Program Notes
Guest speakers: Ken Vanosky and Jerry Candelaria
Ken Vanosky and Jerry Candelaria moderated the most interactive of the 2003 Palenque Norte conversations at Burning Man, and in this recording you will also hear from several members of the audience who added some significant thoughts of their own.
If you have never been to a burn and think that the Burning Man experience is nothing more than the world’s greatest party (which is also is), this conversation will open up an entirely new dimension of the festival to you. And if you are a conservative, you might want to listen closely to this conversation, for these are some of the people who are creating the future you are about to inhabit.
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Transcript
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3-Dimensional Transforming Musical Linguistic Objects
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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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Well, I’m sorry about not getting this podcast out earlier,
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but like many of you, I’ve slowed down a bit due to the heat.
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And speaking of heat, of course, brings up thoughts of the desert and Burning Man,
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which has actually been my main focus for the past couple of weeks.
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And as you most likely know already,
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the schedule for this year’s Burning Man lectures has finally been published. And you can find a link to it on our home portal
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at matrixmasters.com. And from that page, you’ll
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also find our podcast pages, the Planque Norte section, and
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some of the other areas of our little family of websites.
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And for those of you who won’t be able to make it to the burn this year,
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well, once again, we’re going to do our best to try and get them recorded.
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So if you’re wondering what some of our future podcasts will cover,
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well, you can find out by checking out the list of Burning Man talks.
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Hopefully, most of them will eventually make it into a podcast from the Psychedelic Salon,
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at least if our recording equipment holds up this year.
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Actually, you know, many of our regular speakers are going to be back again this year,
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so you’ll have a chance, if you’re there, to interact with Eric Davis, Alex and Allison Gray, Daniel Pinschbeck,
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Nick Sand, John Gilmore, and John Hanna, among others. In all, there’s going to be over 30
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speakers this year, including first-time burners like Ann and Sasha Shulgin, who will be speaking
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on the day of the burn. It’s really a great lineup this year and I hope that many of you will be able to stop by and
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join us for a talk or two. The lectures this year are going to be held in Theon Village and as soon
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as I know where the village will be located we’ll post it on the page with the schedule. I know that
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Matt and his crew have been working all year to raise the funds and build the infrastructure that’s required for these talks.
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So I hope you’ll also come by the village and enjoy some of the other attractions
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that this great crew is putting together for your entertainment and intellectual pleasure.
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I’ll be emceeing the lectures again this year, so if you’re looking for me,
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well, just come to the big tent in Theon Village and ask around.
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That’s where I plan on hanging out during the daytime hours at least.
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And at night, well, I’ll be in the mix with the rest of you.
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But hey, before I get too far into Burning Man mode, we’d better get on with today’s program.
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To be honest, I’ve been kind of down these past few weeks.
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You know, just like everyone else, I have these ups and downs that sometimes test your
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will to keep on keeping on.
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But then I received several emails from you guys out there in cyberdelic space, and well,
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what can I say?
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Your kind words of encouragement got me out of my little funk,
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and so I started searching around for something that made sense to me to pass along right now.
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Of course, part of my depression lately has come from the sad news from around the world,
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particularly in the Mideast and other places where U.S. imperialism is destroying cultures and plundering resources.
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And closer to home, I see all kinds of little dramas going on all over the place,
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even here within the psychedelic community.
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Let’s face it, if we can’t even sort things out among ourselves,
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how can we expect to lead the way to a better future for our species?
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And so I return once again to the subject of community.
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You see, my personal belief, which, by the way, I don’t expect you to share,
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is, actually I kind of hope you don’t share it, to be honest,
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but my personal belief is that the system is so distorted in favor of the artificial intelligences that we call corporations
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that I just don’t see how the current system can even be fixed.
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So instead of pushing against all of that corporate power and trying to change the system,
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I’m in favor instead of changing the culture one person at a time, beginning with myself, of course.
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I still firmly believe that, as Terence McKenna once said,
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if the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.
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And for me, one of the basic truths of our times is that
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if we want to ensure the continuation of the human species for at least another millennium or so,
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then we’d better begin inventing new and
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better ways to come together in human communities of cooperation and abandon the old paradigm
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of competition for power and privilege and resources.
