Tens of thousands of people come to the Nevada desert annually to celebrate a week of community, art, counterculture, free expression, and identity. The ceremony ends with a symbolic burning of a big wooden effigy, following which every guest painstakingly cleans up after herself before going back to their daily life and leaving no obvious evidence of their presence. The Burning Man event is fundamentally about this.
The event has been heralded as a spiritual trip, a lighthouse of hope for mankind, and a celebration loaded with the usual hedonistic trappings you would find—drugs and booze. Burning Man might appear perplexing and exhilarating, scary and freeing, and everything all at once. Both the good and the ugly.
What Is Burning Man?
The first Burning Man event occurred in 1986 when a friend of artist Larry Harvey created and torched an 8-foot-tall figure on a San Francisco beach for the Summer Solstice. More and more people attended the now-annual event over the course of four years until local officials voiced concerns about the huge numbers and the fire risk generated by the blazing man-like figure created of wicker. The celebration relocated to the desert, where a few hundred people gathered to engage in the event whereby the ceremonial burning of "the Man" became the totemistic climax.
Burning Man runs annually in Nevada's Black Rock Desert today. It specifically occurs in Black Rock City, a makeshift community built by the 80,000-strong group using their own tools and equipment to build the infrastructure of the gathering. At Burning Man, nothing is sold except bartering for tangible things and services; coffee and ice are not sold. Black Rock City offers everything you would need free of cost, a present from one or more attendees.
The 10 principles of Burning Man define most of their multi-decade success:
- Everyone is welcome, therefore radical inclusiveness.
Gifts.
- Decommodification—no advertising, corporate sponsorships, transactions, or commercial exploitation.
- extreme dependence on oneself.
- Radical personal expression.
- Group effort, cooperation, and coordination.
- Citizen obligation.
- Not leaving any trace (honesty for the surroundings).
- Inaction.
- Immediacy—no concept can equal the importance of experience.
Burning Man Project's CEO, Marian Goodell, a founding board member, notes that the event is driven by everyone's "radical self-reliance"—that is, their
mutual looking out for one another.One
Burning Man Beyond Black Rock City
Marian Goodell argues that those who attend Burning Man often connect to one another more authentically than they would in that real world. Everybody comes to rely on one another at an event free of the trappings of wealth and comfort. They carry their abilities and lessons with them just as they carry their rubbish back. Based on their experiences at Black Rock City, Goodell talks of Burners who participate in community service like soup meals and disaster aid.
An event organizer who put together his own festival modeled after Burning Man explains the gathering resonates with so many people because the "real world" encourages hard work and greater accumulation of material goods, but offers no answers, no meaning, and doesn't enrich and fulfill people's life.
One writer noted that some people change their names, careers, and even their entire lives following Burning Man because what they go through there broadens their perspectives to the degree that their lives in the outer world appear pale by comparison.
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Karl Jablonski
Tens of thousands of people come to the Nevada desert annually to celebrate a week of community, art, counterculture, free expression, and identity. The ceremony ends with a symbolic burning of a big wooden effigy, following which every guest painstakingly cleans up after herself before going back to their daily life and leaving no obvious evidence of their presence. The Burning Man event is fundamentally about this.
The event has been heralded as a spiritual trip, a lighthouse of hope for mankind, and a celebration loaded with the usual hedonistic trappings you would find—drugs and booze. Burning Man might appear perplexing and exhilarating, scary and freeing, and everything all at once. Both the good and the ugly.
What Is Burning Man?
The first Burning Man event occurred in 1986 when a friend of artist Larry Harvey created and torched an 8-foot-tall figure on a San Francisco beach for the Summer Solstice. More and more people attended the now-annual event over the course of four years until local officials voiced concerns about the huge numbers and the fire risk generated by the blazing man-like figure created of wicker. The celebration relocated to the desert, where a few hundred people gathered to engage in the event whereby the ceremonial burning of "the Man" became the totemistic climax.
Burning Man runs annually in Nevada's Black Rock Desert today. It specifically occurs in Black Rock City, a makeshift community built by the 80,000-strong group using their own tools and equipment to build the infrastructure of the gathering. At Burning Man, nothing is sold except bartering for tangible things and services; coffee and ice are not sold. Black Rock City offers everything you would need free of cost, a present from one or more attendees.
The 10 principles of Burning Man define most of their multi-decade success:
Gifts.
Burning Man Project's CEO, Marian Goodell, a founding board member, notes that the event is driven by everyone's "radical self-reliance"—that is, their
mutual looking out for one another.One
Burning Man Beyond Black Rock City
Marian Goodell argues that those who attend Burning Man often connect to one another more authentically than they would in that real world. Everybody comes to rely on one another at an event free of the trappings of wealth and comfort. They carry their abilities and lessons with them just as they carry their rubbish back. Based on their experiences at Black Rock City, Goodell talks of Burners who participate in community service like soup meals and disaster aid.
An event organizer who put together his own festival modeled after Burning Man explains the gathering resonates with so many people because the "real world" encourages hard work and greater accumulation of material goods, but offers no answers, no meaning, and doesn't enrich and fulfill people's life.
One writer noted that some people change their names, careers, and even their entire lives following Burning Man because what they go through there broadens their perspectives to the degree that their lives in the outer world appear pale by comparison.
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