Comments on: Burning Man should treat “Academia” the way it does “Commercialization”

By: El Gallo

El Gallo — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:38:36 +0000

Please excuse the overly strident tone of my last post. I meant it to be more ironic and with a touch of humor, but it came out a little too belligerent. But the problem of political activists masquerading as scholars within the Western tradition is very serious and I’m glad it’s being addressed here. I would love to see BM culture influence the Universities, but I am very wary of the reverse.

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By: El Gallo

El Gallo — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:11:41 +0000

As an academic myself I totally agree with much, ir not all, of what Caveat Magistar is putting forth. I too attended an that same meeting in the Ashram Galactica. I was appalled at what was a scarcely hidden agenda being proposed by a young lady under the smoke-screen of “academia”. She was clearly probing the audience to see hw far she could go in getting them to sign-on to an obvious Leftist “activist” component. I thought this was positively deadly. The University system today is so heavily polluted with Leftist activism,read fascist propaganda, that is truly nauseating once you’ve learned to smell it through the maze of convoluted code words and terms. Burning Man, if anything political at all, is Libertarianism at it’s best, but by at “it’s best” I mean no political interpretation at all is best.
Socialism does not allow, in principle, that anything can be non-political or that anything should fall outside the scope of political regulation. This poison permeates the academic departments today, and especially the sociology departments (the most interested in Burning Man), and the humanities in general. I smelled it coming when the ACLU was suddenly on the scene offering services supposedly to “protect” us against the police- who asked them, and who needs their protection?
Under normal circumstances a disinterested academy would be welcome. But with the academics in today’s university climate, come the Leftist “activists” (again read fascists) whose aim has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge, and everything to do with the appropriation of anything in popular culture that can be put to their service.
Again- this was so obvious at the Ashram Galactica meeting that year that it took me by surprise and caused me to think really hard on what I witnessed.
It is really heartening to see that I was not the only one who smelled a rat disguised as a scholar.
Even though I am a Ph.D. in the humanities myself, and I came to Burning Man with both a personal and academic interest- I completely understand the point being made, and I have been doing a lot of soul searching on this very topic. Thank you Caveat for bringing this up. It was both brave and bold of you.

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By: Prince of Neptune

Prince of Neptune — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 01:26:14 +0000

Um. This is what an academic approach gets you at Burning Man:

A = I x D / M

when

A is a standardized anthropological assessment of Burning Man culture created with traditional academic techniques such as discussion and collaboration by traditionally trained academics

I is the collective inspiration of all those involved in the aforementioned discussion and collaboration given them by the culture and experience of Burning Man

D is the duration of exposure to the phenomenon

and
M is cognitive masturbation

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By: Dr.Realz

Dr.Realz — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:17:17 +0000

Observational, critical thinking and writing skills are a very touchy subject, specifically What is referred to by academics as implicit memory. You are observing from the first person and if you come from a fundamentalist hyper-religious area how much influence will this have on your observational, critical thinking and writing skills? The credentials of academics carry a weight of legitimacy. This is a slippery slope I am reminded of how the academics have taken the 13th amendment, designed to protect newly freed slaves after the civil war, and used it to legitimize the person hood of corporations here in the United States. I am sure the academics involved sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. The irony of all of this is the academics themselves are now under assault the corporations have now turned their attention to the 300 Billion dollar public owned education system and are pushing to privatize it. They have weaponized accreditation and are using the threat of losing it to control the budgets and governing of our public schools google save ccsf for more info.This is burning man and we are all on fire. Later bitches.

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By: Bruno

Bruno — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:50:54 +0000

Omigod this thread is delicious! Yes, fuck academia at burning man. Let’s invite a clonclave and elect a pope instead… because observation of experiential applications to the real world isn’t the point. A dogma of 10-principles, a new testament forbiding academia, ram it down your throat religion “lite” for the benefit of all new supplicants, conversion of the masses, and radical dis-inclusion, is what we should espouse. ‘Cuz THAT hasn’t been done before! LOL! Cargo Cult is the perfect theme for BM this year. I wish I were going to be there to dress as a Jehova’s Witness and distribute pamphlets. This is just going to be too good to miss!

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By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:57:48 +0000

As an academic burner who has published an article about bringing students to Burning Man on a grant from my university (Southern Theatre, Spring 2012), which sits smack in the middle of a VERY conservative, rural, fundamentalist hyper-religious area, I have a problem with Caveat Magister’s definition of “radical self-expression.” It doesn’t apply to me if my self-expression is my observational, critical thinking and writing skills? And when I leave burning man, I am absolutely taking those 10 principals with me and applying them to my default world, which lies partly in an academic institution.

