Decommodification

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A. ~ Gordon Gekko

I could not resist putting that right at the top of the post.

The argument has “some” merit in it, because there are positives and negatives at both extremities of this line of argumentation.

Too little “greed” = lack of innovation

Too much “greed” = financial crisis

You will find brands at Burning Man, the tent in which someone lives was made by a corporation, the solar panel that is powering up parts of burning man was built by a corporation, the generator powering up many pieces of infrastructure was manufactured by a corporation, the art was built leveraging machines manufactured by corporations, the art assembly, maintenance and disassembly happens leveraging big machines manufactured by corporations.

At burning man we leverage but we do not promote.

At burning man we show but we do not promote.

At burning man we see but we do not promote.

At burning man we acknowledge but we do not promote.

It is the hintergrund of a conversation, it is not the focus of the conversation.

There is a fine line laid out in the argumentation above. Give it a think over.

I see a lot of people running around “giving” gifts ;-) screaming that they are living the spirit of the event by doing so and propagating the spirit. I have no problems in collecting shwag, hell, I really love some of the stuff coming out of the burn, makes for more decorations for my burn vehicle ;-), but PEOPLE, remember the notion of decommodification. At its core, it is about immaterialism and spiritualism. Sometimes the gift of time or the spoken word is the best gift you can offer someone.

Personal experience, I met this person at the burn having a problem with a bicycle tire, I offered to fix it for him and did so. His response was not a thank you, he said that he was in a state of bliss, because this is the beauty of the burn, he had a problem and the universe made me materialize to take care of it. The only thing he said was, “this is why I keep coming to burning man”. It is not about the some odd dollars tire repair, it was about the spirit and the energy behind the act. The materials needed to solve the problem was not what was of utmost importance, hell, even if I did not manage to fix the problem, I would have made a friend for life at that moment. He also got to meet a couple of cool people from the camp in the meanwhile and the circle of friends and good energy grew from this one random act of an offer to fix a punctured tire.

C’est la vie "decommodified" at burning man ;-)