So... How about that Burning Man! The new Woodstock?

It becomes the third largest city in Nevada for one week a year. The only things for sale are ice and coffee. Everything else is barter and trade. You will need your own water, desert survival gear, shelter, water and comestibles. The goals are building community and creative expression. Bring something to share, and did I mention water?

With all the angst, gnashing of teeth and crossing of sabers over Woodstock (honestly!) I thought a fresher topic might provide a pleasant distraction.

We are having generational wars over...Woodstock? :shrug:


:popcorn:

are equivalent to those experienced at woodstock and other events.

they might be similar.
But for almost all of us dirty hippies at the time living elsewhere (I was in Florida) it became a touchstone. An organic event of music and peace that resonated with a whole generation.
That is the true legacy of Woodstock.

Burning Man and other similar events are echos of that. We need them, but there really is no replacing or recreating the original experience for our generation or for the changes it marked in our larger culture.

Give it up already!!! I was there - conditions were CRAP. Please don't live in the past. There is too much to do NOW!!!!!!

Woodstock is important for the changes it represented in our culture, it gave voice to change. Burning Man is...well...Burning Man. It may be a valuable experience, but it is not an original culture changing one. The new generations will have to experience their own cultural change signaling event. If it ever happens, that is. Or is it the ever evolving communication revolution? And how would we mark that? :) Peace

So do you prefer a sterile, corporate-sponsored, pre-digested mass experience? I'll take rolling naked in the mud any day! Too bad I was so young...x(

There is some overhead in that. And NO, I wasn't just referring to the actual burning man structure.

I haven't been, and don't plan to. but have you been? My son is going this year. I was quite alarmed until I did a lot of research on line. They are pretty organized, but still. I will stop worrying when he is back in school. That kid is always looking for an adventure, a rush. I should look much older than I am, but oddly my children help keep me young. Go figure.

There are gay people at Burning. For all the nudity, naturalism and "free love", homosexual expressions were pretty much non existent at Woodstock. Is it a result of society maturing over 40 years? Could be. To me, for all the high minded idealism that Woodstockians boast, they certainly had "too many hang ups man!"

Oh, the last two are back now. Go figure. :)

But, my generation brought things out in the open far more than they ever had been, not me necessarily, but my generation. Oppositon had been building to racism, sexism, repressed sexuality, adherence to conventional belief systems, resistence to creativity. We marked a tipping point that had been building for some time. And there really has been no going back...for the most part. We do have stragglers, recidivists and pockets of resistance. And in full disclosure, I'm still a twinset and pearl sort of person. Just not like the early 60's. My major unconventional area was a passion for science fiction. I traded paperbacks and plot lines with the science guys. It was fun.

But there is still much to be done. I guess there always will be, people being what they are.

I'm old enough to remember Woodstock, but I wasn't there.

My SIL goes to Burning Man. I have to believe that there are 29,000+ intelligent, interesting and thoughtful people there, because she's the one that isn't. She's self-important, obsessed with how hip she is, and won't bother explaining to her elder brother and his wife what is meaningful about going to the yearly celebration, besides self-expression. Obviously, we'll never "get" it.

I went to the website last year and read a lot about it; it sounds intriguing. I'm not sure I'd want to go, but it sounds like the people that do go get a lot out of it.

If she can't articulate why she thinks it is a valuable experience, she probably doesn't really get it. But surviving a week in that environment, I do have to give her credit for that. She doesn't take a big RV and a ton of gas for the generator does she? That might be cheating, not actually living the experience, if you will. Now putting up a yurt, that I understand. ;)