Burning Man And The Allurement Of Giving

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh—the elongated list of high-profiles techies and corporate honchos who have thronged the annual Burning Man fests held in the past in Black Rock Desert (around 150 kms from Reno in northern Nevada in the US) makes one wonder what makes the week-long event—it begins on the last Monday in August and ends on the first Monday in September—such a big draw. In fact, when artist Larry Harvey, along with his friend Jerry James, started the event as a summer solstice evening ritual burning an eight-feet-tall eponymous wooden effigy with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach way back in 1986, he never thought it will eventually become one of the eagerly watched annual fests in the world.

First 38,000 tickets (each one costing $380) for this year’s event attended by close to 70,000 participants were sold out in 45 minutes. You can imagine how many across the globe are glued on to make sure that they make it to the love fest.

There are those who see the event as a corporate retreat where new ideas are conceived and encouraged, and new connections are made. Conversations started at the fest can later grow into bigger business collaborations. Corporate biggies even use the fest as an excuse for hiring the right talent—Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired Eric Schmidt, who later became Google chairman, because from a list of 50 top Silicon Valley executives, Schmidt was the only one who had been to Burning Man. This is just a stray example of the huge bunch of people who find like-minded people with the right cultural fit at the quirky art fest. In fact, attending Burning Man is also seen as a sign that companies appreciate creativity bordering on anarchy.

Many participants flock to the fest because its ‘no-rules’ ambience lets them metamorphose into gypsies, hippies and free spirits—something that a typical corporate ambience doesn’t allow.

There are also enough allurements for globetrotters coming from London and New York—showers, beds and air conditioning are real luxury considering the temperature hits 90 degree Fahrenheit during day before dipping to 40 degrees at night, besides hail storms and dust.

And amid this jamboree, the immediate beneficiary is the northern Nevada economy—which is otherwise driven by casinos—as participants pour around $35 million a year in festival-related activities in the five-square-mile temporary city in the Black Rock Desert. Around 20 per cent of those who participated at the event in 2013 reportedly spent more than $1,000 while around 65 per cent spent more than $250. However, financial transactions are barred in the desert because Burning Man is conceived as a cashless celebration whose founding principals include the key theme of gifting, though that is not necessarily about gifting money—it could be anything: a service, a gesture or even a word uttered in the right spirit. Though one cannot spend money at Burning Man, one need to spend quite a bit doing shopping—camping, food, shade, body lights (not to get hit by a car!)—before going there.

A key guiding principle of the community is decommodification—which means saying no to transactions, consumerism, sponsorship and advertising. Understandably, one wouldn’t find vendors at the fest venue, except ice and coffee sold by the organisers. Apart from huge surrealistic art installations the fest is known for, perhaps, it is the guiding principle of gifting—defined as the act of giving without the expectation of anything in return—that sets Burning Man apart from similar gatherings across the globe. Here giving is seen as a much-needed antidote to what Harvey calls ‘capitalism on steroids’. According to him, giving enhances participants’ sense of who they are and magnifies their sense of being. And Burning Man is set to grow bigger and bigger as the altered sense of being and value through the act of giving will continue to draw more participants from every corner of the world.
Image: Burningman.com