When I contemplate events like Burning Man it honestly just looks like a strange form of poverty tourism.

It's a really strange thing to watch events like Burning Man unfold in the public eye. This year, I guess, there was a climate catastrophe, and torrential rains turned the ancient lakebed in Nevada on which it is held into a bog of mud. But even when it isn't this, it's a desert where you have to take everything you need with you and be prepared. Some years there's insects. In other years there's just that dust that the wind gets into everything. I've spoken with people around here who go to Burning Man, and they are predominantly 1) rich or at least "well-off", 2) white, and 3) liberal. And they are usually the kind of "fit" liberal that has never had to work low wage paying jobs in the heat and fight off insects (like working on a farm for example, which is something I did for years). The reason they're fit is because they have money and time to stay fit. So think light hours, work at home stuff, paid highly, and can afford nutritious food or they know someone to prepare food for them (who may be glad to do it because of easy access to sex and/or money). Many of them have never been to places like Yellowstone Park, but they've had safe liberal upbringings wherein their feelings were validated, they were taught conservation, recycling, and wokeness, and they were told, by and large, that they were special snowflakes. And I'm a person that votes democrat, so there you have it. Someone in the party looking at other people in my party and calling them "special snowflakes." Sigh.

And the reason I say that it is strange is because these people who have all of these comfortable lives desire to go out and just live in misery for a week. They practice radical inclusion and seek to bond with artists and others who are into drugs and showing off their bodies and they kind of get together in this place that really can't support life to bring art and get narcissistic supply from others regarding that art. But I can't help but feel it's just another form of poverty tourism, where people don't actually have to live in misery, but they can dip their toe in it to experience it first-hand, and when it gets to be too much, they have their luxurious unrelatable lives to go back to and chalk it up as "the experience of a lifetime." I mean...there are people who scrabble out lives everyday in the world, and who create art. It would be difficult for me to imagine a Burning Man event in some countries in the Middle East, ya know? like...would the poor of Morocco or Tunisia be compelled to go out into the desert and get caught in flash floods and live in the desert for a week? No. That's because a lot of them do actually live in the desert, and their idea of a good time is probably the opposite: someplace wet with luxuries and lots of green places and yes...art...because humans like art.

We've reached this point in our society where there are so many people who just can't relate to other people. Like, one of the things I've been kind of mesmerized by is Kevin Costner's bitter divorce. Last week, his ex was trying to justify getting $160,000 a month or something similar in child support for her two teen sons when Costner's lawyers were arguing for only $60,000 a month, saying that was sufficient. So they asked Costner's ex why she thought that wasn't enough. Her response, which was totally unrelatable at all went something like this: "My sons have always been fifty steps from dipping their toes in the ocean. They have luxury in their D.N.A. If I don't get $160,000 a month, it will bring serious harm and hardship upon them." When I read that, I was like...whaaat? And then I imagined these boys, probably being raised in a wealthy liberal household (just guessing), as future Burning Man attendees. I could see them going just to "experience" the mud and the insects. "Wow...man! You need to go to Burning Man. What an experience?!" And then there's me thinking, yeah I pulled insects out of my hair and slogged through mud moving pipe on my dad's farm and that sounds a lot like something I never want to go back to. No thanks." It's just...so weird. So weird to think that people glamorize crappy things. And the reason that they do is because they have nothing crappy or that sucks in their lives, and somehow...the lack of misery makes them yearn for it? What? That doesn't even make sense but there you go.

It makes me wonder how, exactly, our species can possibly tackle the huge issues of our time (like climate change) when none of us have lives that are relatable?

Anyone who claims to have the moral high ground over anyone else in society is grossly unaware of their own shortcomings.

The annual event "Burning Man" is happening right now in the desert of Nevada. I know a few "burners" and they are nice "civil" people of privilege who don't realize their privilege. It's a weird thing to view humanity through a lens like this, but my brain goes there in thoughts that turn around and around in my head. Too often I conclude that pretty much all people on this Earth suck for one reason or another.