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Unfortunately, of course, thousands of people have been working on this problem for many
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decades.
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Thank you. giving the final Palenque Norte lecture of that year on our website. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a very hot August 30th
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when Ken and Jerry moderated the discussion about community that we’re about to hear.
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One of the things I find important about the story of how their community grew
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is how essentially organic and certainly unplanned in the beginning that it all was and it is.
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From a few friends getting together for coffee and a very active and engaged community of
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hundreds has evolved.
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Now I know that a lot of you are sitting out there maybe feeling alone and cut off from
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the larger worldwide psychedelic community that really does exist out there.
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the larger worldwide psychedelic community that really does exist out there,
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well, take heart and listen to at least how one community was born,
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and maybe it will give you an idea or two that you can put into action in your local area.
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So let’s listen to Ken Vanowski and Jerry Candelaria tell their story. Most of the people that we have been speaking are friends of ours that we met at Palenque
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and maybe at the All Chemical Arts Conference.
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But Jerry, actually, I just got to meet today.
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And Ken, I actually met very fortuitously.
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We went to lunch together the day after the night that Mary C. and I decided to come to Burning Man for our first time.
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And Ken just kind of smiled and he says, well, Burning Man is going to become your way of life now.
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It’s not just a one-time event.
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And we’ve learned that that’s really true.
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It is a way of life.
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And so we thought it would be very appropriate to sort of close the circle on the lecture series.
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We’ve been talking about consciousness and 2012, a lot of issues like that.
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But really the most important thing I think that Burning Man is about, that we’re all about, is community.
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How do we find new ways to form community?
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How do we improve the communities we have?
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How do we take what we learn here and integrate it back in our societies?
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take what we learn here and integrate it back in our societies.
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It’s very difficult to take this full-blown back in and not be arrested for being mad people or something.
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But Ken and Jerry have been involved in community building a lot longer than I have and have had a lot of successes.
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And I know some of you have been involved in their activities,
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and some of you out in radio land I’m sure have too.
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So I would like now to turn it over to Ken and Jerry,
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and they’re going to give us some comments and then engage all of us in some ideas on community building.
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So if you’ll help me welcome Ken and Jerry.
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Thank you.
00:08:22 ►
I think a good way to start this conversation, and that’s what this is, is a conversation,
00:08:30 ►
a continuing and growing conversation, is to simply presence where we have come from in our own journey to this point.
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And then we can move from there to build context for community as we see it and the purpose that is driving this
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particular energy. Jerry has been my good friend almost since I met him back in
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1997 I believe for the first time
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Another good friend David me Bauer who is sitting over on the couch
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Had invited me to
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Participate in a course a weekend course, which I did participate in. And that generated some connections with a group of men. And those connections led to a conversation, the beginning of a conversation that was taking place once a week at breakfast. And I’m going to let Jerry talk about this and see if he’s really the centerpiece for that conversation
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and can presence it better than I.
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Actually, I thought you were doing a really good job.
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Why don’t you continue?
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So when David actually introduced me to Ken,
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we were just starting to get a bunch of men together and to go out to the beach.
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We’d take ourselves out there and we were building a sort of camaraderie of men together.
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It was a place where we could bring our lives, ourselves, everything that was going on for us, and support each other in our lives.
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Because we realized we didn’t have that in our life.
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We didn’t have a place to go to just express ourselves and check in with each other and be okay.
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So through doing that, we kept building this.
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More and more men kept coming.
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There was like 20-something men coming to the beach.
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We started out at breakfast and ended up at the beach in San Francisco.
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And it just kept growing and growing.
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And at a certain point, we started going to Burning Man.
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And I would say that Burning Man, if you look at it, like it’s a spontaneous community,
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this whole thing that we’re doing out here. I mean,
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who’s been here more than one time? More than five times? Okay. More than three times? Okay,
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good. All right. So something’s bringing you back here. What would you say is bringing you back to Burning Man? What’s bringing you back to Burning Man?
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Creativity.
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People.
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Genuine kindness.
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Genuine kindness to the people.
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Relating.
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Playfulness.
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You raised your hand.
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Well, what brought you here?
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Stories.
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Like what?
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Friendships.
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Making friendships.
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That’s really good.
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Because that’s really what it is.
