askchapo

No offense taken for sure; you're not wrong about any of that. I've been going for 21 years, and am in pretty deep with the volunteer public safety / conflict resolution group out there. There are leftist elements to it--the group that I work with in particular is, I think, a really good alternative model for policing that's worth consideration--but it is in no way a leftist event or organization generally.

I like it because it's a way for me to push myself into physically uncomfortable situations to practice self-reliance and patience (I did almost 20 days out there in a tent last year), and because I think it provides a good experimentation ground for alternative models of social relationships and organization. Also, I have friends that I only see once a year out there (I even met my wife there doing the same volunteer work I do). While it's certainly not a leftist space by design, there are leftist elements to it (decommodification and inclusion, primarily), and I think it provides a useful kind of liminal space for people to try out different ways of living together that would be hard to experiment with in normal life. There are things leftism can take from Burning Man, in my opinion, even if the ideology of the org itself isn't leftist. Some of the regional events are way better politically, and do have more explicitly leftist organizational principles.