To enumerate all the joyful wonders on offer at Burning Man (which is to say, the libertarian, quasi-socialist, quasi-anarchist, judgment-free, cosmopolitan oasis of generosity brought to life every summer through the communal participation of 70,000+ souls) for those fortunate and adventurous enough to spend eight days on a dry lake bed in the Black Rock Desert would take far more space than is at my disposal here.
But as I lounged on the comfy cushions of the Moroccan-style Pineapple Motel, watching fellow guests dance ecstatically to soft instrumental grooves while we were feted with cold-brew coffee, lemonade, preservative-free cinnamon Os floating in oat milk, and (of course) fresh pineapple, it occurred to me that perhaps more than all that Burning Man provides, its most utopian aspect is what it lacks: suffering.
To be sure, Burning Man is an endurance test. Count on harsh sun with temperatures at least approaching triple digits, terrain so inhospitable that even tiny insects are rare, and dust storms reducing visibility to zero. You must supply your own shelter, food, water (never mind a shower!), and even trash receptacles; and when nature calls, the average Burner’s only recourse (aside from a de rigueur piss bottle to avoid unnecessary late-night excursions) is the port-a-potty.
But privation of the usual comforts of home — at least on the timescale we’re talking about — entails adjustment, not suffering (I say this as an unstoic product of upper-middle-class suburbia who’d never had a night’s sleep without a roof over my head until my first Burning Man at age 42). Without much struggle you can go a week without indoor plumbing, your smartphone, and your usual meal routine. You are more adaptable than you think.
With one intentional exception (which we’ll touch on later), unless you happen to witness someone sustaining a serious injury (not a common occurrence, but it happens), at Burning Man you are never confronted with true suffering. For starters, everyone is in a good enough place in their life to afford not only the ticket (this year around $275 for low-income folk, $625 for regular, over $1,500 if you can do pre-sale) but transportation to the middle of nowhere and the numerous other expenses, not to mention the freedom to carve up to two weeks out of one’s work/life schedule to frolic.
Then there’s health. You’re highly unlikely to go to Burning Man unless you’re relatively physically fit. And though there’s no sure way to gauge another’s psychic/emotional/spiritual health from the outside, the behavior on display — the smiles, the laughter, the dancing and free expression, the apparent openness and social engagement — point pretty clearly to the fact that the people around you are in top form.
But not the least of the reasons for this is how people out there treat each other. Among Burning Man’s 10 Principles:
- Radical Inclusion: “Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.”
- 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.”
- Communal Effort: “Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
- Civic Responsibility: “We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants.”
Because the vast majority of participants put these principles into practice, Burning Man is idyllic. Nearly everywhere you roam someone is offering you food, drink, shade, music, meaningful personal interaction, &c. One very late night on my way back to my camp I exhaustedly plopped down on a couch in a vacant courtyard to enjoy the music this camp was playing and quickly dozed off. When I awoke hours later, a blanket was wrapped around me, supplied by a stranger who wanted to ensure I did not get too cold overnight. This sort of solicitude is common at Burning Man. People watch out for each other as a matter of course.
Thus it was when a storm rolled in late in the week. Although word got around that rain was coming, details were sketchy and most of us were ill-prepared for such an unusual weather event. Within a couple of hours the terrain went from dry and dusty to the consistency of slick oatmeal, and with no let-up in sight, many caught far from their home camp found it impossible to make it back and were forced to shelter wherever they could. Not surprisingly, these temporary refugees were taken in, fed, provided with dry clothes, etc., etc.
We often hear stories like this in the wake of disasters, neighbor helping neighbor and the like. The difference is that this is status quo at Burning Man — and sans the exploitation that also springs up in “the default world” (as Burners call the day-to-day they leave behind for the week) whenever the opportunity presents itself. How much price-gouging and profiteering took place during the pandemic? How much fraud? How many people literally threw fits at simply being asked to mask up so as to minimize the chance that others might die a horrible, lonely death?
Would suffering have become prevalent at Burning Man had the rains lasted a couple more days? No doubt — but not because it would have devolved into the dog-eat-dog. There are things you can’t control, and things you can. Burners generally see and treat each other as being in the same big boat.
To state the obvious, life is better when you’re not suffering. What may be less obvious is that your life will generally be better when others aren’t suffering. I’m not talking just about your loved ones, in whose well-being you are directly invested; I’m talking about the strangers in your community and beyond. If you have even an ounce of general compassion in your soul, it is painful to watch others (at least those with whom we don’t have a specific axe to grind) suffer. After my flight from Reno deposited me at LAX, the vista through the Metrolink windows on my way to Long Beach was stained with the homelessness that is everywhere you look these days. And on TV and the internet there’s war, murder, hate crimes, smash-and-grab robbery, wanton property destruction, predatory financial schemes, environmental ruin, institutional disenfranchisement and oppression, the politics of divisiveness and fear — and the suffering that comes with it. For most of us it’s a daily spiritual drain even when your own life is good.
But let’s say you simply don’t give a fuck: I’ve got mine — tough luck for the everybody else. Even if you don’t believe that equity is a moral imperative and charity an absolute good, you don’t need to look beyond simple self-interest to find the value of minimizing the suffering of others — because the less suffering there is around you, the less likely others are to visit suffering upon you. Tupac Shakur states the case with elegant simplicity:
If I know in this hotel room they have food every day, and I’m knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door and let me see the party, let me see, like, them […] throwing food around but they’re telling me there’s no food in there, [… and] I’m standing outside trying to sing my way in, [like] ‘We are hungry, please let us in,’ after about a week that song is gonna change to ‘We hungry, we need some food.’ After two, three weeks it’s like, ‘Gimme [food] or I’m breaking down the door!’ After a year […] I’m picking the lock and coming through the door blasting, you know what I’m saying?
As a societal model, Burning Man is a fantasy, able to be erected each year largely because participation in capitalism back home enables Burners to acquire the necessary money/materials needed to bring the fantasy to a brief but glorious life. Problematic realities in our incomprehensibly complex society preclude the possibility of transformation along utopian lines.
And of course people are suffering at Burning Man. Everyone on this side of enlightenment is in pain — and you can damn well believe that many Burners come for catharsis. The Temple — Burning Man’s spiritual center, whose sadness is palpable from the moment you enter — is all about actively processing the unavoidable suffering that comes from the eventual loss of everything and everyone.
But there is suffering in the overarching, existential sense, and there’s the brute, mundane suffering that pervades today’s society even in the absence of cataclysm. If the default world is like living under water, the residents of Black Rock City co-create a space where we all break the surface together and take deep breaths of the same revivifying air.
By creating a community where the default suffering of the day-to-day is scarcely felt or seen despite harsh conditions and the absence of bourgeois luxuries, Burning Man suggests — both by what it is and what it’s not — numerous possibilities for how to reduce that suffering. Ground yourself in the immediate present. Get off your phone. Don’t be acquisitive. Pare down. Support anything that increases health and reduces poverty. Eliminate inequity. Acknowledge the people you pass on the street. Engage. Be civil. Give. Participate. Dance. Take responsibility for the environment, particularly your own negative impact.
Think of these as continual course adjustments rather than destinations. Want less suffering? It isn’t like we have no sense of the direction in which to go. Because as commendable as it is to be charitable and benevolent, it’s in your own self-interest to reduce the suffering around you. Do so and even when the rains come, things might not be so so bad.