Take "burners" for example. These are people who like to go to festivals like Burning Man, and they preach among their values "radical inclusivity." Okay...sure. You are radically inclusive to all able-bodied people. Disabled people? Not one bit. If you are disabled then you are on your own if you are at this event, much less getting to it. The art that is displayed, especially if it is meant to be climbed upon or if it is meant to be enjoyed physically in some manner is probably not going to be handicapped accessible. The organizers of this thing that preach radical inclusivity should start another one in the middle of the Amazon or on top of Mount Everest. They could say, "We are radically inclusive." Then someone like me would reply, "But how can you be inclusive if you are at the top of Angel Falls in South America?" Then it would afford them the opportunity to smile and reply back to me, "If you get here...we are inclusive to you. But it's not our fault that you can't deal with the natural terrain. That's on you."

"That's on you." There's a quote for you that I've heard too much. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." "Take responsibility for your own shortcomings." There are all kinds of ways to express this sentiment, but in any re-wording of this sentence, I never reach the words "radically inclusive." It's disingenuous at its very core.

Another thing that people like to own are positive virtues. Somewhat like the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a study that showed people grossly overestimate their own competence in doing things, people overestimate (or lay claim to) positive virtues that they don't actually possess. For example, here's a conversation to illustrate this point:

"I am a compassionate person."

"Wow...okay...well here is my quadriplegic patient. Every day he's going to need to be fed three times, meals will be in the fridge over there. You will need to spoon feed him and give him a drink of water from this special mug here and then at three o'clock, he needs to have his leg bag drained of urine. If his hose gets tangled on his nose, you'll have to straighten out the tubes..."

"Oh I'm sorry, I can't do that," the person replies. "I'm compassionate but caring for that gross fat quadriplegic person is something I can't do. There's the smell and stuff...I can't deal with that. But if you need hugs I'm ready."

I look at them, "Oh...I thought you said you were compassionate."

"Compassionate yes, but I have boundaries. Truthfully, I just want to hang out with the pretty people and be called pretty. I don't want to deal with that. It's a downer."

"Oh okay."

Sure...that's a conversation that takes place in my head, but I have no doubt there are thoughts that run through people's skulls that go exactly on these lines. I (for one) do some care-giving of a person in a chair and have experienced tremendous difficulty getting other people to care for him when I am not available. And one of them did say she thought he was gross (just being honest) and told me that she would rather not be asked ever again. She also claimed that she was "compassionate."

So here's the thing: people on the left of politics and people on the right of politics both suck. In fact, there's a lot of people who suck. Events like Burning Man co-opt phrases that are outright lies. People who claim to be compassionate have so many boundaries that they might as well say, "I'm compassionate to person A and person B and in situation C but anything outside of that is a flat out 'No.'" And I include myself in this too. I have plenty of boundaries. I guess the point of this post is that the older I get, the more I begin to have a distaste for any person or agency that wants to claim the moral high ground in anything.

/end rant :) Have a nice day.

Burning Man

Burning Man was held this last week near the town of Black Rock City, Nevada. For those of you who don't know what it is, from everything that I've read about it...all seem to agree that it is a festival for the "tragically hip".

Now...you won't find a definition online of "tragically hip".  It's only two words but they say a lot.  I have wrestled in my "writer/authorial" mind as to how I would define the condition of "tragically hip".  In a discussion that I had with my friend James, we came up with this definition:

Tragically hip ==> When a person is so artistic, so completely creative, that their talent strangles them. It makes them "weird" to normal folk.  And this end result is "tragic".  Think of people with horns implanted in their heads, teeth filed into those of a reptile and tattoos that cover all of their body.

Thus, Burning Man is made for the "tragically hip".

Do you agree with my definition?

Take a look at some of these pictures taken at Burning Man and posted online.

Very organized parking