what burningman is...

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 6:15 pm

we each have a unique perspective...we each have our unique experience...

this is burningman through my eyes...

humanity is delusional...the whole of modern society is a matrix of hollow paradigms...paradigms that are conformist in nature...to be involved with them is to be caught in an imaginary struggle...

to try to change something that is not real is to be caught in the delusion...

people exist...the planet exists...yet the entire structure of human civilization, from governments to religions, are nothing more than concepts...shadows of thought...

a delicately balanced house of cards, yet even the cards are imaginary....

on this planet, sprawling with the self-perpetrating fantasy of how the world works and who people should be, there can seem to be few options for working unaffected by the mass delusion...delusional people make an impact on those around them...they have notions of what i am and who i can be...projections that hinder my development...

it is scientifically proven that thought affects the basic structure of water...quantum physics declares that i am strongly affected by the paradigms which people in my environment are projecting on me...

judgment fosters insecurity...
class/status nourishes greed...
and control sprouts fear...

what choice do i have to further my development while respecting the personal freedom of those who wish to project onto me?...leave...

i can choose to leave the entire structure of modern humanity...to step beyond the reach of those who would project limitation onto me...

to step out onto a flat lake bed...a hostile environment that has no resources modern humanity feels need to exploit...no compelling reason for controlling what goes on in the alkali saturated environment...

yet it does have one natural resource that draws me and those like me...

it is a blank canvas...

a space to create...to create who we are...how we function in a community...to create a city, but even more than that, we create a new humanity...born out of passion and love...with an intention to live open and free...

liberation from repressive conditions...freedom from paralyzing self supression...

collectively we create the space that allows us to lift our heads, strip our souls bare, and to finally recognize and acknowledge that humanity is beautiful...

~elf

TheJudge · Post by **TheJudge** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:17 pm

Uh... its a rave, right?

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:28 pm

how do you define 'rave'?

~elf

Tiahaar · Post by **Tiahaar** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:37 pm

the fire elf wrote: yet it does have one natural resource that draws me and those like me...

it is a blank canvas...

a space to create...to create who we are...how we function in a community...to create a city, but even more than that, we create a new humanity...born out of passion and love...with an intention to live open and free...

~elf

OOOoo, those are good thoughts, especially the bit above. Perhaps there really already are Wraeththu among us?

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:59 pm

Perhaps there really already are Wraeththu among us?

perhaps...

~elf

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 12:42 pm

Uh... its a rave, right?

dictionary.com -

rave:
(noun)
1. The act or an instance of raving.
2. Informal. An extravagantly enthusiastic opinion or review: The play received raves.
3. An all-night dance party, especially one where techno, house, or other electronically synthesized music is played.
4. Chiefly British. A raucous party; a rave-up

i say that burningman is not a rave...but there are raves at burningman...

~elf

Isotopia · Post by **Isotopia** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 3:34 pm

i say that burningman is not a rave...but there are raves at burningman...

Buh!

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:01 pm

this year the gap has widened...

to step back into society from a vanished city is to throw myself headlong into a clash of forces...

all that i have known myself to be has crumbled away...

all that is left is dead set on taking the 'default world' down...

soo many sandcastles of ignorance...

ignorance shall not be ignored...

~weed the garden

DVD · Post by **DVD** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:38 pm

the fire elf wrote:4. Chiefly British. A raucous party; a rave-up

Wait wait- I though a rave-up was a Mississippi Delta/Texas thing. Like a Hootenanny(which it what Burning Man *really* is) which is not Scottish!

gawul · Post by **gawul** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:05 am

my own personal re-set button

Mister Jellyfish Mister · Post by **Mister Jellyfish Mister** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 7:03 am

Thanks, Fire Elf. That was a touching first post. Spot on. I came home from work last night with some of that default world crap slung around me. Prevented me from hugging my daughters properly. I'm ashamed.

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:25 pm

Mister Jellyfish Mister wrote:I'm ashamed.

then you're clouded by illusion

mars · Post by **mars** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 7:15 pm

Burning Man is an expression of who you are.

Burning Man is an expression of who I am.

Burning Man is an expression of who we are.

Burning Man is an expression of who they are.

