Is anyone planning on going with a theme camp? Ona, I know you are planning on working with the Blackrock foundation in the first aid/psychosis treatment area, does anyone else have pre-organized plans? What are your thoughts for realizing the theme of "The American Dream"?
I personally am planning (at the moment) to camp with my friend Dave Casey (UCBerkeley) at the moment, but would love to be a part of a far out, intellectually driven, spiritually magnetic, crazy ass group of shaman-healer-extraterrestrial-tribal-robotic-nomadic-wisdom imparting peoples. Is anyone else down to try and make that happen? Is that a realistic goal with so many of us on opposite ends of the globe? Could we materialize a week before the event and put together a circus troupe worthy of performing for 50,000 burners?
The theme for this has gotten me pondering an awful lot. What is the American Dream for you? Is it so simple as freedom - of expression, consumption, belief? Is it a better life (education, prosperity) for your children? A crack house? Slot machines and all-you-can-eat buffets? Is it humble, supercilious, pious, turgid, avaricious, profligate, self-aggrandizing, button-down conformity, white picket fences and lucky charms for breakfast? For me it is above all embodied by Thorstein Veblen's notion of conspicuous consumption, the drive to purchase things of no practicality only to smash them up (www.latimes.com/news/local...86184.story conspicuous leisure, and our dispersal of this consumer lifestyle to the most remote corners of the globe. An epiphany for me came when I was in Vang Viang, Laos, a hotspot of drug tourism, when I walked down the Thang Falang (foreigner way) and saw the two notorious Friends cafes. These two cafes play Friends nonstop for the hordes of stupefied tourists that come to indulge in opium, pot, mushrooms, and myriad other substances that make their way there, but Laotians are obsessed with the show too, being entranced by the ideology of inanity and easy living that it embodies. The American Dream is characterized by boundless expansion, indigenous extermination, the near total extinction of buffalo for sport, railroad barons, the dot-com boom, the monsantos, archer daniels midlands, and cargills, and the complete detachment of the end consumer from the natural resources, labor, and energy that goes into the product purchased which is all too often thrown away without having even been used. It's manifestations are inequality, anorexia and bulimia, habitat destruction, the obesity and diabetes epidemics, often meaningless choices in our political candidates, decreased diversity of foodstuffs and animal life, and the general cultural homogenization that brings jews and muslims, blacks and whites, rich and poor together under the roof of a McDonald's, and projects Friends into places like Laos which had 2 million tonnes of American ordnance (more than was deployed in all of WWII) dropped on it from 1971 to 1973.
Why are we going to Burning Man? As the preeminent counterculture event in the United States it claims to be based on radical self-expression and radical self-reliance. It is perhaps better known for being the site of copious amounts of substance use and electronic music. Yet the artistic, spiritual, and communal elements of it are undeniable. How do we intend to contribute? What do we plan to take from it? What are our expectations, imaginations, projections for the experience? Is this just another manifestation of conspicuous consumption? Will we costume ourselves or go naked? Overindulge in substances and beats, or remain sober and turn our consciousness inward?
All things to ponder, as I am just now beginning to really do. I bought the ticket and I plan to take the ride, but just what that ride will be is entirely dependent on the planning of the next couple of months, the company that I keep during the trip, the mental, physical, and emotional preparation that I engage in prior to arriving at the Playa. I hope you will all join and challenge me as we embark upon this great adventure full of so much possibility and spine-tingling uncertainty.
Namaste,
Kinga
I personally am planning (at the moment) to camp with my friend Dave Casey (UCBerkeley) at the moment, but would love to be a part of a far out, intellectually driven, spiritually magnetic, crazy ass group of shaman-healer-extraterrestrial-tribal-robotic-nomadic-wisdom imparting peoples. Is anyone else down to try and make that happen? Is that a realistic goal with so many of us on opposite ends of the globe? Could we materialize a week before the event and put together a circus troupe worthy of performing for 50,000 burners?
