce tickets and early entry. Our camp
dues were ridiculously low, $40, as a result of this in addition to the
generosity and affluence of the camp members.
I’ve never been at such an elaborate camp before that cost less than
$100 per person. So why am I
complaining? Because the event has
changed dramatically as a result.
I’ve been 7 times now and for several years I helped others
by fixing bikes at “my” camp, Bike-n-Booze, or helping assemble an art car for
a stranger, and didn’t spend a lot of money on stuff. It was expensive getting to Burning Man from
the Midwest. I was taught to contribute
in my own way and volunteered a lot, knowing it was impractical to build or
bring an art car or make some huge art project.
When I finally moved to the West Coast, I kept the same budget but could
bring a $250 keg of beer and spent the better part of three days hauling ice to
keep it cold and happily giving it out to strangers. If the $390 ticket I paid for this year busted my budget so
badly that I wouldn’t even be able to do that, or priced me out of the market so I wouldn’t be able to go, then
my contribution might be limited a bit. I’m
more fortunate than most in that I could afford to build a fairly large art car
on my own.
The next problem is acculturation. There ratio of newbies to veterans is too high. I did my part to tell the newbie I brought
(bless his heart) about what was expected by the community. He rose to the occasion and made me proud for
all the work and contributions he did.
Truly he had the Burning Man experience and “gets it”. The work was hard, and he earned his
fun. Hopefully my art car didn’t burn
him out like it did me, and was a positive experience. He told me later in the week that the best
part and most fun thing for him was manning the “FuBar”, a kind of confessional
bar at our camp where you have to tell your most fucked-up beyond belief story
and receive a shot if it’s a worthy story.
But others just came and consumed.
Helped out nada. I saw that. I remember that more than anything.
Another problem is the bureaucracy. I understand why bureaucracy happens. It’s inevitable with a large group of
people. But I hit it hard and with my
art car creation. I was fortunate to
sail right through approvals for my art car, but it was entirely due to my
inside scoop on what meets the needs of the bureaucracy. I talked with anyone and everyone with art
car experience, and learned a ton about what they wanted. To give you an idea of some compromises, lets
start with the windscreen on my truck. I
wanted to cover it all up with plywood and look out small round portholes. This was judged by anyone and everyone in the
know as dangerous and not going to be allowed by the BM DMV. I’m grateful they pointed this out, but in
the olden days I’d have been driving around like that. There was a time in the past when drivers of
large buses (in the shape of a whale or Spanish galleon) would drive blind with
only commands from lookouts above to tell them where to go. Those cars were amazing to look at, and the
artistic vision wasn’t compromised by bureaucracy. Granted, I’d be a fool to drive with only
portholes to peer out of, but I’d have gotten the look I wanted and would have
learned from my own mistakes.
The other thing that pissed me off was how stuck I was with
my rudimentary art car plan and how their application process really expects
you to deliver exactly that sketch in life-size form when the car appears for
licensing. If I wanted to radically
change my concept… tough luck. It’s too
late once the application is in. When I
ran into snags and wanted to scale things back, I’m just damn glad I wrote
exactly the plan “B”s that I intended into my original application. But if I’d changed the ship from say, a
freighter into a Battleship, that would probably have been rejected if I showed
up with essentially the wrong art car.
Also it was a good thing that I had such a simple concept in the initial
renderings. I could have dreamed up
something far more elaborate (and I did, and have all the sketches), but I only
told them what I considered the bare minimum.
Still, it felt like a gun to my head come August when I couldn’t scale
anything back more, yet in no way did I want to wait another year and bring it
to Burning Man in 2013 for the first time.
I guess I’m an anarchist at heart, or a libertarian. Limited government. I used to say Burning Man is 50% hippy and
50% anarchist. Now it seems it’s 50%
hippy, 47% contributing nothing / Communist, and 3% anarchist.
/ offrant
Burning Man principle #6 is "Communal
Effort". But it seems to be
morphing into "Communism", taking from everyone and redistributing
the wealth. The future of the event
might as well shift. Let them charge
everyone $1000 per ticket and give out grants to anyone with a good idea that
meets their idea of what Burning Man should look like and feel like. Unbridled creativity will be replaced by
bridled creativity. If my art car was
accepted as a worthy project, by all means I’ll take $14,000 and happily build
my creation and drive everyone around all week.
The “commodification” will have completed it’s course.
Gone are the early days when you’d show up and contribute in
the most outrageous way you could, principle #5 "Radical
Self-Expression". The location is
the same, but the Burning Man corporate sponsorship and infamy / popularity of
the event has changed it irrevocably.
