Last week I had the opportunity to participate (for the first time) in Burning Man, wherein I camped out in the desert for a week with 70,000 or so other like-minded folks who collectively instantiated a ‘creative, connected, thriving society,’ if only for a brief moment. Burning Man made a big impression on me because of the sense of community I experienced there, which was unlike anything I’ve encountered before and which has inspired me to dive deeper into community building out here in the ‘default world,’ as burners call it.
If you’ve heard of Burning Man, you might think of it as a music festival, or an art festival, or a bacchanalian orgy of drugs and sex in the desert. Burning Man does contain all these things, but none of them are essential to it. From my perspective as a first-timer, what makes Burning Man go and probably what has sustained it for decades is its radical idea of community, and the commitment of virtually all its participants to that idea.
what is community?
I’ve recently been reading about the power and untapped potential of communities. In particular The Abundant Community by John McKnight and Peter Block lays out a framework of requirements for the creation of communities made of neighborhoods and families that provide a lot of what people have grown accustomed to buying or contracting out in a consumerist society: health, safety, environmental stewardship, food, raising of children, and care for the elderly and marginalized. McKnight and Block describe “universal properties” of abundant or “competent” communities:
- The giving of gifts – every member of a community has skills or resources to offer to the community, and they share their gifts freely
- The presence of association – we can amplify gifts from community members by forming associations to support things like parks, schools, music, etc
- The compassion of hospitality – strangers and the marginalized are welcomed into the community and have access to the benefits of gifts
The authors argue (convincingly, to me) that if a community exhibits these properties then it can replace much of what we buy or obtain from government institutions and at the same time dramatically enhance human connection, self-reliance, and physical, emotional, and environmental health. I have personally experienced this in the community that supports the public elementary school my kids attend, and I am inspired to expand my efforts into the other communities that surround me.
Now, compare these properties and goals with the ten principles of Burning Man:
- Radical inclusion
- Gifting
- Decommodification
- Radical self-reliance
- Radical self-expression
- Communal effort
- Civic Responsibility
- Leaving no trace
- Participation
- Immediacy
It’s clear to me that what Burning Man is trying to build is a cultural movement founded on abundant community. What’s truly amazing is how successful they are, at least from my personal experiences over the last week.
burning man’s gift economy really works
Principles 2 and 3 say “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” and “in 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.”
These are nice words, but how does it work in practice? In my experience, it is utterly transformational compared to the ‘default’ society I’m accustomed to.
Burning Man is a city composed of thousands of camps, and every camp contributes gifts to the community. The gifts might be daily coffee and tea service (this is what my camp provided), or yoga classes, or bike repair, or a cost-free pub, or lessons in trapeze arts, or a dance party, or any of a hundred other things. These gifts make Burning Man go, they set the menu of activities for the day, and they support the day-to-day functioning of the temporary city.
What’s incredible is the shift that occurs when you interact with gift purveyors instead of paid service providers. Every thing on offer is “free,” and that instantly sparks gratitude in the recipient and the joy of giving in the purveyor. It transforms every routine interaction into a positive one ripe for human connection–you are always just minutes away from a new friendship. And you’re eager to share your experiences, thereby building a network of connectivity among camps and individuals.
This gift-oriented posture spreads beyond camp services and pervades everything you do. Whether you’re out and about on the playa or just hanging around your camp, you find your attitude toward other people has changed. If you see someone in distress, you offer them help. If someone is lost, you give them directions or just walk them to where they need to go. You find yourself picking up trash and even trying to keep the porta-potties nice. You come to expect this kind of behavior from everyone else you encounter, and it makes you feel warmer and more connected to those around you. I experienced all of this, even as a relative introvert, and I was captivated and inspired by it.
inclusion, participation, and immediacy
I belong at Burning Man. Of course, I’m very used to feeling a sense of belonging as a white, cis-het male. But, incredibly, the inclusiveness of Burning Man is so baked in and pervasive that I did not feel defined by that identity, and in fact I felt invited to challenge and subvert it, and I had a blast doing so. At Burning Man, people are not interested in “what you do” or even “who you are.” They are interested in your participation in what’s happening right now, with them, and you are welcome to decide on the spot how you’ll behave or act in a way that is gloriously unconstrained by your accumulated sense of identity or personal baggage or whatever.
