The 10 Principles of Burning Man Analyzed

The 2013 Burning Man is over, participants have returned home to continue their normal lives.  They will return with new experiences and ideas, and they'll change in ways they can't quite explain to their non-burner friends.  Part of Burning Man's appeal is that it eludes formal description and is best understood by direct experience.

The intentions which provide the theoretical foundations of Burning Man (and all other Burning Man regional events) are the 10 principles.  As with Christians and the 10 commandments, most burners haven't memorized the 10 principles and will probably violate some of them.  Unfortunately, the 10 principles come into conflict with one another, aren’t implemented perfectly or lead to undesirable outcomes.

THE 10 PRINCIPLES

Radical Inclusion

Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Burning Man is more inclusive than most places, but it's not perfectly inclusive.  The city is divided into camps of people who typically know each other before the event starts, you cannot expect to receive anything from camps you don't belong to. Realistically, you need to spend at least a thousand dollars and take a week off to attend, so poor people are excluded by default. The demographics of Burning Man show that groups (many of which have been excluded throughout history) are drastically underrepresented.  A slight majority of Burning Man attendees are male, and an overwhelming majority are white.  The most successfully included group are LGBQT people, they are overrepresented at Burning Man.

Gifting

Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Getting gifts is great, and it's not hard to get gifts from strangers at Burning Man.  But you won't necessarily want the gifts you're given, and other people won't necessarily want what you give them. Many participants put little or no effort into giving gifts and many gifts end up being trashed.  Other gifts (mainly services like massages) are so popular that long lines to receive them.

Decommodification

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

There is no money, stores, banks or stock exchanges at Burning Man.  Normal economic transactions (besides purchasing ice and coffee) do not occur.  Large amounts of unique art is created for Burning Man.  While Burning Man does succeed in preventing the creation of large numbers of identical products, there exist many services that commidify the Burning Man experience.  You can buy your way into camps which will provide you with everything you need without any participation on your part.

Radical Self-reliance

Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

To a degree, this principle serves the interest of the owners of Burning Man (Black Rock City, LLC).  The less people rely on BRC, the easier it is for the company to make large profits. Inner resources are of limited use if you're getting dehydrated.  Still, burners do usually leave the event stronger and less dependent on others.

Radical Self-expression

Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

The description of this principle isn't entirely clear.  Gifting is a principle, but here BRC is claiming expressing yourself is a gift to others.  You will see forms of expression at Burning Man you won't see anywhere else. You'll probably receive compliments on your form of expression, no matter how strange it is.  But if Radical Inclusion and Radical Self-expression were both implemented perfectly, Burning Man would be a hotbed of conflict.

Communal Effort

Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Building a city from scratch requires lots of work, and most of that work is done communally.  But Burning Man is composed of tribes that usually don't work together.  Large scale Communal Effort does occur, but it's mostly on dance floors or small projects, the big projects are mainly composed by tribes which aren't always Radically Inclusive.

Civic Responsibility

We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

This principle also enables BRC to make more money.  Roads, Port-a-Potties, police force and medical care are all provided by BRC or volunteers.  Beyond this, it’s not clear what level of civic responsibility is useful, especially if people are Radically Self-Reliant.

Leaving No Trace

Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

At a glance, BRC succeeds at this principle tremendously.  But upon further inspection, this principle (and its alleged concern with the environment) is flawed and likely only exists because of a deal that BRC made with the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) in exchange for access to the land where Burning Man occurs.  The Black Rock Desert contains almost no life, if Burning Man didn’t exist it would be a good candidate for a toxic waste dump.  BRC’s is more concerned with clearing biodegradable matter from the desert than discouraging its attendees from bringing gas guzzling Recreational Vehicles from the event. 

Participation

Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

The amount of effort people put into Burning Man is amazing, but it’s not equally distributed amongst all participants.  The camps which have a track record of participation are in the center of the city.  So new camps on the outskirts will have a hard time finding an audience to participate with, and their members will likely spend most of their time participating in other people's projects.

Immediacy

Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

This principle is the hardest to understand.  Long term planning is necessary for a successful burn.  The man takes hundreds of people months to build and it is almost completely incinerated within half an hour.  When participants return to reality, they won’t remember the many hours they spent preparing or even most of the time they spent on the playa.  They’ll remember the short serendipitous moments  

Though my analysis of the 10 Principles may seem harsh, it should not be taken as a condemnation of Burning Man itself. The event existed before the principles and it's not clear how the Principles have impacted the event. Sometimes codifying a ritual ruins the ritual. It's important for Burning Man participants not to take the Principles too literally or to follow one principle at the expense of another. Ultimately, the Burning Man experience is created by the attendees, not the administrators. Participants should feel free to make their own principles and express and justify them to other participants.