2008 "American Dream" theme

[TheFunkHole]

Children, children... If I have to pull this car over, you are going to walk home.

What is it about forums that make people so cranky? Take a Havidol http://www.havidol.com/ and get yer smile back.

"Give me a reasonnnn 2 luv U"
Listen - Portishead - Glory Box
"For this is the beginning of forever, and ever."

[TheFunkHole]

"it seems Larry Harvey is personally inviting us to give this idea a voice and make it part of our history and playa politics.

THE WHOLE WORLD THINKS AMERICA'S POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS SHOULD BE ON THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY AND NOT ONLY ITSELF.

I'm glad the theme IS The American Dream because this provides an opportunity for us to make a statement that changing the theme or staying home never could."

Hell yeah, thanks SFbrothermichael.

It's due time to admit real eyes, realize, real lies. (thanks Brewce)

WTF is the Amero Dream these days? Not to me or you, the the average Amero Dream. The one that we all sorta buy-in on. The one your mind says falls somewhere there in the middle. You don't wanna go too far left or right, you might discover something you're not immediately comfortable with. Just keep things sorted kinda in the middle there by the Applebees restaraunt, over by the Best Buy, Home Depot, Borders, Bed Bath & Beyond complex. (Oh that reminds me, I need a new stainless steel rain making shower head. I'm tall and I need one that will adjust to my height. It's on sale for $99.95)

[flaming fag]

how could the people who plan this let a theme like that even be suggested?!how hypocritical.I thought this was aiming at being the all inclusive global green conscious community minded gatherings of alternative types of thinkers looking to get away from the"american Dream" for a spell...maybe just enjoy something not quite so elitist.
are all the hippies and faeries,faggots and ravers looking to buy into the hype all of the sudden?where have I been hiding?

[smcrob]

Just Google Zeitgeist the Movie... then watch it... then tell me you want the American Dream for a theme.

www.zeitgeistmovie.com

[TheFunkHole]

I have seen Zeitgeist. That isn't a dream, it's more of a reality, IMO.

Hey SFNathan, I would be curious to hear how your friends from London interpret the American Dream. What does it all mean to them?

51% Americans don't trust the government, according to the news report on the tv. Maybe that is a good enough reason for this theme? Apparently there is a wide variety of ideas for the American Dream.

I was just reading this version of the dream:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/

What do you think about it? It's about 10 years old, it sure seems to be making progress. Is this in line with your vision of this country's future?

[SFNathan]

“it appears you can't even read a poll ..65 is not 80..â€

[unjonharley]

65%+15% = 80% think it’s extremely to somewhat lame. And 7%+12% = 19% think it’s good to brilliant. That means its roughly an 80/20% split.

your grabbing at # that don t belong to you..

first of all i think many things are" lame lame lame" or kind of lame.. my thought are passing and mean little or nothing to the rest of the world.. so i tend to put the kind of lame 15% in with the ok.. then the printed remarks from the lame lame lame are far fewer in this thread.. this lends to a quick knee jerk reaction by most of the 65% voters

claiming that most of us are anarchist is some thing you appeared to have pulled out of your ass..

this make me belive you are becoming unstable

?? do intend to contribute anything + or - to burning man 08?
or just keep blating like a sheep here on eplaya?

[SFNathan]

"claiming that most of us are anarchist is some thing you appeared to have pulled out of your ass.. "

um, before 1997, the event was completely anarchist. Not like ideologically anarchist, but practically anarchist. There were no rules. The first year I went in 1994 there were 2000 people and you could pretty much do whatever you wanted. Driving, gun shooting at the gun range, being naked anywhere, drive out to the local hot springs, burn things right on the playa without a burn dish, - whatever floats your boat, you could do.

In 1997 the BMORG instituted some rules that the community complied with. They made streets, told people to park their cars, and made basic rules to protect people's safety and the environment, but otherwise the event continued to be mostly anarchist. Some of the rules also included not allowing any corporations to advertise in any way at the event now that the event was becoming more organized, not allowing any big name DJ's to feature their name, etc. While the event was more organized, no one wanted it to become another big corporate party where the attendees bought entertainment provided by the organization. It was supposed to be participant driven.

The theme was something that has always been somewhat vague. But last year the theme and the Burning Man staging area did something different. They featured a theme that had an underlying agenda of environmentalism and they featured environmental technology that could be purchased by Burners outside the event. This year, the theme is more specific than any theme of the past.

So I'm not drawing the fact that Burning Man has previously been anarchist out of my ass. You can call it something different if the word anarchist has political tones you don't like. Burning Man was probably a lot like the biker parties you were describing. It was "anything goes". That's what I mean by anarchist. And I know because I've been doing this since 1994.

