It may seem like Burning Man is just some crazy hippie party with lots of drugs in the desert. And in some ways, it is, but it is also much more than that. Burning Man is a construct that represents the greater reality of our society compressed into a production, a collective kayfabe that seems to manifest out of the Playa dust once a year for a few weeks, after which, everyone packs up and goes home. Hopefully, someone cleans up, right? I’ve been a few times now, 2017, 2018, 2019, and I skipped the virtual one in 2020. Burning Man seems more like a time to escape the virtual world and bring the wisdom back from the desert than a time to find wisdom virtually.

The best Burning Man experience, if one can manage it, seems to be to manifest a great camp, come for build, and stay until the end of strike. From crusty dust to the bitter end. It’s an experience to witness an entire mini-civilization rise up from the desert and to be there afterwards, tearing down the camp, and picking up MOOP, matter out of place - stray hairs, little screws, etc. until our little neighborhood is spotless. It’s like an artistic metaphor for our civilization, from dust to dust, profoundly transformative. And then the Burning Man organization, Bureau of Land Management, and volunteer crews take care of the heavy lifting after that. Sometime, the lifting is too heavy.

Burning Man is “governed” by ten principles. These aren’t rules, they are an ethos for “good citizenship” that arose organically.

• Radical Inclusion

• Gifting

• Decommodification

• Radical Self-reliance

• Radical Self-expression

• Communal Effort

• Civic Responsibility

• Leaving No Trace

• Participation

• Immediacy

Larry Harvey was the co-founder and Chief Philosophical Officer of the Burning Man movement. He passed away in 2018, but the Man keeps Burning. Larry was a legend. I never really read much about him or researched him on the Internet, but one could not help but hear his legend while on the Playa.

It goes something like this. A long time ago in a city (San Francisco) far, far away, Larry gathered a group of friends and burned the effigy of a man that represented a romantic rival who “stole his woman.” As the years went on, the ceremony to Burn the Man grew, evolved, moved to the Black Rock Desert, and manifested in many different expressions. Over time, it became evident that the Burning of the Man represents, not the burning of the rival, but the Burning of the Self, and the Ego. The Man that needs burning isn’t the rival, it is our own ego, and the hate that we hold inside.

That’s the legend, anyway.

Burning Man is also still a collection of the best and the worst of Humanity. Many camps have drama, things definitely get out of control, safety is thirdish. For my first Burn Night, I went out to the party and watched the spectacle of the Man Burning. The next few years, I watched from afar, from our tower at camp. The more time I spent at Burning Man, the more I found that my favorite part is serving in our camp’s tea room, or sitting around the campfire, getting to know people, learning about their stories - sharing, listening, and learning. Those were the best gifts.

On this historic day today, a significant part of the greater collective kayfabe has spent the past five years doing their best to Burn a Man named Trump. He’s been reviled, hated, and disavowed by a large part of the US population. He’s been impeached once, and is being impeached a second time to remove him from office. I’m not sure if that is “just to be sure,” or if they are attempting to run up the score, or if they didn’t get the memo. He’s banned from Twitter, the official news media continues to burn him, and they nuked Parler, so he wouldn’t have another platform to speak on. Silence is violence, they say.

When the Man Burns, it feels like the biggest party ever, taking place during the end of the world. Celebration. Festival.

The Man has been Burned. The Man keeps Burning.