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When Is Gifting Not Gifting?
Some of my least favorite experiences as a Burner are when we become victims of our own success. Often this happens when the “default world” culture takes something that we do, misunderstands it (sometimes accidentally, sometimes willfully), and then tries to sell a nonsense version of it back to us. In 2016, I wrote about […]
Has Black Rock City’s Torch Passed to the Regionals?
For as long as I’ve been involved, people have been saying that “the Regionals are the future of Burning Man.” But at first they said it in a distant, hopeful tone, the way they’d say that “someday we’ll end world hunger.” A decade later, something changed. They were still saying “the Regionals are the future,” […]
What Does Burning Man Do for the World?
What does Burning Man have to offer the world? This has always been a question with good answers that are hard to explain. Larry once told me that he was constantly asked, in the early days of the Burning Man LLC, why they didn’t found a nonprofit and exclusively fund Burning Man with grant money? […]
Does Your Art Party Have a Philosophy?
Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles in 2004. He established the Burning Man Philosophical Center in 2013. Five years ago in July, the first formal book on Burning Man philosophy was published, centering on that work. Yet to this day, the most common question I’m still asked is: “Does Burning Man have a philosophy?” The […]
Does Your Art Party Need a Philosophy?
Whenever a discussion of Burning Man’s philosophy gets big enough, someone who isn’t enjoying themselves always tries to ruin it for everyone by playing the “do we even need a philosophy? Aren’t you all just missing the point?” card. Which is another way of saying, “That thinking is making me uncomfortable so stop it right […]
Can We Make Our (Terrible) Online Conversations Feel More Like Amazing Theme Camps?
I’ve heard nothing but glorious things about this year’s Black Rock City — lots of people saying that it was their best year ever. But most of the online discussion about it was still as awful as ever. Honestly, if I didn’t already know and love us from all my in-person experiences, I probably wouldn’t […]
What It Means for Black Rock City to Go from “Prototype” to “Outlier”
This is a very interesting time for Burning Man culture, and Burning Man institutions. So naturally we’re all fighting about it. But before we talk about that, let me tell you a bit about how I’ve been “Burning” these last few years, as a way of illustrating a point. How I Burned: Then and Now […]
The Need to Make Bureaucracy “Burning Man Compliant”
Okay, let’s talk about big cultural challenges. Because … we’ve got them. Burning Man has come to a point of unprecedented reach, scope, and diversity, with more people in more places “Burning” in a greater variety of ways than ever before. That’s the good news. The bad news is, that presents as many challenges as […]
What a Bureaucracy That “Feels Like Burning Man” Might Look Like
Before the pandemic, when Burning Man was in its “High Culture” phase, there was a strong sense that the kind of organizational systems and bureaucracy that work for conventional organizations won’t work well for this culture … and so while we needed systems, we also needed to find a way to “make bureaucracy Burning Man […]
The Secret Ingredient to a Bureaucracy That Feels Like Burning Man Is …
Caveat has been writing about Burning Man culture and community for years. His writing does not represent the official views or opinions of Burning Man Project. Because we value Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, and Participation, the Burning Man Journal has always been a space for sharing the many diverse voices, unique experiences, and colorful sto