[SFNathan]

"?? do intend to contribute anything + or - to burning man 08? or just keep blating like a sheep here on eplaya?"

for the last 7 years I've been the lead organizer for one of the playa's ten largest Villages, a 300+ person village of 8 theme camps. I contribute a lot every year to this event because I love it, and I've never had a single complaint to the BMORG in the past. I plan on continuing to organize the village at this point, but if one of our theme camps that is mostly european declines to go because of this theme, I may reconsider.

Are you going to keep trying to get people to not express opinions you don't like to hear on a discussion page that is specifically designed for people to express their opinions?

[unjonharley]

your refering to times gone by "97", braging of your great controbutions and insistance you will get your with "small" mob rule.. all go to show how unstable you are becoming..

as i have writen.. as a rider i have been to biker rallies that make early bm look like a cake bake.. we were not anarchist.. we were a bunch of anti social ass holes.. about the same as your early bm ers..

times have changed.. your refusel to change makes you appear way out of step with the main stream..

[SFNathan]

"your refering to times gone by "97", braging of your great controbutions and insistance you will get your with "small" mob rule.. all go to show how unstable you are becoming.. "

dude - I'm not trying to be rude to you. I wish you would be more respectful to me.

You asked if I plan to contribute next year so I told you what I do every year and what my plans are for next year.

This is my last response to you because I'm not interested in being in a flame war with you.

[unjonharley]

"your refering to times gone by "97", braging of your great controbutions and insistance you will get your with "small" mob rule.. all go to show how unstable you are becoming.. "

dude - I'm not trying to be rude to you. I wish you would be more respectful to me.

You asked if I plan to contribute next year so I told you what I do every year and what my plans are for next year.

This is my last response to you because I'm not interested in being in a flame war with you.

\/
yup people that have gone around the bend do not like it pointed out to them

[Kinetik V]

for the last 7 years I've been the lead organizer for one of the playa's ten largest Villages, a 300+ person village of 8 theme camps. I contribute a lot every year to this event because I love it, and I've never had a single complaint to the BMORG in the past. I plan on continuing to organize the village at this point, but if one of our theme camps that is mostly european declines to go because of this theme, I may reconsider.

You've got to be kidding. Just because people don't like the theme it's a reason to not go? With that kind of closed minded attitude perhaps the playa would be better off without ya.

And if you've been going this long and don't have some kind of prior complaint, IMHO you're not fully engaged with the event.

Anyway I bet when Larry publishes the rest of the theme details a lot of people will be eating crow. Everyone's jumping the gun without having the full vision...which I think is absolutely hilarious.

[TheFunkHole]

The theme is forcing us to think about issues that are so relative and important right now. While this can be seen as a "downer", I still argue that it's something that should be brought up, especially at BM.

I'm all for this theme. Not sure exactly how to visualize it, but maybe that's not as important this coming year. Radical self-expression can be interpreted many ways too, not just visually.

If people who have been going to BM for years don't show up because of this theme, that is fine, take a year off. There will still be plenty of people there to form a beautiful community and celebrate. If 5-10,000 people showed up, great! I'll get to know some really interesting folks, and have some great conversations about the theme. Whatever it ends up being is fine with me, I will be there. That's the beauty of BM, there is no pattern of what it should be.

Maybe it's time to quit escaping reality and deal with it. Avoiding the problem doesn't fix anything, in fact it makes it worse.

There is so much potential for an escalation of war this year, predominantly caused by OUR country, America and our allies. At times, it is difficult for me to have fun knowing the bitter truth about what our leaders are doing and me, more or less not giving a shit by escaping reality. Isn't that more important than dancing in the desert?

"Crude Awakening" meant more to me than a big fucking ball of fire in the sky. That was a statement of the American Dream and people loved it and cheered and was probably the highlight "Wow" of 2007. Yet just afterwards it was back to dancing as usual, I felt a little sickened. Our country's thirst for oil may very well lead us to destroying anyone in our way, and I'm sorry, I'd rather be forced to change/adjust than have that on my conscience.

Hope and Fear: The Future - no shortage of hope or fear when I think about the future.

Green Man - yes, let's find ways to adjust our relationship with Mommy Earth. Corporate Shmorporate, things HAVE to change or we're all scroogled, I'm young and will have to live with this for some time.

American Dream - the world's leader is asleep and having a nightmare. Time to wake up! (or have a lucid dream where we gain control)

"All of us are immigrants to Black Rock City. What can we dream America to be?"

[SFNathan]

"Maybe it's time to quit escaping reality and deal with it. Avoiding the problem doesn't fix anything, in fact it makes it worse."

