| ▲ | gkoberger a day ago |
| Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been. But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man. |
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| ▲ | gkoberger a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| I looked a bit into the author. His friend unfortunately died at Burning Man in 1996, as did two other people. Since then, he left and has been an advocate for shutting down Burning Man. They fought over the name for 10 years after that. |
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| ▲ | ElProlactin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/burnin... > ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man. I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next paragraph with that context. Have you been to a Mexican ranchero wedding that lasts several days? Enjoyed a weekend BBQ in a Filipino province? Been invited by a bunch of 60 and 70-somethings in a small town in Vietnam who don't speak English to sing karaoke with them? Enjoying life doesn't have to be a monumental, once-a-year event, and it shouldn't be. |
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| ▲ | gkoberger a day ago | parent [-] | | You can't just post an article about pollution and use that as a trump card. The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM. I get it, 70,000 people in one spot creates trash and pollution. But we all are, every minute of every day. In the grand scheme of things, Burning Man is _not_ the problem. Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes? I agree meeting locals is a ton of fun and should be a part of everyone's life. But if a bunch of people want to go to a desert and hang out for a week, and they clean up after themselves, why do you care? | | |
| ▲ | ElProlactin a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article... Did you even read the article? It stated very clearly: > With organizers themselves estimating that Burning Man emits 100,000 tons of carbon every year, it is clear things cannot stay the same on the playa. 100,000 tons total. Please don't cherry-pick one part of the article to make a point. > ...and they clean up after themselves... Except, if you actually did the research, you would know that there are lots of reports of trash being dumped in nearby towns, including Reno and Tahoe. It's not the straightforward "they clean up after themselves" you make it out to be. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/07/burning-man-... https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2023/09/06/b... > Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes? Who took anything to an extreme? Most of my comment was pointing out that in much of the world, particularly in places where people have way less, they find a way to enjoy life and have fun without events that have the environmental impact of a Burning Man. I'm not calling for Burning Man to be banned. But what I think is extreme is the idea that, because the "world kinda sucks", the solution is for people to take a few days out of the year to go into the desert and let loose. Have a monthly BBQ with friends. Sing karaoke on the weekend. Take a hike every Sunday. Those things will contribute way more to a durable enjoyment of life than a Burning Man. | |
| ▲ | fsckboy a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Burning Man is _not_ the problem Burning Man is completely discretionary, you need to compute the total discretionary carbon footprint, and then the BM carbon footprint | | |
| ▲ | gkoberger a day ago | parent [-] | | Okay, then it's at about 0.0008% of discretionary global emissions. If we're going down the list of things to get upset about, Burning Man is pretty far down the list. Let people have fun. |
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| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Regional burns are a thing, and they're pretty awesome. |
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| ▲ | cassonmars a day ago | parent [-] | | They can be, but unfortunately the org has threatened to revoke official regional burn status unless they followed all the same rules, in particular, that children be allowed. There used to be some leeway on that, and there were really wonderful regional burns that did not permit kids. They were forced to, which resulted in the "real" burn being in a small taped off area. Seems insane to me to think kids should be at burns. | | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I usually camp where I can get some distance from the noise, which means I hang out with the burner parents and their kids. It's really great to see all of the ways that burners adapt their art so that kids can participate, and the kids bring a pretty excellent energy also. Most recently I was navigating this wooden maze, lots of tight spaces and odd bends necessary to get through it. Part way through I encountered a bunch of kids who weren't tall enough to get over a ledge (they navigated the rest of the thing with ease). I made myself into stairs for them and they completed it. Later I had an epic foam sword fight with the same bunch. It was super fun. I've never been to the big burn, so maybe I'm just missing out on the magic of whatever you mean by the "real" burn (although many of the people at my regional say it isn't worth it), but I don't think anything was lost by having the kids around. Their parents are convinced that it's raising a child in default society that's the more dangerous thing, and after talking with several of them I'm convinced as well. | |
| ▲ | Ancapistani a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I’m pretty extreme ideologically, and that carries over to parenting. I would consider taking my child and requiring that it be allowed strikes me as an enormous red flag. | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | newsclues a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s because it’s easier to recruit kids into cults or whatever | | |
| ▲ | pstuart a day ago | parent [-] | | > That’s because it’s easier to recruit kids into cults or whatever That's what Sunday School is for. I lived in SF at the time of the original burns on Baker Beach and heard about them but I was too lame and isolated to ever participate but followed their antics (and the Cacophony Society) from afar. The universe arranged for me to go ten years ago and I found the experience magical. There's an exhibit that shows how each wave of newcomers has destroyed burning man which I found to be a cheeky take on its evolution. The kids I saw there were doing kid friendly stuff and them being allowed there was clearly to allow their parents to come without having to leave them behind. There's plenty to hate about it but in the end it's about people coming together to have a good time, and there's nothing wrong with that. | | |
| ▲ | newsclues 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or school, including university/college | | |
| ▲ | pstuart 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sorry, but no. That's a key reason why the religious folk hate public education at the college level: that exposure tends to help previously indoctrinated kids recognize that they have been in a cult and they leave it. As for K-12, their hatred is that the public version is competition for their private education which is fully intended to indoctrinate them into their particular flavor of religion. I'm not saying this to be combative -- it's all publicly stated. The only combative thing here is using the word "cult" to describe a mainstream religion, and even that is because people get offended by that rendering rather than it not being the case. | | |
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| ▲ | megagpt1 a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Burning Man is also a quintessential example of "what if we just did a cool thing?" - a philosophy that more of us need to try following. |