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It’s an invented reality that’s not the same reality that’s out there at your job, you know, at your house.
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Excuse me, your mic isn’t very sensitive.
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Okay.
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It’s not the same reality as your job, as your house, as the normal life that you’re living.
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This reality out here is pretty wild.
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life that you’re living, this reality out here is pretty wild. And what the men that we were with discovered out here was that sense of rawness, that sense of wildness, the passion, the creativity,
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and it really inspired us. And in that inspiration, a lot of energy gathered around us and a lot of
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women gathered around us and we started to build a community. Now, we didn’t start building a
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community by saying, okay, let’s build a community.
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We were just really inspired by the spirit that we tapped into at Burning Man,
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which was total freedom, love, expression, fun,
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and all the things that are juicy out here
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that it seems to be what keeps people coming back for more.
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Through the experience of
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Burning Man, we started throwing parties ourselves. We decided we wanted to come and represent our
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community out at Burning Man in 1998. So we ended up throwing five or so parties to raise money to
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build a theme camp out at Burning Man. And in the process of that, we built an email list.
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And pretty soon, there was a couple hundred people on our email list and next thing you know i think ken coined the phrase to me i never heard it
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before he called it a virtual community that the email list became a virtual community because a
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lot of the people that were on this list we had never met but they kept putting their input in
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they kept coming to the parties, and a whole vortex
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of energy got created. And through throwing these parties and coming out to Burning Man year after
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year, a whole community developed, and it was called The Community. We didn’t even know, we just
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kind of threw that name out, so we had no idea what the hell was going on, but we knew something
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was happening. So we called this thing the community.
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And in the last four or five years, what spurred out of that has been several sub-communities have formed,
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several little tribes have formed inside of that one larger community.
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Organizations have formed.
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People were bringing their businesses, their projects, their visions in life to that community
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and then people would gather around that and go out and build those things.
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There was also a vision at that time because it was basically an underground dance community in San Francisco that we had formed.
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And there were several other underground dance communities happening,
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many of which are out here at Burning Man and have been out here for many, many years.
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And we had this thought like, why don’t we all get together and throw parties together? happening, many of which are out here at Burning Man and have been out here for many, many years.
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And we had this thought like, why don’t we all get together and throw parties together?
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And there was a lot of talk around how each of these communities were closed communities.
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And that notion was very disturbing to me because I couldn’t imagine how closed and community connected. It didn’t make any sense to me. Does that make any sense, closed community?
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It doesn’t make any sense. So we just kind of, over the last five years, let that notion,
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that desire to do things together, percolate. And this year at Burning Man, the camp called
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Conexus, which is way out by Center Camp, is a combination of how many dance communities?
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Five.
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Five formally kind of closed dance communities
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that are all working together to build something brand new.
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And with that, I want to turn it back over to Ken
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because one of the things that’s really inspiring to me
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about all this growth and movement and community
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is what Ken talks about when he talks about
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what it was like in the 60s because he was there so I want to turn it over to
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you I want you to talk a little bit about what that was like and what the
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what the difference is now okay let me start this out this way my first
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Burning Man was 1998 and I was expressing to Lorenzo before this talk started that my experience
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upon leaving Burning Man, pulling out of the gates, I was in the back of an RV with a friend
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of mine, and I just started to weep. And I was weeping and weeping and weeping.
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And the context for that emotional release was this sensation that all of the things that I had said to myself were not possible.
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I suddenly realized were indeed possible.
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Not only was it possible, but it
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was there for the creating. That sets a very powerful purpose loose in life. Once one recognizes that something can be, then that person, whoever is inspired in that way, breathes in the energy
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of that possibility and that possibility becomes a force.
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It becomes an intention inside of that person to make that real.
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Not just in this reality that takes place one week out of the year,
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but in the reality that exists out there in the world.
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How do you create the tendrils, the tentacles, the threads, the filaments that move from here out into our reality of life?
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How do we create the life around us that makes us happy, where we can find the same happiness that we experience in this place,
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the same truths that we experience in this place out in our lives.
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Well, that’s what I was confronted with when I first experienced Burning Man.
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Inside of my historical experience was this.
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I was here during the 60s.
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I remembered all too well the freedom of expression that was there,
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and I also remember what occurred in the late 60s and into the 70s as things began to unwind,
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that energy began to unwind.
