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FIRST_THROUGH_THE_FIRE

                                             October  3, 2007       
                                             November 5, 2007       
                                                                   
                                     Originally found here (now a dead link):
                                     [ref]
   A quotation:
                                              
   "... [after a] week on the playa, locking themselves
   into their bedrooms, actually shedding tears about
   what appeared to be a devastating return to what is
   widely accepted as modern civilization. Even my
   therapist at the time looked horrified during our
   first session after her first trip to Burning
   Man. ''Why do we live like this,' I have to keep
   asking myself,' I remember her saying."
                                                       
                                                       
                                                       
This is a hard one to know                            
how to deal with.

I didn't have anything like this
reaction myself, but then I've never
understood the extreme enthusiasm the
event provokes in some people                I often think: "Haven't you ever
                                             done anything cool before?"
   There's an obvious cyncical take on
   this: they did a lot of crazy drugs,
   and now they're crashing.

   Another is: yeah, vacation's over,
   now you've got to stop slacking.
   Rough, eh?


I have a suspicion that there's something a        
little more than that going on: many, many         
people live in a more constrained world than I     
do... they go around behaving Normal out of        
some combination of habit, inclination, and        
defensive reaction, and they don't really know     
how much of each it is.                            
                                                   
   For people like this, to be               
   subjected to the world of               If anything at Black Rock,
   Burning Man where everything            it often seems that Weird
   like that is inverted --                threatens to be the new
                                           Normal enforced by the usual
   Maybe it really does call               mechanisms of conformity.
   some things into question.
                                                EVIL_THOUGHT_NUMBER_23487
      The way the nominally real world is    
      set-up: things are done in an          
      orderly fashion often for no good      
      real reason: a symbolic imposition     
      of order on chaos.                     
                                             

                                             
                                            

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