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Oct 25, 2022Liked by Alex Olshonsky

So I’ve been heavily involved in our regional burn for a decade, though I’ve never attended the big burn, and every September I just can’t wait for the obscene amount of navel gazing that goes on around the perpetual death of burning man. Personally I think it’s a combination of over investment in a semi-cult-like community (and I say this in full awareness of my own over-investment), underestimation of how very very fucking impossible it is to run a large idealistic event via commune / non-profit / committee system, and the unpleasant fact that unfortunately the world still runs on cold hard money, even if you pinkie promise you spent it all before crossing the gates. So rather than bemoaning the inevitable evolution of the event for the next couple decades, could people maybe try turning off their Instagram so half the bullshit goes away; accepting that absolutely everything will either change or die, so their angst about the ethical differences between the ‘90’s and ‘20’s events might fade; accepting that everything was always better before they found it; and taking your good advice from above, that if this particular experiment isn’t what they need, maybe start something that is?

Also please call it a festival again, I love it :)

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Oct 23, 2022·edited Oct 23, 2022Liked by Alex Olshonsky

I greatly appreciate your observation of what seemed to be the institutionalization followed by the inevitable decay of Burning Man. Despite having never been myself, nor a regular participant of festival culture, I can still see why such a loss of sacredness would play out. I would assert this is the natural course of collective decadence, where upon Novelty is lost to the laze of Entropy.

You mentioned "where to find meaning" and "what to believe in" being of dire importance, most particularly in the current age of mass information. I would assert here that the solution to meaning is found within the concept of responsibility. Not responsibility that has been handed to you, but responsibility you have discovered and claimed for yourself, which is analogous to "one's calling", wherein lies the answer of "what to believe in". This, I suspect, is what the post modernist clumsily identifies as the total lack of any universal truths in contrast to one's personal truths.

Where festival culture comes in short however, isn't the post modern folly of pedestalizing personal truth, but rather the inability to meet the aforementioned mode of attaining one's own calling, and rather opting to collectivize a series of responsibilities, and project them of onto the patrons. In short, it has become the hedonistic rendition of the megachurch.

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Oct 21, 2022Liked by Alex Olshonsky

I followed the precise same thought sequence and reached the same conclusion as you about that astrology essay. A certain cynicism is required to navigate the commodified culture of narcissistic pseudopsychology, however there is a whole baby/bathwater thing with astrology specifically and self-development modalities more generally. As lines of subjective, qualitative self-inquiry these ideas do help one to understand world and self a little better, but when used as a means to generate quantitative output (likes, views, subscriptions) then malaise inevitably accrues!

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Wow, I couldn't have come upon your work at a better time!? I've been going to festivals for a decade-ish. This weekend, I was struck with some bizarre pull toward Burning Man, i.e., do I need to experience the playa before I get married/have children/lose the stamina? This prompted hours of Reddit, TikTok, etc. wherein I literally just read that post by Healing From Healing lol. I love Nina's comment here. If there's anything the annual Burning Man discourse has given me, it's an appetite for paradox. Most modern sources of pleasure are built on some symptom of advanced capitalism; why not choose the one that encourages half-naked dancing on mushrooms in an apocalyptic environment?

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Playing catch up and loved all of these recs, especially that Twitter thread on post-modernism. But I'm just commenting to say that I'm super pumped for this giant essay on the needed "both-and revolution!"

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