A few fun examples that come to mind: there was a camp devoted to swings of various kinds, including a series of rings you crossed like a monkey. The camp provided instructions for how to cross the rings, with the final step being “take off your pants!” So, I dutifully followed each instruction until I was confidently sailing across the mats they provided. Then I was gently encouraged to consider following through on that last part–and soon I was experiencing pants-free monkeyness with a crowd of strangers cheering me on. Why not?! At another camp was a group meditation session where pairs of strangers peered into each others’ eyes continuously for minutes at a time, often leading to tears–of recognition, relief, connection. On the playa, hundreds of interactive art pieces invited viewers to climb, swing, enter, or ignite the art as they viewed it. I have never experienced such intense connection with art before in my life. I ended up giving a teary bear hug to my favorite sculpture, The Cosmic Messenger, when I had to leave it for the last time.
It’s worth mentioning how the “immediacy” principle feeds the feeling of freedom and connection. Aside from a few moments taken to grab a photo or send a proof-of-life text message, there just wasn’t much use for cell phones at Burning Man. When you encountered someone, they were right there, with you–not about to return their attention to a phone, or marching off to a meeting or some other commitment. Everyone collectively agreed to pay attention to each other and the world around them, and it electrified every interaction with so much more potential. It made me realize how much we give up by being coy or insular in our day-to-day interactions.
the mini community of your camp
Most Burning Man participants come as part of a camp. Camps range in size and ambition, from just a few people to more than a hundred, and from offering coffee to bringing huge art cars and concert venues. Within each camp, attendees support each other by pooling resources like water, cooking group meals, joint trash and gray water management and expansive shade structures. But also core to my positive experience was the emotional support, knowledge, and invitations to participate that came from my fellow campers, many of whom had ten or more burns under their belt. Every one of them was eager to help explain how things worked, to help me find my way, and to invite me out to see art on the playa or to a 2am dance set with a special DJ.
The camp provided a home base to chill and recuperate, where faces were familiar and a sense of safety and security pervaded. It was a place I could make direct contributions in cooking, cleaning, and coffee service. It provided a framework to be a healthy, functioning participant in the broader Black Rock City community. In addition, my camp was wonderfully multi-generational and multi-disciplinary, with participants ranging from new college grads all the way to retirees, tech folks to lawyers to journalists. They showed me that everyone belonged in our camp who was willing to give back in turn and support the others there.
Most of the people I know who enjoyed the burn had a similar camp experience. It is possible to camp solo on the fringes of the city, or to be a part of a camp that you buy your way into, but that often doesn’t result in such a positive experience–and I think it might be unhealthy for Burning Man in general (see below).
threats to and limitations of community at burning man
If it sounds like I am drunk on the utopia of Burning Man’s community, that’s because I am. But I am also aware of how delicate it is, and of how unsustainable it is in the form of Black Rock City.
The most important threat is from non-participating attendees. On your Burning Man ticket in huge print is the text “No Spectators.” At the top of the website for the event is the admonition “Burning Man is not a festival! It’s a city wherein almost everything that happens is created entirely by its citizens, who are active participants in the experience.” Alas, I witnessed a certain set of BRC citizens who definitely seemed like spectators. They stayed in “plug and play” or “oligarch” camps that made minimal community contributions, where camp members did not know each other, and where membership was simply purchased for some thousands of dollars or financed through personal wealth that employed staff to insulate their members from the obligations of community participation. It’s hard to describe how, but you could tell who these folks were when they were near–they seemed to be looking ‘at’ Burning Man rather than being part of it. At night, I could feel gravity wells formed by groups of these folks as they moved among the dance parties and free bars, hungry for the next experience that Burning Man would provide them.
I also have to acknowledge that Black Rock City is not a sustainable community. It is made possible through a huge amount of paid infrastructure (sanitation, power, emergency services, etc) combined with a year’s worth of effort and contribution in art, activities, and supplies that is all very much not free, but rather jointly contributed by people who make their money in the ‘default world’ and then funnel it into Burning Man to make it such a spectacular yet very temporary space. In this way, BRC is not a model community, but rather a radical experiment in how a community could feel if consumerism and class could be magically erased.
go to burning man!
I first considered attending Burning Man twenty years ago, buying a ticket for me and Leslie in 2005 when I was on the cusp of grad school. I ended up not going because I hadn’t realized all the demands that were placed on participants, and I wasn’t ready to meet them. And, to be honest, I had decided that by 2005 “Burning Man was over.” I mean, how could something that had been going since the 90s still be cool? This year I was able to attend because I was invited to an already-functioning camp that created a space for me to show up and contribute. And what I discovered was that the culture of Burning Man is alive and well, because of the community that is created there.
If, like me, you’ve been curious about this strange experiment in the desert, then I encourage you to connect with a camp and make the effort to go. In Black Rock City you can taste a version of community that is incredibly inspiring and encouraging, even as it is evanescent and endangered. I’m convinced that it carries important lessons for those of us seeking to build and improve communities in our daily lives.