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And I wanted to presence what I feel is a primary difference between the 60s and now.
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I wanted to present what I feel is a primary difference between the 60s and now.
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And in presencing that difference, hopefully give some context for what this is as opposed to that.
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One of the things about the 60s is that it was a lot of different movements that came together and all of those movements were predominantly
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pushing against something. It was pushing against what existed at the time, the society
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that existed, how society held each of those elements, each of the aspects that were important
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to people. So you had movements be created. It started perhaps
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with the Civil Rights Movement. There were the Gay Freedom Movement. You had a woman’s
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movement, a sexual freedom movement. All of these movements began to arise and each of
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them in turn found something to push off against. And in a, it was a rather fractured time.
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You had a lot of environmental, I could throw that in as well.
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You had a lot of energies that were out there all pushing against something.
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As the changes began to occur, as the Vietnam War ended, as some of those movements matured, the energy
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was lost.
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And the energy was lost because the balance that was there between the positive and the
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negative began to close in on itself.
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There was the base by which the movements were begun dissipated.
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So the movements themselves dissipated.
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The energies pulled out of the movement.
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We went into a different period.
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Some people would call that a postmodernism.
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The energy that was there was pushing off of something, and that was the base.
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It was the society that existed at the time and the movements found their energy by pushing back against that it
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found his forward motion by pushing back against that let’s bring it to this
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point present what’s different here at Burning Man now what’s different now in
00:20:43 ►
the tribal cultures that are being created out of this?
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Well, let me ask the question.
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What do you guys think is different?
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What do you feel the difference is?
00:20:53 ►
A positive vision of what we want and going about creating it.
00:20:57 ►
Yes, acceptance of the way things are and moving forward irregardless.
00:21:05 ►
Would that be a good way of saying that?
00:21:07 ►
Conscious cooperation, a gift economy.
00:21:10 ►
It’s not political.
00:21:12 ►
It’s not explicitly political.
00:21:15 ►
Living into a future as opposed to responding to the forces that are there.
00:21:19 ►
Building a new culture in the face of an old culture that is collapsing, that occurs as if it is collapsing or changing.
00:21:31 ►
Let me move from that point into what I want to say here.
00:21:36 ►
I’ll give context to what we just talked about. There’s a wave coming through.
00:21:41 ►
There’s a wave. There’s there’s small waves of consciousness. There’s small waves of consciousness.
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And there’s great waves of consciousness.
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And great waves of new consciousness
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come through every so often.
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Historically, they’ve come through rather seldom.
00:21:59 ►
But time’s changing.
00:22:02 ►
The information society is here.
00:22:05 ►
Consciousness is coming faster.
00:22:08 ►
Energies are flowing faster as information flows faster.
00:22:12 ►
My sense of this is that in my life I have already experienced two great waves.
00:22:20 ►
One great wave in the late 60s and another great wave that started in the 90s.
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I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have experienced two waves.
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I hope to experience a third.
00:22:37 ►
That would be a remarkable situation.
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I think throughout most of history, people, if they experienced one great wave of new
00:22:43 ►
consciousness, felt very fortunate indeed.
00:22:47 ►
So something is occurring here.
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We didn’t invent it.
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You know, consciousness comes from a thousand places all at once, and these energies merge into these waves, and they come through.
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What we’re doing here is translating this consciousness into new language, into new
00:23:06 ►
time. And the consciousness that we’re feeling is represented by how we come together in this
00:23:14 ►
place and how we interact with each other. We all are bringing something to this interaction.
00:23:21 ►
A context was set by Burning Man, and we are bringing the energy. What occurs here is
00:23:29 ►
what we’re bringing from the consciousness that we feel. So in a sense, what this is,
00:23:37 ►
is an expression of something that is already being generated in each one of us. We’re feeling it out in the world, and we’re bringing it forward,
00:23:48 ►
and we’re meeting other people who are feeling that energy and bringing it forward.
00:23:53 ►
When we meet, there’s an electricity that occurs.
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That electricity is here.
00:24:00 ►
We feel it.
00:24:02 ►
We discover it.
00:24:03 ►
We sense what is available to us.
00:24:08 ►
We find purpose, we find intentionality.
