Hard Lessons from Burning Man
Three Things #84: September 10, 2023
This week’s issue is delayed since I was at Burning Man last week. The experience was too intense to write while I was there, and it was so intense that I can’t not write about it now.
I’ve been to Burning Man three times and each experience has been very different. I’ve been at a different stage of my life each time and arrived with different sets of goals and expectations. This was my first Burn after missing three years due to covid and having a child. Each year, Burning Man has a theme: this year’s was Animalia. In similar fashion I feel like each Burn has had a different personal theme for me.
As I wrote before, Burning Man has ten beautiful principles that have deeply impacted me and the way I live my life. I could probably write a hundred pages on the topic, but as brevity is the soul of wit, here are my three biggest takeaways from Burning Man this year and in prior years.
Burn #1: 2018: The Power of Decentralization
This was my first Burn and it was momentous for several reasons. Most people go crazy their first Burn and I was no exception. I did things I’d never done before. I exposed myself to ideas and concepts I didn’t know existed. I felt the energy of a room full (well, a fishbowl dome full) of strangers—seriously. I tried new drugs. I came out of my shell. I made friends for life (five years later we’re still in touch and I’d still go to the ends of the earth for these people). There were highs and lows, but overall there was joy, wonder, awe, and release.
Prior to 2018 I more or less ignored Burning Man for over a decade since I felt that I didn’t need music, drugs, or desert festivals in my life. Little did I know how wrong I was. I was finally convinced to give it a chance in 2018 by my friends at Camp Decentral. At the time I was traveling and attending crypto conferences nearly full time, and I could squint and sort of pretend that Camp Decentral and Burning Man was just another crypto conference. (I camped with people I was used to hanging out and conferencing with at crypto events in Berlin and New York.) My main motivation was to see decentralization in action. I was quite active in Ethereum governance at the time and I wanted to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and try actually living some of the principles I had been espousing: things like do-ocracy, holocracy, and anarchy.
Be careful what you wish for—I certainly got more than I had bargained for! Both Camp Decentral and Burning Man itself are run along more or less these organizing principles. The Camp, and the Burn, are cooperative. There are no spectators or tourists. In camp everyone has a role, from cooking and cleaning, to building and striking, to managing critical infrastructure like power and water. At Burning Man there’s no money and thus no economy, so everything works through the principle of gifting. Every attendee and every camp brings gifts with them to share, some of them physical, some of them intangible and ephemeral. The whole thing only works because people respect the commons. Everyone maintains a sense of civic duty and everyone participates, and it would fall apart if this weren’t the case. (It’s not perfect. Some people respect and live the principles more than others; some gift more than others; and in recent years there’s been something of a fly-in fly-out tourist culture and people taking without giving much. Managing the commons is hard, man, and it flies in the face of selfish, short-sighted human nature.)
There’s a nonprofit organization nominally in charge of the event known as The Burning Man Project, “BMORG,” or affectionately just “The Org.” Their role is to provide very basic rules and infrastructure such as tickets, gate and will call, the physical layout and placement, regulation of mutant vehicles (a.k.a. art cars), emergency medical services, rangers, and porta-potties. Literally everything else—including food, water, and shelter, and of course all the art, music, and other fun—is provided by the participants.
Burning Man holds a lot of important lessons for “default world” life and business. It makes sense for a government to exist and provide some very basic rules and infrastructure, but The Org is generally respected because it mostly stays out of the way and lets people create their own Burn and enjoy themselves. The Org isn’t perfect but even so Burning Man is something of a libertarian paradise because it’s more or less the smallest, most local form of government most of us will ever experience. (Federal and local law enforcement are nominally present at the event as well, but I’ve never encountered them during any of my Burns and rarely see them at all.)
As a result at Burning Man participants necessarily develop a sense of community and civic involvement because they have to, because no one else is going to do things for them. And, incredibly, it all works and genuinely amazing things happen every year, testament to the power of decentralization and small government. Things at camp and at the Burn can be a bit messy. Sometimes things take a while to get done, and sometimes something doesn’t get done at all. But the important things get done, and when people do things, they do them well because they genuinely pour their heart and soul into them. In other words, they’re doing things to give back and because they really want to, not because it’s their “job,” because they’re being paid, or because someone else told them to (as it turns out, intrinsic motivation like this is a much stronger incentive than money). The Camp has leaders in the form of experienced burners who have done this a few times, and people volunteer for roles and shifts. No one gets told what to do, there are no performance evaluations, and the only form of sanction for shirking responsibility is that you won’t get invited back the following year.
