One of the few large organisations on earth that is closely aligned with changing consciousness for the better is Burning Man. There are smaller ones popping up everywhere though. After all, radical change is always brought on by a shift in consciousness and sometimes that shift is no centralised but distributed.
The principles of Burning Man, according to the org, are "crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception."
The principles of Burning Man, according to the org, are "crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception."
Is this somewhat of a copout though? If you don't have principles then how do you know that what you are creating is necessarily the pattern of greater universal chaos (in the physics sense of the word - not radical violence) that is 'best'? If you have no guiding principles then you're simply doing what everyone else is doing, but somewhere else with more vigor and colour. It's just a different reflection of ourselves, not particularly heading anywhere. And if it's just what everyone as a collective created, this allows whatever already exists to be changed and perhaps risk pollution. At the same time the hope is that natural chaotic order will arise from the mess. But that has not happened historically, so why would it happen now?
To create something new, you need to go 'against the grain' - not a rebellion of sorts, but not the mediocre middle. And in order to be truly changing you need to be adaptive, the norm (a bell curve fo sorts) also shifts. Hence at the risk of pollution the ideals should also move forward alongside the polluting aspects so that there may be balance in the forces.
Burning man is fun, its a step forward. But the next step is already here and it is happening even amongst the burner community. Burners without borders is just one example of smaller subcommunities being formed. Burners are also very talented people and have amazing skill sets. Put together they can make a huge difference to where we are going as humanity.
There are greater concerns to deal with right now than a big party. The same way danger compells a meditator sitting, to get up, the impending model of human living must stir the consciousness of those who are forerunners.
Out of the Burningman principles the most aligned one for this is Immediacy. Defined as being the urge to '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.'
You can go into your psychedelic trips and trance states all you like, but the real work has to be done in the greater world. This involves developing ideas together beyond just the experimental.
If you don't review what you have created ( which Burning Man does by the way - clap clap ), you can't evolve or grow.
Gifting culture is great. But outside and now more on the inside we have an uneven distribution of resources (citation needed - not enough evidence of this) . The model needs to start supporting the creative and help them to sustain it. Otherwise it's just a gather and burn. Yes, this is the point of Burning Man. Right? Gather everything and burn it? Burning the proverbial 'man'.
It teaches an important lesson in impermanence and the right to destroy. But this lesson need not be so extravagant and attract so much pompousness. We can simply observe this in our lives should we pay attention.
In fact if the resources were put to better use, real change could happen and a snowball effect could be achieved in the right direction. But without actual direction, that is at the hands of the rich few and hence the pattern of the org mirrors that of whole, the pattern holds.
Take for example small to medium businesses transitioning into large. The newbie employees have just enough time to understand what the organisation can really use, just enough lack in power to be doing something with that knowledge and just enough pressure from the current org culture to not take action out of fear they will be shunned.
The first fear is ridicule from the current powerful: 'So what's new, we know this. What's your radical idea?'
The second fear is of actual failure: 'we tried this before, it failed, that's why we gave up and here we are'
The third fear is higher up the food chain: 'what if the new way of working makes me feel uncomfortable and undermines my power and authority? What if everything I did before is no longer relevant'
No one wants to lose their livelihood. Plebs nor honchos. In fact the smart plebs will mirror the honchos and bring in their own set of cultural behaviours supporting not just a set of useful practices but including a set of redundant practices.
The gap in pay between employees and their managers is also a point of contention. Those above middle manager level are paid rates that are exorbitant. Market rates and competition between employers to get experienced managers with leadership skills, who know what they are doing is blamed for this.
Take note also the business is located closer to where best lifestyle for those who are highly paid is available (when main office location has zero impact on actual business). If you dont locate the business in a central and buzzing area, the managers will leave to companies that do. However everyday employees spend a lot travelling in from far to get to their jobs while the few managers who influence business location decisions, usually live minutes from work. Its not democratic at all.
So how do we evolve from this model where we value managers (not all are actually leaders) above employees? Where we reward some work more than other work because it takes more of a certain type of skill to do? Risk taking and overview is rewarded more than actual hands on work, perhaps because of the way investment itself works and how as a collective we care more about growing our money than growing society - as money can be exchanged for consumables and society will likely not give back. Trade is certain and donation is not.
One emerging method is the sharing economy where skills are shared, not sure where it will go. Here is an example: Awakening Sovereignty Collective
The counter culture of this is things like Air Tasker, and Fiver - where the collective creativity of many is taken advantage of to have work done for the cheapest price possible. The counter to this are startups like Uber which challenge the current way of providing services.
Further to this the peer to peer exchanges of value on the decentralised ledger (crytocurrency) are changing the way people transact. The middleman, the bank and it's limitations and safety are being weeded out. More on this aspect in my next post.
