One More Thought About Burning Man

I’m sitting writing this from 30,000 feet on a flight from SF to NY which is isn’t that exciting because wifi is on most flights nowadays.

Returning from Burning Man to the default world this year made me appreciate humanity and civilisation in a way that I have not done before.

We moan and grumble about modern day civilisation, our late flights, or the homelessness on the streets.

But the amount of civil engineering and the cooperation of billions of humans before us to be able to even create streets is just incredible.

Sure humans have fucked up the planet in countless ways and still go around massacring each other, but for us to have running hot water at the turn of a tap, and for us even to be alive has taken copious amounts of engineering and civil cooperation.

We easily take these things for granted, get complacent,walk around thinking we are entitled, or worse complaining about our iPhone crashing or our Uber being late, this is wrong and it’s why we are unhappy.

This year at Burning Man I went early and had to build a camp completely from scratch. No SUVs or campers, we had to think about how we were going to get running water for cooking, stake down the tents so we didn’t get caught in a dust storm whilst sleeping.

I spent hours hammering nails, building a wood base for a shower, only for it to be torn down because the water wasn’t draining.

When I got home I was in ore of the hot water that came out of the tap, I felt gratitude for being able to make a cup of tea without spending an hour boiling water.

If you are complacent with life, go early to Burning Man next year. Build your camp from scratch and you will not take the amazingness of humanity and civilisation for granted ever again.