That's why I'm here talking. And that's why I am active politically outside of this event - I'm not someone who just looks the other way about these issues. But I think we should deal with them differently for the event.

I appreciate your view on the theme. I have a different one.

[TheFunkHole]

"I appreciate your view on the theme. I have a different one."

Yes I respect everyone's opinions as well. I hear what yer sayin' too. It's gonna be a kooky year. I hope you and your friends still go.

See, we CAN agree to disagree. Good thing I'm not really working now, I've put too much time into this board.

Happy Fuckin' Friday! Cheers

[unjonharley]

"I appreciate your view on the theme. I have a different one."

Yes I respect everyone's opinions as well. I hear what yer sayin' too. It's gonna be a kooky year. I hope you and your friends still go.

See, we CAN agree to disagree. Good thing I'm not really working now, I've put too much time into this board.

Happy Fuckin' Friday! Cheers

\/
yup, me too.. if i can get these kitties off my lap.. i ll get back to the board and drawing the plans for the theme.. The American Dream Machine..

[lurker]

"most of the rest of the people in the world don't think like this." - Lurker

It's this kind of attitude which ignores the international burners who attend Burning Man that many of us find offensive.

Guess you missed the line where I pointed out that they were thinking like us then....?

One of our camps is a theme camp of people almost entirely from London. They rent out all of their equipment from Reno and build a camp here every year, investing tons of money, time and energy into an event that is just as much theirs as it is my event and all the rest of us who are from America. Just because they live on the other side of the world doesn't mean they are any less Burners than us - in fact, they invest probably more in this event than a lot of Americans who attend it.

Don't think I ever said that the international burners were any less burners than anyone.

But come on--lots of people rent and buy all kindsa crap and invest all kindsa money into building the chaotic utopia that is BRC, but I was pretty sure it wasn't about money.

It's about the chaos.....and all that can spring up out of it.

And here's the thing--where exactly are your british friends going to have all this burnery fun? Glastonbury? Nope. Nevada. In the US.

Are they complaining? They don't like this event that happens in America to say anything that could be construed as good about America? Somehow I don't think so.....

And your myopic view that creativity is only an American thing is yet another reason that we should broaden the perspective here. Creativity is not an exclusively American thing.

Again, don't think I said anything like that. Tried to describe what made Burning Man uniquely American...tried to elaborate on a thought process that we have that a lot of the world finds annoying--that we think the world is our personal toy. This has it's bad side, to be sure. But it has it's glorious side as well. Burning Man is part of the glorious side.

(America is NOT the only place in the world that celebrates events like Burning Man - The Full Moon Party in Thailand, Psytrance parties in Goa India, Carnavalle in Rio, and many other places have radically creative celebrations that are comparable, if different in style, from Burning Man).

Well, starting with the simple fact that the only one of those 'events' that comes anywhere near close to being in a spirit that manifests sometimes, but is not a feature of Burning Man is those psytrance parties, I think you're stretching.

Burning Man, as you've noted, is an experiment in a type of anarchy(I prefer chaos, but that's just splitting heirs). None of those are. And, as far as I know, Burning Man is unique in that.

Creative contributions have happened all around the world and we should celebrate all of them, not just America's

.

And we do, as you've pointed out, "The Full Moon Party in Thailand, Psytrance parties in Goa India, Carnavalle in Rio"--Thailand, India and Brasil. And this one is in America. Is it wrong to know that? To like that? To, dare I say it, celebrate that?

There is NO reason that you can't have your American art in the context of the Global Dream.

It should be Global Dream if we are going to discuss nations at all.

So you're into globalism?

[fireartjohn]

I've been going since '99 and am one of 3 US citizens in a camp of about 25 people. When I heard the theme I felt "Oh, no. I've had enough of the celebration of stupidity and manufactured terror we've experienced during the Bush regime". I got invited to the South African burn next year and thought about going there instead. And I agree with the posters that point out this should cut the population of BRC significantly (good) but will likely attract mostly we're-the-best-fuck-the-rest-rednecks (bad). I don't believe having a party in the desert can help to recover the America we knew. I think it's at best like whistling in the dark to hold the fear away and at worst a distraction so we look away from regime-change-begins-at-home (hopefully I'm very wrong and this event will inspire lots of willing-to-work-for-a-better-future-"hippies"). Finally though, I came back to the idea that this may actually be less hypocritical than many other themes we could have. After all, this theme really turns us loose to race even more smoking loud scooters around in huge clouds of dust. To burn massive amounts of fossil fuels simply because we call it "art". To scale up the corporate marketing opportunities tremendously. And to throw Dennis-Kozlowski-scale parties for only an "in" crowd of friends. Suddenly I'm filled with ideas for ever more outrageous theme camps and "art" cars and ironic shock therapy for the "participants". I think it will be a GREAT year, just not in the manner BMORG may have imagined.