The theme for this has gotten me pondering an awful lot. What is the American Dream for you? Is it so simple as freedom - of expression, consumption, belief? Is it a better life (education, prosperity) for your children? A crack house? Slot machines and all-you-can-eat buffets? Is it humble, supercilious, pious, turgid, avaricious, profligate, self-aggrandizing, button-down conformity, white picket fences and lucky charms for breakfast? For me it is above all embodied by Thorstein Veblen's notion of conspicuous consumption, the drive to purchase things of no practicality only to smash them up (www.latimes.com/news/local...86184.story conspicuous leisure, and our dispersal of this consumer lifestyle to the most remote corners of the globe. An epiphany for me came when I was in Vang Viang, Laos, a hotspot of drug tourism, when I walked down the Thang Falang (foreigner way) and saw the two notorious Friends cafes. These two cafes play Friends nonstop for the hordes of stupefied tourists that come to indulge in opium, pot, mushrooms, and myriad other substances that make their way there, but Laotians are obsessed with the show too, being entranced by the ideology of inanity and easy living that it embodies. The American Dream is characterized by boundless expansion, indigenous extermination, the near total extinction of buffalo for sport, railroad barons, the dot-com boom, the monsantos, archer daniels midlands, and cargills, and the complete detachment of the end consumer from the natural resources, labor, and energy that goes into the product purchased which is all too often thrown away without having even been used. It's manifestations are inequality, anorexia and bulimia, habitat destruction, the obesity and diabetes epidemics, often meaningless choices in our political candidates, decreased diversity of foodstuffs and animal life, and the general cultural homogenization that brings jews and muslims, blacks and whites, rich and poor together under the roof of a McDonald's, and projects Friends into places like Laos which had 2 million tonnes of American ordnance (more than was deployed in all of WWII) dropped on it from 1971 to 1973.
Why are we going to Burning Man? As the preeminent counterculture event in the United States it claims to be based on radical self-expression and radical self-reliance. It is perhaps better known for being the site of copious amounts of substance use and electronic music. Yet the artistic, spiritual, and communal elements of it are undeniable. How do we intend to contribute? What do we plan to take from it? What are our expectations, imaginations, projections for the experience? Is this just another manifestation of conspicuous consumption? Will we costume ourselves or go naked? Overindulge in substances and beats, or remain sober and turn our consciousness inward?
All things to ponder, as I am just now beginning to really do. I bought the ticket and I plan to take the ride, but just what that ride will be is entirely dependent on the planning of the next couple of months, the company that I keep during the trip, the mental, physical, and emotional preparation that I engage in prior to arriving at the Playa. I hope you will all join and challenge me as we embark upon this great adventure full of so much possibility and spine-tingling uncertainty.
Namaste,
Kinga
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Re: Burning Man 2008 - Camp plans and the American Dream
Fri, July 4, 2008 - 3:36 AMAlright Matt, I'm down as you know it. I'm ready to try and Make It Happen, whatever this particular It would be - at least a guarantee to have a communal blast out there in the desert.
I wonder if there are two sides of the American Dream. The one TBR (To Be Rejected) as the twisted consumerist globalization (global consumerism), presented by young, world-aware and world-guilty Americans.
And the literal definition of the American Dream, as in the dream that only going to America might turn into reality, or so it is (often wrongly - perhaps?) perceived by the immigrants. The evils of homogenization, of course, but what are you supposed to do when you just prefer to choose a mix of cultures other than your own?
My personal dream wasn't a self-help book success story. Not even the Land of Opportunities. Instead, a chance to construct an identity from scratch making sure it would represent my concept of self as accurately as possible. The initial anonimity provided the courage, the cultural patchwork of Boston - choice, the fact that I was only responsible for myself at Harvard - time. I brought the passion.
