home.wangjianshuo.comWangjianshuo's Blog | Events (in Shanghai) that affect my life (and others')

Wangjianshuo’s Blog Events (in Shanghai) that affect my life (and others’) SearchTravel China Beijing Guilin Xiamen Sanya Luoyang Hong Kong Guangzhou Qingdao Chengdu Lijiang Daocheng Nanyang Taihu Hangzhou Singapore Italy Japan Australia United States San Francisco New York Seattle Washington D.C. San Jose Chicago Boston Living in Shanghai Living Cost Holidays Westen Holidays Chinese Holidays New Year Shanghai Photos Real Estate Phone and Mobile Restaurants Shanghai Apartments Banks Universities Internet Access Discover Shanghai Transportation By Train Metro Line #1 Line #2 Line #4 Line #5 Line #6 Line #7 Line #8 Line #9 Line #10 Future Lines Bus Car Flights Pudong Airport To Hotels To Other Cities Hongqiao Airport Taxi Maglev Shopping Bookstores IKEA Starbucks Xiangyang Market Hotel Cheap Hotels Shanghai Weather Spring Summer Autumn Winter Roads Favorite Road Near Shanghai Dishui Lake Yangshan Port Chongming Island Attractions Blogging Blog Tips Backstage This Site Other Sites MovableType Spam Hosting Bluehost IPowerWeb Out of Blogging Readers Meetup Happiness Wendy Yifan Friends Goudaner Cats Help and Love My Hobbies Map Sports Running Cycling Learn to Drive Boat New Tech WAP Wireless Webcam Hi-Tech Toys Books Movie Art Conference YLF Projects Smiling Library Exhibition Confluence Project Planning Me Media Coverage Interview Birthday Moving My Life Life Productivity English Misc Internet Garden Education Public In China Business Baixing Google Microsoft MSN Jobs Opening Day Like This Jet Lag News Zhiyong Sars Polution Super Girl West Meets East Government Tibet Issues Expo 2010 Olympics 2008 Culture About Post navigation ← Older posts Burning Man is a Vacation from Ego Posted on September 20, 2023 by Jian Shuo Wang Reply Is Burning Man over-rated?” This question has been lingering in my mind during the first afternoon and the second morning of Burning Man, when I looked at the dusty desert, the African-like infrastructure, the nomadic tents in disarray, and the people of all colors dressed in strange costumes. Is Burning Man over-rated?” Seven days from now, if someone asks me that question again, my answer will be a resounding, Fuck you, you mother fucker!” The Guardians Burning Man is the guardian of humanity’s diversity. The most extreme, to the point of being considered evil, ideas are religiously guarded here. Ideas and behaviors about Nudity, Sexuality, Bondage, BDSM, Drugs, LGBTIQ, and many other ideas and behaviors that are not allowed in the mainstream (default world) are preserved and developed here. Of course, it’s not a good idea for these ideas to spread easily to the whole world, and some of them maybe have to be confined to a small environment because most human societies aren’t ready for it yet. e.g. open nudity, sexuality, complete de-commercialization, breaking all the rules and boundaries, for many societies with a low level of productivity, would bring about a humanitarian catastrophe such as a mass starvation, but there has to be someone in the world to experiment and develop these ideas to prepare for the future form of human society. So, Burning Man is kind of like a laboratory where humans keep the smallpox virus. These viruses can’t be spread, but they can’t be eliminated either. Because once eradicated, biodiversity is harmed. Many of the deviant behaviors that the hippie community has been guarding for 30 years, such as LGBT, are now being accepted by more and more of society. Perhaps some of the other ideas that are guarded now will become mainstream somewhere, sometime in the future. Boundaries To summarize, my 7-day Burning Man experience has greatly broadened the boundaries of my own world. I have absolutely no idea what the impact of this will be on me. It must not be ‘better’ in the traditional sense, just ‘more diverse’. If you look at it from the default world’s point of view, these practices teach people to be ‘bad’. Because it is too avant-garde, too egotistical, too intense. With its acceptance of nudity, its understanding of the LGBT and SM communities, its embrace of a new social form, the Burning Man experience is by no means guaranteed to turn myself into better people, or at least, worse person before we become better person. It makes me go from being familiar to being unfamiliar with the world around us, from taking for granted the rules and conclusions of everyday life to being far removed from them. It doesn’t teach me anything new, it just changes the way I look at the world. Once this sense of alienation from the world of absence is created, there is no way to get back, just as there is no way to return to innocent” once it is lost, and there is no way for a language to become unknowable once it is learned. The process is profound and irreversible. One of the most essential questions is: What is good? What is bad? When this criterion is rethought, everything in the default world needs to be rethought all over again. I had no idea where this path would take me until now. In the movie Black Swan, Nina is a good girl who can perfectly portray the White Swan, but she lacks the kind of evil inside her that the Black Swan needs. Eventuallythrough drugs, jealousy, seduction, betrayal, and attack, she ends up forcibly kissing the male art director and biting his lip bloody, exploding the wildness that has never been awakened within a good girl. Having become a ‘bad girl’, she is finally able to switch between the roles of Black Swan and White Swan with ease, and becomes a more complete person. While Burning Man also gives the power of the White Swan, what is so unique about it is that it gives the participants the power of the ‘Black Swan’, the power to betray, to destroy, to oppose, to let go of oneself. We can summon and use this evil, destructive power, and we ourselves can become that vicious incarnation with the skull on our chest. Burning Man is a place where the evil power of the ‘Black Swan’ in my body grows and explodes. This is something I never expected before I traveled to Black Rock City. What I experienced in Burning Man I never thought was the only correct solution to the world. No extreme is the only solution to the world. Should we always brake, or should we always hit the gas? Is it more correct to steer to the left, or to the right? There is no answer to such questions, because there is no one solution that is always correct. The only correct solution is what to do when you should do it. However, after expanding the boundaries of whatever we do, or after maximizing each of the two opposites, it gives us more space, and choosing the most appropriate point within that space is our own freedom. The yin and yang in the bagua diagram, black needs to be absolute black, and white needs to be absolute white, with black and white in some kind of balance, is the way the world works. The world is balanced by two forces: and the stronger each of these two forces is, the greater the space of freedom that can be pulled apart in the center. The best sports cars have strong engine and good brakes, and both of these levels are pulled to the extreme to allow for a better ride, whereas a broken car, just doesn’t pick up speed even when you put the gas in, and doesn’t slow down when you slam on the brakes, so the person who drives a broken car has less freedom than the person who drives a good car. Burning Man pushed these boundaries. The farther the boundary is pushed, the more inner freedom we get. Humanistic Reflections on Burning Man Burning Man is a place where the ego of an individual is systematically removed. This ego is tightly connected to the default world, and we enter with our ego and spend 8 days letting it slowly melt away. On the NV-447 highway from I-80 to BRC, I kept complaining, Why cannot they run Burning Man in beautiful mountains and lakes?” Now I know why. Being inside a desert (not strictly a desert, just a lake bed that dries up in the summer), a place that is uninhabitable for...