00:24:11 ►
In a sense, it’s a new society.
00:24:13 ►
It’s a new community that is being created.
00:24:16 ►
Even though we don’t have history with each of the people here,
00:24:30 ►
with each of the people here, we recognize that there’s a common sense of being that exists with each person because of their willingness to participate in this.
00:24:34 ►
And an instant community is formed.
00:24:37 ►
We have a sense of community, and with that community goes trust.
00:24:41 ►
I mean, why is that?
00:24:42 ►
Let’s explore that for a moment.
00:24:44 ►
So why is that? Why is that occurring
00:24:47 ►
here? And if you went 10 miles outside of this camp, you would not act the same. You would lock
00:24:56 ►
your car doors. You would change your behavior. So why do you have that behavior here? What is here,
00:25:02 ►
So why do you have that behavior here?
00:25:07 ►
What is here, if I may use that term again, virtual community,
00:25:13 ►
what is here is a community, and there are elements between us.
00:25:21 ►
There are elements, there’s bonds that we recognize as being common in the community, even with people we’ve never met.
00:25:23 ►
There’s something here.
00:25:23 ►
in the community, even with people we’ve never met.
00:25:24 ►
There’s something here.
00:25:31 ►
And the issue is, you know, clearly this is different than the community that is out there.
00:25:32 ►
There’s a shared geography.
00:25:34 ►
There might be a shared religion.
00:25:37 ►
There might be a lot of factors, a shared government.
00:25:40 ►
There’s a lot of factors that define the community out there.
00:25:43 ►
This community is very different.
00:26:08 ►
It shares a temporary geography, which it cares for and finds sacred, but that is only a temporary geography. The bonds of this community are much different than the bonds that exist out there in the world. So let’s explore what that is. The basic premise of mnemology is that consciousness evolves more or less unconsciously.
00:26:16 ►
So we have hereditary drives that cause us to pay attention to certain things.
00:26:22 ►
And those things that we pay attention to are the things that get spread through consciousness. If you think of all the people in the world or all the people who speak a single language, in one way they’re one super organism or one large
00:26:29 ►
consciousness. They can be all connected potentially. Usually scientists will study how evolution
00:26:39 ►
of ideas occurs through looking just at what ideas survive.
00:26:49 ►
It’s sort of the same survivability notion that they have in general evolutionary theory.
00:26:52 ►
It’s not the idea that’s the best idea for us.
00:26:58 ►
It’s not the thing that has us live our lives the most happy and the most fulfilled.
00:27:01 ►
It’s the idea that people pay the most attention to. So that’s why Madison Avenue uses, you know, they say the four F’s.
00:27:07 ►
Feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fucking.
00:27:13 ►
Those are the things that sell
00:27:14 ►
because those are the things evolutionarily
00:27:16 ►
that we’re wired to pay attention to.
00:27:19 ►
And where our attention goes,
00:27:21 ►
our reality is created.
00:27:23 ►
Now the sort of promise or idea that consciousness could
00:27:29 ►
actually evolve consciously is a very interesting and exciting notion, because then we’re no
00:27:36 ►
longer at effect to our genes or our material makeup about the way in which we create our reality.
00:27:46 ►
We consciously choose the way we want to create our reality.
00:27:49 ►
And it’s a completely different ballgame.
00:27:52 ►
And my sort of idea of that is that
00:27:54 ►
we’re at baby step stage.
00:27:58 ►
We barely even get it that we create our reality.
00:28:02 ►
We fucking create our own reality.
00:28:05 ►
That’s the truth.
00:28:07 ►
I get up in the morning and I open the fucking newspaper and that’s my reality.
00:28:12 ►
It’s bullshit.
00:28:13 ►
It’s all bullshit.
00:28:15 ►
But we have the ability to change that.
00:28:17 ►
And only we have the ability to change that.
00:28:20 ►
So the more we’re asleep, the more we don’t pay attention,
00:28:23 ►
the more we do things out of habit,
00:28:26 ►
and just because that’s the way it is, the more it’ll just continue on that way.
00:28:31 ►
And we have sort of this unique ability to set intention and to create what we want to create.
00:28:37 ►
So in some ways, I like to look at it optimistically.
