For the burners I know it’s a profound experience of community, connection, love, and wonder. They’re genuinely kind, sorta dumb hippies who really do pour their heart and soul in to the art they bring out to Black Rock. They get to see all their friends, take off all the masks society forces them to wear, be wild and free from the day to day drudgery of a society that hates them for being weird. They move heaven and earth, bum rides, beg borrow and steal to get out there.
It’s incredibly sad. To them Burning Man is a kind of glimpse of paradise and most of them don’t seem to recognize that they’re the trained monkeys performing for the real audience of rich tech bros who inflict the very misery and poverty they’re seeking to escape from. Or maybe they do know and don’t care, seizing an opportunity for genuine community and belonging in spite of the crass larger picture of “the burn”.
For the burners I know it’s a profound experience of community, connection, love, and wonder. They’re genuinely kind, sorta dumb hippies who really do pour their heart and soul in to the art they bring out to Black Rock. They get to see all their friends, take off all the masks society forces them to wear, be wild and free from the day to day drudgery of a society that hates them for being weird. They move heaven and earth, bum rides, beg borrow and steal to get out there.
It’s incredibly sad. To them Burning Man is a kind of glimpse of paradise and most of them don’t seem to recognize that they’re the trained monkeys performing for the real audience of rich tech bros who inflict the very misery and poverty they’re seeking to escape from. Or maybe they do know and don’t care, seizing an opportunity for genuine community and belonging in spite of the crass larger picture of “the burn”.