“It seems Caravancicle broke several of the ‘Ten Principles’. Will “Chateau Tananburn” address those issues?”
We ruffled some feathers (which were once banned as well, but now allowed) last year, and we are likely to ruffle a lot more in 2015. I am a firm believer in the saying “If you’re not pissing someone off, you probably aren’t doing anything important”. Let me be clear: I want to be self-important and I’m willing to piss people off to do it.
As for the Ten Principles, I can’t stress this enough: It is the “Ten Principles“, not the “Ten Commandments”. There is a huge distinction that I feel is lost on people. When you break a Commandment, there is punishment. When you break a Principle, there is whining from the people who regret not breaking it first. I feel so strongly about this I bought my way onto the BMORG board (With promises, not cash. Decommodification in action!) in order to program this into Burning Man’s DNA.
Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the people who are guided by the Ten Principles. Without them, there would likely be no Burning Man that I can show off to my peers. Those people made Burning Man what it is: A unique cultural event with limitless commercial opportunities.
Finally, we do have a plan for addressing people’s concerns that we violated their principles. As you can see from several posts and announcements on the Burning Man site, nothing we did was deemed unacceptable by the BMORG1. In fact, you may have noticed that there have been a few PR style posts explaining that camps like ours have always been there and that they are part of the fabric of the event. That’s how we move Mount Fuji: by convincing people it was someplace else all along. You can thank me, a few like-minded board members, and a couple of the ‘founders’ that we have been grooming into perfect yes-women and yes-men. You will see, we are becoming the Future of Burning Man.
1 There was one dissenting voice, but the newly empowered board of directors fitted him with a shiny muzzle and it will be a long while before he’s allowed to bark again. Problem solved.