00:28:41 ►
We’re at the very beginning, the dawning of a golden age of human society. But we’re way back there. It’s like you can’t even really get it because
00:28:51 ►
just like you say, you go 10 miles to another town and the memes are just memeing. It’s
00:28:58 ►
like bam, bam, bam. That’s what’s true. That’s what’s true. Bullshit bullshit so there’s an opportunity
00:29:05 ►
but it does require
00:29:07 ►
all of us to wake up
00:29:09 ►
and that’s not an easy thing for us to do
00:29:12 ►
myself included
00:29:13 ►
I love sleeping
00:29:14 ►
as long as I so conveniently have the mic
00:29:20 ►
I’ll add to that
00:29:21 ►
I totally agree
00:29:23 ►
and we are at the beginning
00:29:25 ►
of something really, really
00:29:27 ►
immense.
00:29:30 ►
And the way you can tell you’re at the beginning of
00:29:31 ►
something big and new
00:29:33 ►
is that that means that you’re
00:29:35 ►
end of something old and
00:29:37 ►
falling apart, like the Catholic
00:29:39 ►
Church and Enron and all the
00:29:41 ►
things that are having these problems. So we can see
00:29:43 ►
the old structures crashing, and that’s why I think what we’re talking about here is we better
00:29:49 ►
get in gear here and start building the new structures pretty quickly because the old
00:29:55 ►
ones are taking care of themselves. And that was the 60s pushing against. I think the 60s
00:30:00 ►
put some good cracks in it and it’s coming down, so we’ve got to go forward now.
00:30:09 ►
Let me see if I can describe the territory of this community.
00:30:17 ►
And in the spirit of Burning Man, I’ll just say that what I’m going to do is describe a map,
00:30:21 ►
but the map is not the territory, okay?
00:30:23 ►
It’s just words.
00:30:26 ►
And I never read my stuff because it’s long and windy. But and I’m going to keep this really short. So if I would, I’m going to set up a polarity,
00:30:37 ►
but the polarity is not one that I would describe that we’re pushing against.
00:30:51 ►
The opposite end of this is not a base that we’re pushing off of.
00:30:59 ►
I’m going to give the polarity only because it gives context for what I think we’re moving to. One polarity, fear or love.
00:31:03 ►
Numbness or awareness, closure or openness, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving, sensing or intuiting, consuming or generating, creating, scarcity or abundance, taking or generating, creating. Scarcity or abundance.
00:31:26 ►
Taking or sharing.
00:31:29 ►
Controlling or trusting.
00:31:32 ►
Separate self or oneness.
00:31:35 ►
Striving or harmony.
00:31:38 ►
Future, past or now.
00:31:41 ►
Defending or gratitude.
00:31:44 ►
Planning or wisdom. defending or gratitude, planning or wisdom, safety or risk, already knowing or experience and wonder.
00:31:54 ►
I could add awe.
00:31:57 ►
Right, wrong, or no absolutes.
00:32:01 ►
On the positive side of that, did that resonate with people as a map of this community
00:32:07 ►
territory? And I’d like to just say that words are just words. There’s a somatic involved with them.
00:32:17 ►
That means that we all have a different understanding of what love is. We all have a
00:32:22 ►
different understanding of what openness is. It’s just a word. And these are just points on a map. But taken together, this map begins to describe a territory. A territory that we are moving into. A place that we are heading towards. a direction that is new and different and unique from the society and place that we have all come from.
00:32:56 ►
We feel the difference in this dynamic.
00:33:00 ►
We feel the difference in the polarity. We feel the motion, the movement forward into
00:33:07 ►
the new unity, the new oneness that is coming together here. And in a sense, this is a unity.
00:33:16 ►
It is a coming together. It is not fractions pushing off against something. it is in fact integral. But I want to say something to that.
00:33:27 ►
That what you’re saying are great and they’re ideals.
00:33:32 ►
It’s idealistic and there’s a practicality to it.
00:33:36 ►
And I think it comes down to what she was saying about leaving her doors unlocked, leaving
00:33:41 ►
her house open, food for everyone, whatever that was that she was saying,
00:33:45 ►
it was indicating that she was going to take some action.
00:33:49 ►
And what David’s talking about is waking up.
00:33:54 ►
And to wake up, you’ve got to take action to wake up.