In spite of all of this I don’t think Burning Man scales—in time or in size. But it’s still a wonderful, radical experiment and seeing it come to life in all its glory really has changed the way I look at governance and social organization in the years since my first Burn. It’s definitely made me a fan of a smaller, more local, more hands-off form of government and governance. It’s worth mentioning that some of the social and technical primitives we’re developing in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, such as DAOs, are inspired by the Burning Man principles and might just allow us to scale them, but that’s a topic for another issue.
Burn #2: 2019: Radical Self Expression, Radical Transparency
Radical self expression is another of the Burning Man principles. Burners tend to express themselves through crazy outfits, temporarily taking on different personas, engaging liberally in things like drugs and sex, and generally doing debaucherous things they wouldn’t do elsewhere. None of these behaviors appeal to me in particular—these aren’t why I attend the event—but what does appeal to me is breaking routines and getting out of my comfort zone a bit. It shouldn’t require traveling thousands of miles and camping in the desert, but the reality of day to day life is that sometimes breaking routines does require extremity of one form or another. We’re quite stuck in our habits and, as free as life may be today compared to the past, society doesn’t make it easy to radically break the mold or radically express oneself.
One way I do this at Burning Man is by relaxing my regimen, things I normally do every day like writing, running, and meditating. For me radical self expression means going out with the intention of meeting new people, something I very rarely do these days. It also means being open to new experiences and new ideas. For someone like me who’s very rational and has an engineer’s mind and training, a lot of Burning Man can feel like hippie dippie, new age, spiritual mumbo jumbo, but I’ve found that being open minded and engaging with people and ideas that feel unfamiliar and a little uncomfortable can actually be very rewarding. Burning Man is a terrific opportunity to do this. I’ve learned a lot from these conversations and from workshops on topics such as male-female spiritual relationships and how to authentically relate with strangers.
I first came to understand the power of radical self expression in 2019, when I was facing something of an identity crisis. I was at an inflection point in my life. I was approaching the end of my thirties, and I was confident and comfortable with who I was internally, but I didn’t feel comfortable revealing my true self in public. I hid a lot, even from the people I cared about the most. Despite being a contrarian and having no interest in going back to the corporate world, I still felt that I had to remain “on the career track,” to make sure my resume looked good so as not to close the door to future opportunities. I rarely provided honest, critical feedback to friends and colleagues, preferring to avoid conflict in a misguided attempt not to burn bridges. I also realized that I didn’t believe in monogamy but felt that I was forced to pretend I did for social reasons.
As a result, I was feeling quite stuck and conflicted. Burning Man helped me break free of these feelings. It helped me realize that acting in a way that didn’t align with my true feelings was unhealthy and unhelpful, and was causing a lot of stress for me and the people around me. By seeing lots of others at the event act in ways that involved brave, radical self-expression—whether that meant adopting a different persona, a different gender, taking on risks they normally wouldn’t, or just being nude in public for a few days—I began to see that my behavior didn’t align with my feelings for silly, shallow social reasons. In short, I began to see that, rather than feeling that I needed to “grow up” and conform to the world, I should instead be proud of who I am and celebrate and lean into the things that make me different (such as non-monogamy, honest feedback, and opting out of the traditional career track).
This involved some painful adjustment when it was time to reengage with the “default world.” I decided that, first and foremost, I had to confess about lying to people I cared about, so that radical self expression began with radical transparency and radical honesty (which I consider my personal extensions of the Burning Man principles). I came clean to people that I had hurt and had lied to, and adopted a policy of radical honesty with myself and others. It was really scary and I was afraid that I’d lose multiple friends and relationships. It was difficult for the people I confessed to, and I probably did burn a few bridges that needed burning anyway, but ultimately it resulted in much stronger relationships. One is with someone who’s now my life partner and I’m certain that our relationship wouldn’t be as strong as it is without my experience at Burning Man and the difficult but positive actions it inspired.
