Burning Man happens every single year this week. It is one of those experience you will forget. Especially the first time you go. The energy is WILDLY magical, lights everywhere, dust in every crevice of your body, freedom like you’ve never seen before.
The first time I went I was shocked by how incredibly built it was and how advanced the art installments were, while also being shocked at how rugged I felt sleeping in the dust for a week, cooking food over a fire, dressed in googles and mask. It’s the size of Manhattan with over 60,000 attendees and when we are there, it feels like we are living in a new world of infinite possibility.
As soon as COVID hit, I jokingly commented that it felt like Burning Man. Everyone was wearing masks, gifting services to the community, and working from home nude (yes, we all do it). Yet the more this experience has gone on, the more I realize that it feels more and more like burning man.
Burning Man represents this counter-culture way of operating in the world, based on radical inclusivity, freedom of expression, art, decommodification, gifting, participation, radical self reliance. At Burning Man, it doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone drops their ego, their given name, and takes on a more expressive identity. There is no status or money that can buy your way somewhere. Everything happens in divine order. Right now the world is experiencing a take down of the man. The system as we know it is shifting drastically. Our education systems, our political systems, our police systems are all getting an extreme makeover, home edition.
We have no idea what the world is going to look like at the end of this all but what we do know is that, this is all happening in divine order. We will come out of this totally changed. It is up to us at how we respond.