[Saki]

There seems to be two different Burning Man philosophies.

The first sees Burning Man as an escape from the default world. A place where people leave money, politics, problems, and common people are left behind. A place isolated and removed from the rest of the world and its man made problems.

The second view Burning Man as a solution to the world’s problems. They want to see the culture and ideas of Burning Man propagate through the rest of the world and continue to grow as it touches more people.

It is upsetting how divisive the theme topic has become. I see burners telling burners to just stay home and they will have more fun without them. That's not true or right.

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

Everybody has a dream....







the rebbi

[joya]

Wow, fuck this. I missed this year and was so psyched to go next year. I am not going with a theme like that. God this makes me so angry.

My sentiments exactly.

This theme sickens me.

[Greenltdistrict]

Yeah...this theme sucks as$...but Saki has a point. It would suck if the people here who are bitching and threating to boycott next year did not show up...because clearly they care about BM. These are the people who in large part make BM what it is, to me. When I read posts like "Why the burn was not as good as it was last year" it is funny because it's so subjective. Yeah there were more people defiantly this year, the guide was a little frustrating (WTF??!!!), people on those gopeds and on personal scooters were irksome, someone even stole my bike (which I found in line on the back of car as we were leaving)...but what made it so spectacular besides the eclipse, rainbows ,having my eyebrows singed off and finding my bike at the last possible moment was the amazing people I met. Veteran burners and newbies alike who bought a lot more to the playa than the urge to party and self entitlement issues.
..anyhow I sincerely hope that no one allows three little words to stop them from coming out... if you give a shit enough to come here and fill up 14 pages bring that passion home...take that theme and chop it up. call it "The dream" call it "the" or Don't call it all. Just bring your beautiful self out and BE the "AMerican Dream" ...still sucks.

[pinemom]

theme shmeme...I go so I can make crazy ideas I dreampt of as a child a reality... I go to enjoy the new and old friendships I go because i love it...................... i go ....................ugo?

[Toolmaker]

THE WHOLE WORLD THINKS AMERICA'S POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS SHOULD BE ON THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY AND NOT ONLY ITSELF.

I have to disagree here.. personally I think this our BIGGEST problem. We can fix anyone else if we can keep ourselves fixed.

I'm glad the theme IS The American Dream because this provides an opportunity for us to make a statement that changing the theme or staying home never could

I couldn't agree more here.. I just hope we can rise to the challenge.

[TheFunkHole]

"There seems to be two different Burning Man philosophies. "

ROOOOOOOOOOOBOT
HUUUUUUUUUUUUMAN

CHOOSE HUMAN

[BAS]

Everybody has a dream....







the rebbi

You mean you want to get a breast job like that, rebbi?!?

(Or am I misinterpreting things again?)


B.

[BAS]

"Aw, crap, September isn't even over with, and I am already tired of the theme discussion!"

get ready for a long year of talking about this theme. I don't see Unjon and you dropping the conversation and saying you don't care if they change the theme, and I'm not going to drop the discussion until they DO change the theme. This theme by nature is divisive and is going to pit people in the community on different sides of the issue. That's what happens when you drop a loaded political theme onto a community that is mostly anarchist.

So of course we are going at it (although I'm not going to call other people trolls or whiners - I really wish a few people on this thread had more class and courtesy about people who think differently from them).

Ultimately, most of my recent conversation has had to do with flag burning, and not the theme per se. I've pretty much state my views on the theme, including that I think Larry and Co. chose it precisely to stir up controversy like this, and I think that everyone else has pretty much stated their views. Which I why I am tired of the discussion. For that matter, I don't recall my ever saying one way or the other if I cared if they change the theme, I just said I like the theme. (If they do change it, I will just do something else for my camp..., maybe.)

So, unless I feel otherwise at the moment, I really don't plan on contributing anything meaningful to this topic from here on out.

So, anyone going to try to steal Larry's hat this year and sell it on eBay?


B.

[Tiahaar]

(there's also WRAETHTHU Bwahahahaha)

If there's one thing Burners ® are good at its satire, and the 2008 theme is just loaded with opportunities. I can't wait!

[klone138]

Im just posting another one just to say this is the worst theme EVER! Fuck the american dream. Everyone that hates this theme should write the burning man staff a quick email and tell em how you feel. Or else shut the fuck up. IF YOU DONT LIKE IT...DO SOMETHING! Heres a perfect way to be heard. [email protected]