Burning Man is an expression.

Burning Man is.

Burning Man isn't.

spritemcb · Post by **spritemcb** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:05 pm

...something to shout & scream about,
laugh & cry about,
dance & prance about,
and best of all,
something to dream about.

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:28 am

Burning man is a war on sleep.

Burning man is deep torpor at the limits of experience.

Burning man is too much and not enough.

Burning is everything and the kitchen sink: on fire.

Burning man is loud noise and blinking lights.

Burning man is a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.

Burning man is the upside down city.

Burning man is shifting sand.

Burning man is the loss of reference points.

Burning man is what grows where nothing can live.

Burning man is the revenge of civil society in the age of intelligent machines.

keepercurrent · Post by **keepercurrent** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:06 pm

Before just taking on mine, and then telling everyone, what's what!
I would imagine rather liking fire elves, but not when they're cloning/changelinging me! I hear that face transplants are no longer a thing of the past! Bit buggered!

keepercurrent · Post by **keepercurrent** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:10 pm

So whats this part about " we each have a UNIQUE perspective...
we each have our UNIQUE experience" and you putting on my UNIQUE
avartar face!

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:05 pm

donned the face to remind me of a friend who left the image here:

http://losangeles.tribe.net/template/pu ... 96&r=10025

you desire me to represent myself differently, so be it.

SaraSioux · Post by **SaraSioux** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:52 am

Thanks for explaining it so perfectly FireElf. I kept trying to find the words, to explain the point to my friends and family. I couldn't get past these silly phrases like "getting away from society" and "finding my true self" and even "soul searching".

None of those words accurately sum up the true drive to be there. Why experiencing comething beautiful and disturbing is so refreshing after being served the same-ole-same-ole from so many sources throughout every day life.

The projection of ideas, of how I should feel about life, myself, my role in this world, my sexuality, my career, directed towards me from others, outside of myself. You said it perfect... I can choose to leave, and to remove myself. I can't stop you from projecting, but I can stop me from receiving.

I have much to reflect on today! Thanks for the new ideas.

foolsfolly · Post by **foolsfolly** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:56 pm

I have met the people who are going to save the world.

mars · Post by **mars** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:08 pm

I'm reading a very interesting book about the need for a new, worldwide, creation myth based on what we now know, scientifically, about the universe. The authors speak of the need for us to find a unifying understanding of our universe, in which we participate as citizens rather than voyeurs. They want us to create mythology that makes sense of modern life, includes personal understanding of our role in the universe and binds us to our tribe of humans.

I keep thinking burningman burningman as I read, and the authors have never been there.

Neon

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ubu · Post by **ubu** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:35 pm

so what is the name of the book?

I'd be very wary of most new age apropriations of science. as soon as someone starts talking about non-local phenomena I pull out my....

There is absolutely no empirical evidence of the effects of thought on water, for example. That gent is a fraud.

Newton still holds for phenomena at a human scale.

And it is naive in the extreme that burningman leaves the conventions of global capitalism behind.

Davoid · Post by **Davoid** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:10 am

Capitalism schmapitalism. It's just a wee bit easier to have a brain bursting with loftier, crazier, more inventive, more inquisitive, more accepting, more connected-to-your-fellows thoughts while in BRC than back in Default City. No, it's not perfect, it's veined throughout with little bits of corruption, forms of capitalism, what have you (and no, I'm not saying you can't find those wonderful feelings anywhere else). "Naive in the extreme" is a bit insulting to the thrust of the original post, though.

If you want to be a downer, complain about Fire Elf's new avatar. It's all Violent God an' shit. Me, I got my avatar from the gallery.

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 8:17 am

I'm sorry davoid,

I'm not complaining. I would not try to help what I see as muddled thinking if I did not share the drive to innovate.

I share the impetus of fire elf, and I certainly enjoy breaking convention as much as the next person. I did wait till the thread matured until I came out with some criticism, but I thought I'd try to gift you with my thinking. take it or leave it.

We certainly can, I think, reimagine and rework, the coordinates of civil society. Burning man is something of a little bit of a start in that direction.

Capitalism is a little to loaded of a term; how about "advanced money economy"?

