The Scene That Became Cities

Larry nodded. “Oh, there are plenty of squares at Burning Man. Lots of them.” Isaac thought Larry was being self-deprecating, and in return he tried to be gracious. “Well, they always turn up eventually, there’s really nothing you can do . . .” “No no,” Larry interrupted. “We welcome them! We encourage them. How else are you going to have an impact?” “Oh,” Isaac said dismissively. “I’ve never believed in that convert-the-masses stuff.” “Well,” Larry said, without a moment’s hesitation, “I’ve never believed in the romantic allure of the underground.” (Location 396)

the flame do not consider Burning Man part of the Situationists’ legacy because that city is built by the very people the Situationists wanted to liberate, rather than by their “liberators.” The squares don’t get to free their own minds! (Location 409)

Larry Harvey—the guy who had kicked this off by burning a life-size wooden man on a public beach in 1986, and who I would be at an Oakland art museum with in 2017—wrote the 10 Principles of Burning Man. That was the total response. Just ten principles which, read in their entirety, come out to fewer than five hundred words. (Location 449)

As longtime Burner Dusty Hawthorne once put it, “Burning Man is a self-service cult. You wash your own brain.” (Location 501)

All of which is to say that the very best way to understand Burning Man philosophy—and this is a point we’ll be coming back to a lot later—is to go and do Burning Man, not to study it. Have that experience first, and examine it later. (Location 599)

Note: Applies to most things

specific (Location 829)

tell a great one, leading to more stories for (Location 831)

But it was also well captured in 1992 by political scientist Benjamin Barber when he coined the phrase “McWorld” in an essay for The Atlantic: [This world] is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce.* (Location 1080)

Wander out into the playa at night and you won’t just find beautiful bodies dancing in a ring of fire; you’ll find lonely souls, lost and confused, wandering through the desert as they crawl through an existential crisis. In those long, dark nights, they’re much less happy than they would have been if they’d stayed home to catch Simpsons reruns. That’s because the psychological effect of Burning Man isn’t to solve our issues automatically, as though the Man were Jesus touching lepers; it is to bring them up. The Spectacle lulls you into passivity; waking up from that passivity does not involve just having a good time. Indeed, the prospect of being constantly entertained without doing anything is part of the lulling process. (Location 1147)

To Burn is to act as an agent of possibility: creating a space where something amazing can happen, letting anyone join, and then cleaning up after it when it’s done. (Location 1215)

Because when you have agency, you are confronted with that most fundamental question: what’s important to me? (Location 1259)

Money is very good at what it does. But as an intermediary between people, it does not support the kind of human relationships that Burning Man is trying to create. This doesn’t mean that Burning Man spaces don’t require money to be produced; in fact, the bigger they get, the more money they tend to need. Burning Man’s stance toward money also isn’t a denial of the very valuable impact capital can have on human affairs. It is instead a recognition that it is harder to have authentic interactions with other human beings when money and commodities mediate those interactions. Which, come on, we all know is true. (Location 1333)

At the very least, it means that the kind of experience Burning Man is trying to create is likely not for you. Or that you need it desperately. (Location 1347)

People who are self-reliant are less likely to respond to people as the things they have, which is to say that self-reliant people are less likely to commodify one another. Reducing people to material components—how much they make, how much they have—dehumanizes them. (Location 1377)

Instead, the culture of gifting emerged because people discovered that the experience of giving in a decommodified environment was one they deeply valued, and it was unlike an experience you could have elsewhere. (Location 1447)

Given the freedom to do nearly anything, people very often create art (broadly defined) that represents their own subjectivity, and they engage in whimsical—even nonsensical—behavior just because it’s fun. Such things may have no value whatsoever to a disinterested observer, but they are things created precisely because they are meaningful to the people creating them, and for no other reason. And in fact such idiosyncratic passion, such raw individual vision, often creates interest in observers. Instead of standing at a safe distance and seeing a product calibrated to appeal without offending, with all its rough edges sanded down, you are experiencing someone’s raw commitment to an idea that may make no immediate rational sense to you but that epitomizes their sincere desires (Location 1474)

Indeed, the context for art in Burning Man spaces is significantly different from both the museum context in which western art is typically viewed and the commercial context for which its most famous contemporary examples are created. (Location 1481)

Each part connects with and influences the others, which is relevant in two ways: first, this is what happens when a culture emerges organically rather than being created by blueprint. At no point in time was Burning Man culture ever established by fiat from on high. Rather, it was built from the ground up by everyone who participated in creating the spaces, and it was guided by people who self-selected for it by doing the work to nurture these spaces year round. When I interviewed Burning Man’s founders for this book, literally every one of them said to me at some point, “We were making this up as we went!” (Location 1569)

being helpful is more important than being in charge, and if you’re helpful enough you might end up in charge anyway. That happens a lot, in fact. And I think that’s the way the culture should work.” (Location 1586)

But it can only work that way if you’re not working from a blueprint—if you’re flexible enough to, at some level, make it up as you go. (Location 1587)