The Scene That Became Cities by Caveat Magister (Benjamin Wachs)

Author:Caveat Magister (Benjamin Wachs)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623173708
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2019-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

After looking at all these individual stories about why Burning Man culture has been so successfully internalized by so many people, some of you may be thinking (actually, I kind of hope you are) that hey, wait a minute, some of what you’re saying makes Burning Man experiences so powerful and makes people eager to internalize them has nothing specifically to do with Burning Man’s own ethos. You don’t have to be Burning Man to be a participatory culture that evolves from the experiences of its members, or to travel out into remote and unusual places and put strangers out of their comfort zones together.

And you’re absolutely right. You totally do not.

We’re not talking about some special secret formula about how Burning Man and only Burning Man can do this; we’re talking about how culture works. And while Burning Man does have a unique culture . . . I would say that the way Burning Man combines pointlessness with an environment that is supersaturated with meaning is quite unique, and that the kind of “supersaturated with meaning” environment it creates is likewise very distinct, for example ... you don’t have to look very hard to find other cultures and communities that have some of these things going for them too. As I said at the beginning, Burning Man has some things in common with families as a cultural unit, and some things in common with religious communities. There are plenty of other examples.

But when you put all this together, what is it that Burning Man specifically offers that people are so eager to internalize? How does Burning Man’s specific process of cultural transmission happen?

I think there are two fundamental dynamics at work, neither of which is unique to Burning Man, but which Burning Man is uniquely suited to offer.

The first actually goes back to Aristotle, who held (this is an approximation; I don’t actually speak the original Greek) that happiness is the result of striving at your capacity toward a meaningful goal. When you are fully applying yourself, actualizing your potential to advance something that matters to you, that is the most profound kind of happiness.

Now let’s be honest; most of what we do in our daily lives has nothing to do with that. Quite the opposite: we spend most of our time doing things we don’t really care about and pretending to appreciate other people’s bullshit (and so bullshitting them in turn) in order to get by and be as comfortable as we can.

But I hope you can see, after everything we’ve talked about, how Burning Man spaces offer you the opportunity to live up to potential you didn’t even know you had in pursuit of things you intrinsically care about. The moment of applied existentialism that Burning Man provides is exactly your chance to figure out what matters to you, really matters to you, and then to work on it in the ways that are most engaging to you.

That’s what Burning Man offers. And once you discover that you can do that, you tend to carry that capacity with you into the rest of your life.

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