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By: VWChairman

VWChairman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:07:55 +0000

Magister Caveat…

What do you think of the following study? I love burning man, contribute to its evolution in my own little way, and hope to see our community’s amazing characteristics influence the world around us. I also want to gift something back to our community, and think the following study satisfies a personal fascination and a communal need to reflect on the impacts of our actions. What I propose specifically attends to our “Leave no Trace” principle, but very much touches on the others as well.

Urban metabolism is a method of understanding the evolution of a city. It attempts to capture the stocks and flows of materials and energy through a give space and time. Urban metabolism sort of considers cities organisms, or ecosystems, and examines the consumption and output of energy, water, food, trash, emissions, etc. While most studies have looked at metropolitan areas, like LA, Melbourne, or London, none to my knowledge have looked at the completely unique (temporary) city model represented by Black Rock City. But none of the data exists yet, and much of it would have to be generated by participant feedback (surveys/interviews?) regarding resource use/consumption/waste. Of course, there are the intangible, non-quantifiable elements of an urban metabolism study that looks at Black Rock City (ie. art, culture, personal growth, sense of community, evolution, technology, etc.). I don’t think I would try to capture all of these elements in my study, but rather give credence to them through a discussion. I can see ways that remote sensing or soil (ie. playa dust) testing could look at environmental and atmospheric impacts. The goal of the study would be to get a picture of our collective impact from participating in our week long gathering, including travel to and from BRC. Cities around the world may have a great deal to learn from our model. Consider it an extension of Larry Harvey’s interview with Time, where he recommended “5 Things Cities Can Learn From Burning Man” (http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,39616455001_1921966,00.html) Like I said, this is totally unique in the sense of urban metabolism studies.

I am a five time burner that returned to academia between my 3rd and 4th burns. I’ve always appreciated the influence Burning Man (as an event, community, and eclectic culture) has had on my personal and professional lives. For me, I don’t see them as such distinct spheres that cannot overlap. I don’t have any intentions of portraying the event or our community in any sort of canned fashion, I agree with many of the perspectives noted in this thread, and could engage in conversation about this topic for a great deal of time. In fact, I think the best thing to come of this blog post is the discussion that has followed.

Rather than discuss the merits of arguments for or against academia’s role at burning man, can we evolve to the stage of determining how to expand each other’s hearts and minds? I welcome your feedback. How can the study be improved so as to move beyond the shortcomings of traditional academia that you (and I) criticize?

I’ll start my PhD in Ecological Planning and Design next fall, and I am fascinated by the myriad of ways that Burning Man has influenced my understanding of cities, urban design, civic processes, and resource use. One request, however, please try to avoid discrediting my interest in conducting this study on the basis of some personal flaw — like everyone, including you I suspect, I am simply trying to make sense of the world around me and do what I can to improve it.

(**If anyone else is interested in an urban metabolism study of BRC, get in touch with me**)

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By: Captain Vic

Captain Vic — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:29:10 +0000

I am a carrer academic who has attended the academic meetings at the Ashram Galatica the past several years. Great fun. Having said that, I am not the least worried that academic types will have much of any effect on Burning Man. It is OK with me if you follow this course of action “We should be willing, and eager, to confuse, befuddle, and overwhelm the academic attempt to define Burning Man at every stage …”, but it is really not necessary. The academic types are perfectly capable of doing this to themselves, they do it all the time.

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By: Dr. Realz

Dr. Realz — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:24:12 +0000

Academic interpretation is unavoidable soon or later someone will quantify and qualify what burning man is. We have a duty as burner to delay this as long as possible to give this delicate magic a chance to manifest itself in the default world. As I write this I am imaging a scientist looking at the essence of burning man in a petri dish. The scientist next to him says what do you see. The first scientist says a bunch of naked people giving me the finger.

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By: Don

Don — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:23:13 +0000

Seeking to define burning man via any metric doesn’t limit it. What Caveat seems to be indicating is that if one were to ever remove burning man from the realm of pure qualia it would die, and quite frankly that isn’t true. Burning man is a shifting mass of ideas and wonder each worthy of study. Studying the motion of a fire dancer, the physics of an art car, the logistics of a camp, city planning, the glory of assholery, how the ten principles work, and other things won’t be a magic silver bullet that slays the man. It will help us bring these things to others. Yes there will be people who will try to find a profitable least common denominator, and make a magic mc burning man experience, but fuck them. This is how we fight them. Burning man is glorious and worthy of study; be it by poets, musicians, bloggers, interpretative dancers, ravers, fools, sparkle ponies, shirt cockers or the (apparently most villainous of these) academics. If my method of seeing the world involves measuring it, touching it, analyzing it, and trying to figure how shit works then I’m going to do that as part of my burn. It is part of my immediacy, if you don’t want to participate in a study, or a conversation then I understand, just find something else to do and don’t mess with my data.

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