I tried on new languages, professions, drugs, political and sex positions like dresses at a corner store, found a gateway to my so-far favorite world of Latin America; discovered the concepts of radical tolerance and radical intolerance, suburbs and cheerleaders, the mix of politics and religion I only attributed to certain Islamic countries before, and the lifestyle sheltered to varying degrees. (Most issues are at least in part as Lithuanian as they are American by now, but it was easier for me to indulge and explore without any externally set boundaries, whether by family, by lack of opportunities, or by culture.)
In the end I'd find myself so trapped in the world that the newly-designed-I occupied a part of that I would sink into a huge, spiralling out mess nearly every spring, in need of the most American shrink (that I never actually bothered to contact). I never wanted to leave though, realizing the problem clearly was not with the country I was in - instead, I subconsciously started identifying myself with the political and social consequences of being an American, which, as evidenced by my passport and the yearly migrations hassle, I'm most obviously not.
Meanwhile, each vacation at my ex-home would bring about the real cultural shock. It took four years and twice the number of countries to stop feeling like an One-Night Caliph from the Thousand and One Nights, and make all my realities separated by border posts and migration controls fall into one, at least enough to decrease the discomfort of trying to squeeze into old identities.
My American dream came with the price of being unable to identify with any one cultural framework or nation, and choosing a weird Latino-US-Lithuanian-tinged mix, of openly not belonging to any society but my own friends around the world; with the danger of depression due to an ill-fitting identity; not to mention a share of the consumer's guilt. I don't ever want to imagine myself without all that.
Did I choose to make myself a part of the global problem in change of a personal solution? Now I realize that I didn't need to go anywhere to reconstruct myself - but I had to go to the US to realize it; and nonetheless I'm imagining my future anywhere _but_ in the country that I was born in.
And how many Americans would leave behind their country, lifestyle and national/cultural identity in search to rebuild it by following, for instance, a Lithuanian, Peruvian or Mongolian dream? Would they come back?
The fact that I'm going to Burning Man is yet another way that my identity was released in (by?) the US, so I'm planning to celebrate it - and be aware of the responsibility that came with it. I'm planning to indulge, of course, in substances and demonstrations, but in people above all - and I would advocate putting up a show instead of a costume. This brings me (us all?) to the need to brainstorm and propose... Some sort of a game, a performance, a troupe - the Vague Idea needs to become Flesh.
We should probably just post a number of random ideas, however unfitting, and work from there. TBC on that! -
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Re: Burning Man 2008 - Camp plans and the American Dream
Tue, July 15, 2008 - 12:56 PMHey matt, your speech sounds like it was written by a politician. What do they teach at Harvard these days?
Pardon my crass unpolished writing style.
A conversation I had with a couple of Latvian twins psytrance DJ´s comes to mind, what they said was the first time you go to Burning Man, just go. Observe, explore, absorb, don´t try to do too much. He also said just being there was about the equivalent of a psychedelic drug and that one does not really need to take them (and if you do, things will get crazy quickly...).
I don´t know if you are in contact with people that have been, but this is just the suggestion I received. I imagine just getting the camping gear together in the 2 or 3 days we have in the bay together is going to be nightmare enough. That´s what I think yah?
For me the American Dream´s ideals are the unshackling from Old World constraints of religious intolerance, monarchy and theocracy, nobility, the establishment of a libertarian democracy (which has long since disappeared and it looks like we are nearly full circle back to theocracy), and the freedom to exploit ´virgin´ land never before touched by ´civilized´ man, for each man to have his 40 acres and a mule so none are left wanting. Manifest destiny I guess. Also, the tolerance and mingling among different races and nationalities and religions, which is admittedly still far from being perfectly harmoniously realized but living in California I think there are not many places in the world where one can find this diversity and tolerance.
The mindless consumerism aspect I don´t see as much as a dream but more a reality, or manifestation if you like!
Anyway I like the cowboys and indians idea, since I´m in Nicaragua and the campesinos dress like cowboys, and then the indigenous garb is pretty neat and psychodelica as well.
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