00:33:57 ►
And in reality, it took a lot of action and effort to make Burning Man happen.
00:34:02 ►
And Burning Man disappears in a few days.
00:34:05 ►
It’s gone.
00:34:06 ►
And you walk back into your lives.
00:34:08 ►
And to me, I come out here, it’s great.
00:34:11 ►
It’s a wonderful party.
00:34:13 ►
It’s an incredible time.
00:34:14 ►
And it’s also, just as David would say, it’s also bullshit.
00:34:18 ►
Because it disappears in a week.
00:34:20 ►
It’s gone.
00:34:21 ►
Now, what difference did Burning Man make?
00:34:24 ►
That’s the question. What difference
00:34:25 ►
will it make for you? What difference will it make is the difference you take and make in your life
00:34:30 ►
with it. That you walk out, the interaction with you and your boss, when your boss tells you
00:34:36 ►
something that pisses you off or says something that degrades you or someone cuts you off in a
00:34:42 ►
car and you want to flip them off. You know, it’s in those moments.
00:34:45 ►
Those are the moments that count.
00:34:47 ►
What David’s talking about, when David talked about consciousness and being awake,
00:34:51 ►
it’s a bitch because it takes being awake moment by moment by moment by moment.
00:34:56 ►
And none of us are really up to that task.
00:34:59 ►
So it’s kind of like we come here to Burning Man and we have this really glorious experience.
00:35:03 ►
We blow our wad and we go back and we’re back to the same person we were before we came here.
00:35:08 ►
Unless we take action, unless we take a stand to say, you know, this is how I’m going to be.
00:35:14 ►
I’m going to be open and practice that every day, all interactions.
00:35:21 ►
I see the Burning Man as an alchemical stove basically so
00:35:27 ►
everyone here gets transformed and transformed in the sense that the cells
00:35:33 ►
are not the same anymore right the emotions are not the same the fears
00:35:38 ►
transform into awe and sharing and that’s why people keep coming. So in some way we don’t have to do anything
00:35:47 ►
when we get there because we are changed
00:35:49 ►
and we radiate that change.
00:35:53 ►
That’s the beauty that we are all participating
00:35:55 ►
in that alchemy and we are all transforming each other
00:36:00 ►
with this yearning and longing for love
00:36:04 ►
and connection that is in us.
00:36:07 ►
That’s true and it’s a trap. It’s true that you’re transforming. It’s true that just being
00:36:13 ►
here in this space of love and trust and intimacy and fun and play, pleasure, all the various
00:36:20 ►
things that you’re going through, that’s true. Yeah, you’re transforming. The cells are transforming. All that’s transforming. But one of the things David talked about with
00:36:28 ►
memes is that there’s a historical context with memes. They’ve been around for thousands
00:36:33 ►
of years. The things that make your mind up, the decisions you make, it’s very genetically
00:36:38 ►
encoded, survival-based. You’re a body. I’m a body of habits and patterns that have been around not just when I was born,
00:36:47 ►
but they’re encoded with my family’s background.
00:36:50 ►
There was a way my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
00:36:55 ►
treated his wife or children
00:36:57 ►
that has passed down one pattern after the next,
00:37:00 ►
down the family line,
00:37:01 ►
and I popped into the world and I inherited it.
00:37:05 ►
You’ve inherited your history.
00:37:06 ►
You’ve got a historical context that comes all the way back from the first one of your family.
00:37:12 ►
And your family’s family’s family’s family.
00:37:14 ►
So you’re not just this immediate invention that popped out.
00:37:18 ►
Look at your color.
00:37:19 ►
Look at your religion.
00:37:20 ►
Did you wake up when you were born and choose your color?
00:37:23 ►
Did you choose your sex did you
00:37:26 ►
choose your religion did you choose how you were going to relate to people that shit just came down
00:37:32 ►
the pike boom boom boom boom boom it’s exactly what david’s talking about now you’re here at
00:37:38 ►
bernie man and you’re like whoa shit that’s the way i’ve been do i want to be that way anymore
00:37:43 ►
you start to see what’s possible, what’s available.
00:37:47 ►
And all of a sudden, you get to choose.
00:37:50 ►
And all I’m saying is that’s a glorious moment to choose what you want to be.