I’m a much stronger, more resilient, more confident person today and I feel able to show my true self all the time, whether it aligns with social expectations or not. I’ve striven to maintain these principles in my day to day life, on and off playa.
Burn #3: 2023: Hard Isn’t Difficult
This year’s Burn was hard, but it wasn’t difficult. Let me try to explain.
As any regular reader knows, I’m obsessed with running. One of the things I enjoy so much about running is that it’s hard: I run every morning because I like to do at least one hard thing before breakfast. By hard I mean physically and mentally demanding. Physically, moving forward continuously for an hour or more is hard. (Believe me, staying in bed is easier, especially when the weather’s bad!) You get tired, thirsty, hot or cold depending on the weather, and sometimes you get sore. As hard as running is physically it’s even harder mentally, especially long runs. I get anxious before a run, and I often second guess myself. I worry that I won’t finish the run or that I’ll get sunburnt or hurt myself or need to use the bathroom, that sort of thing.
But these are all small things and running isn’t difficult. At the end of the day it’s just one foot in front of the other, again and again. It’s not complex or hard in any sort of big, novel, challenging way. I’ve done it so many times, I’m quite confident and can do it now without thinking about it. There’s still some anxiety but a lot less than there used to be. And more than anything there’s the knowledge and confidence that it’s good for me, and all of the happy memories of running over many years.
The difference between hard and difficult is psychological. Something hard is demanding, but it can be demanding in a very positive, enjoyable way. Physical labor is demanding—but if you know what you’re doing and enjoy it, are prepared and supported, can do the work safely and rest after, etc., it’s not necessarily difficult. Meditation or even just sitting still is hard but not difficult.
This year’s Burn was very, very hard for two reasons. Firstly, because I camped with friends who built an art car. Operating it, then taking it and the camp down, was very hard. It was a great deal of exhausting work, some of it a little dangerous. I was on my feet working for 8-12 hours a day—and that’s before going out and trying to have some fun. It’s the most physical labor I’ve done in years. But it was exhilarating because I like the people I was camping and working with, because it was for a meaningful, creative cause that brought joy to many people, and because I learned a lot (how to safely vent propane, that diesel fuel won’t ignite unless compressed, how to safely and securely set up a camp shade structure and keep it dry, and that shiftpods and hexayurts aren’t waterproof, to name a few things).
Secondly, because as you may have heard we had some quite extreme weather this year. My previous two Burning Man experiences were both hot, dry, and dusty. This one was wet, muddy, and cold. Rain at the Burn was always a distant possibility and friends that are OG burners shared stories from a decade or more ago about wet Burns, but it just doesn’t happen often. Or at least it didn’t used to. In the event we got several months’ worth of rainfall over just 2-3 days. I don’t have too much to add to what’s already been reported but it was muddy and miserable for a few days while the rain kept coming and while we waited for things to dry up. The thick mud made it almost impossible to move around. Everything in camp got wet and muddy and it was a constant struggle to keep things clean. Even after the weather improved and we had a full day of sunshine things were still wet and muddy and everything was a mess when we packed up camp. This made striking camp significantly harder than usual.
But, again, the experience wasn’t particularly difficult. It was uncomfortable and required hard work but it wasn’t especially taxing psychologically. On the contrary it was a great opportunity to adapt to new circumstances and to experience life away from the comforts of home for a few days (this is always true of Burning Man but it was doubly true this year!). This sort of experience really helps me not take day to day comfort and convenience for granted, and it makes me appreciate simple things like a real coffee in the morning, a hot shower before bed, and a clean, dry place to sleep. The conditions also meant that we were mostly stuck in camp for a few days and couldn’t venture out, explore, join parties, etc., which made for a great opportunity to form deeper bonds with our campmates.
Another term I’ve heard for this sort of hard-but-not-too-difficult thing is “stretch experience.” I suggest seeking out a few stretch experiences every year as an opportunity to grow, test yourself, and remind yourself how lucky you are to have the things you have in your life.