Burning The Man Twice?
I would normally be at Black Rock City, NV celebrating with everyone on the playa at Burning Man right now, but my recent move to New York City has me focused there. The current playa gossip is about a guy allegedly setting the man on fire early tues morning. Here’s my angle on it.
I’m more in the mindset of…do whatever you want to do on the playa as long as it doesn’t interfere/intrude on another person’s experience. Yea yea, the trance camps interfere with my sleep at 7am with their damned dush-dush-thump-thump music from hell…but I can easily (and do) put in ear plugs. So there’s some gray.
For me, burning The Man (I figure it gets a double cap) early and selfishly is a bit on the dark side of that grey. Regardless of any of his (the alleged arson) reasons, altruistic or not, he changed an iconic symbol for some/all playa citizens. Changed their expectations. Changed their experience.
For the good or bad? I dunno, but he intruded on the experience of everyone there and that, for me, is a behavior not to be supported. Ugh, but even as I write this paragraph, I hesitate because I also believe the following. And yes, I’ve quoted it before.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) “Maxims for Revolutionists”
So probably a better way–for me–to think through this scenario is to better understand his reasons. If they are altruistic in nature, then perhaps this is a good thing. We will all have the opportunity to learn from this. But, if done for some meaningless reason like cheap thrills, then his actions don’t justify the results even if accidentally positive. Living in a world where alleged arsonists set fires for selfish reasons isn’t safe.
[Update 2:28pm 30 Aug 07] They are about to raise a new Man. You should be able to see it in this live camera feed from the playa which scans across the horizon.
Tags: Art, Burning Man, Society Issues