Let's be honest with each other. Every attempt to link quantum mechanics with spirituality is either fraudulent or deeply muddled. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. Name one of these so called "thinkers" that try to, and I'll be happy to show you how they are not worth their salt. or playa dust.

What we are calling gift economies these days are really hybrid gift/market economies, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Impurity is not so bad, really.

I think that confronting the implications of "where we are at" is in the end, liberating. And I don't want to be coddled with quantum fairy tales.

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:45 pm

babylon...

concepts and talk...

live differently such that others learn from simply being in your presence...

the rest is mental masturbation...

masturbation can be fun...

but it's not the only reason we're here...

~chaotic peace

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:52 pm

for you to take refuge in silence when you use words everday is a mistake, and a grave one.

sure you should live it, which is precisely my point. and living it, includes the intellect, and yes words. it is not words that fail us, but us that fail words.

I'm as difficult and blustery as a playa wind, and playa wind makes you stronger, as you know, from experience.

so too, throwing off new age hearsay and muddled thinking will make you stronger. that is my wager. take it or leave it.

hone your mind, test your opinions. challenge yourself.

I hold you to a high standard fire elf, and I like your style. That is why I take exception to your words. If you disavow them so easily, then why utter them.

mars · Post by **mars** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:35 pm

Very sorry that I cannot yet tell you the name of the book, as it is not yet published, though on the fast track to being out pretty soon, I think by mid-2006 I couldn't think of any other way to say what I wanted without saying I was reading a book, and unfairly peaking some peoples' curiosity. I can only say that I am loving the concepts I am learning and am eager to integrate them into my thinking and, later, my life. Writing the above was my very first attempt in that integration and as i re-read it, I find it woefully inadequate in explaining what I am getting from this book.

So I can see why it may have sounded hokey or new-agey, in top of not knowing me and that hokey new age stuff is not in my radar at all. I completely agree with you about the water guy.

I know science can be read "science" and there is a lot of junk science out there...this isn't that. It is written by a leading cosmologist and is about recent discoveries about the make-up of the universe and how our understanding of the current theories affects our perspective on the world and our personal behavior.

Maybe after I've read a bit more, I'll be able to articulate it better. All I know is that there is some connection with something that is really meaningful to me about burningman and I can't quite put it into words yet.

Stay Tuned...

Neon

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nova_mike · Post by **nova_mike** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:48 am

TheJudge wrote:Uh... its a rave, right?

hardly.

Mister Jellyfish Mister · Post by **Mister Jellyfish Mister** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:01 am

ubu wrote: Burning man is a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.

Ubu- can we use that? -Jellyfish, Kamp Apokiliptika

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:26 am

you are hip to open source, right? use it, steal it, change it, modify it. go for it.
please. you can say some crazy avatar-bot on eplaya came up with it by having 100 robot monkeys pound on dumpster saved keyboards. please. anything I say is open game.

also, I'm not knocking anyone for hokey new age thinking or even psuedo science. I'm a connoissuer of psuedo-science. psuedo-science is a palette from which to play, if that is your game, and that sounds like an intriguing game.

But, then you have to distinguish between psuedo-science and honest, careful, plodding science.

I am curious about that book as well, so please do keep us updated.

Even the application of honest science to domains other than the ones in which its tentative claims are made is very problematic. That's the beef against applying wacky counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics to "spirtituality." It just doesn't wash. It sounds trippy. which can be fun. but.

There are flattering narratives that we tell ourselves, that flatter us as moderns,into thinking we discovered relativity, or that with Einstein's breakthroughs we all of a sudden lost certainty. Certainty was hard long before Einstein. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is misnamed and leads to misuse, to mention another bugaboo.

If you go back to the Ancients, late antiquity and further, you find radical skepticism abounds. Atheism is as old as the hills. Descartes' rather tentative philosphical musings were forged in an atmosphere of tremendous uncertainty. But now we have people railing or we used to a few years ago against Cartesian dualism as if it were written in stone which it never was.

Descartes is pretty damn trippy.

what burningman is...

what burningman is...

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Re: what burningman is...

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Burning Man is...

Hey Elf, why don't you find your own avatar first???

we each have....faux uniqueness

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