00:37:54 ►
And walking away from Burning Man,
00:37:56 ►
if you don’t take that choice and put it into practice, it’ll disappear.
00:38:02 ►
That enlightenment’s very short-lived.
00:38:04 ►
It’s a dime a dozen.
00:38:05 ►
So I just wanted to say that,
00:38:08 ►
not to bring it down to you all,
00:38:10 ►
but to bring a choice,
00:38:12 ►
to kick our asses,
00:38:14 ►
to go back out in our lives and be great.
00:38:17 ►
If you’ve been great here,
00:38:18 ►
and you’ve been with people who’ve been great,
00:38:20 ►
then go out in your life and be great.
00:38:22 ►
That’s about the best thing you can do.
00:38:24 ►
If you want to transform this planet, you want to change this world, then change it at the level of when somebody
00:38:30 ►
says something to you that pisses you off, watch when your heart closes and open it. It’s that,
00:38:36 ►
that’s where the start is. And it may take a thousand more years before that ripple of openness
00:38:42 ►
transforms the entire planet. But isn’t that worth it to live your life that way?
00:38:46 ►
I think so.
00:38:47 ►
I find it helpful personally to share this experience with friends, family, colleagues,
00:38:53 ►
people who don’t really know what it’s about and have a lot of misconceptions.
00:38:56 ►
When I first started coming here about five years ago,
00:38:59 ►
my family heard that it was just a big, you know, party, naked party with a lot of drugs.
00:39:05 ►
And now my mom actually sticks up for me when her friends say,
00:39:09 ►
oh, is your daughter going to that wacky thing in the desert again?
00:39:12 ►
And she says, oh, but, you know, it’s, oh, I have to show you the pictures.
00:39:16 ►
And I helped her buy costumes this year.
00:39:18 ►
And she talks about the people that I meet and the things that I experience.
00:39:21 ►
I mean, she tells ten people.
00:39:23 ►
They tell ten people, and the misconceptions are gone.
00:39:26 ►
Not that easily, but it really opens their mind.
00:39:29 ►
These are people who, you know, fairly conservative friends that she’s affecting.
00:39:34 ►
And then the other thing I wanted to bring up as a question,
00:39:36 ►
we haven’t really talked about the system really at all,
00:39:39 ►
but I register people to vote,
00:39:43 ►
and I find myself sort of entering arguments with a lot of progressives, liberals,
00:39:49 ►
you know, people on the left about whether they should vote or not.
00:39:53 ►
And it’s not a happy experience because I don’t like fighting with someone about, you know,
00:39:56 ►
we share the same values or the end goal, but they refuse to take part.
00:40:02 ►
And, you know, I mean, we’re living in a pretty ugly time right now,
00:40:06 ►
but there are some politicians who are fairly good people. So I don’t know. I mean, that’s
00:40:10 ►
kind of an open-ended question, but I kind of wanted to throw that out there about taking
00:40:14 ►
this and, you know, expressing yourself, not even for, say, an elected official, but for
00:40:18 ►
propositions, things like that.
00:40:19 ►
Less present community once again. So what is this?
00:40:26 ►
In a sense, it is nothing more than a conversation,
00:40:32 ►
a shared reality that all of us have entered into.
00:40:38 ►
The conversation exists between us, among us.
00:40:44 ►
We generate it among us, among us. We generate it among us, and it grows as this community grows.
00:40:52 ►
The conversation continues to generate outward. It stays alive only because each of us are compelled to regenerate it in each moment of our lives.
00:41:06 ►
And because we regenerate it, we move that conversation out to new people,
00:41:14 ►
and those people experience what we experience here.
00:41:20 ►
They begin to regenerate it.
00:41:23 ►
That is the growth of this society, this culture.
00:41:28 ►
How does a society grow, really?
00:41:31 ►
In a sense, the origins of community are two people getting together in a conversation.
00:41:38 ►
They agree on some point, some value perhaps, or some process.
00:41:44 ►
They take that process and they begin to generate it with other people. on some point, some value perhaps, or some process.
00:41:49 ►
They take that process and they begin to generate it with other people.
00:41:52 ►
New people join into that conversation. There’s enough value or sense of importance in whatever that conversation is
00:42:00 ►
that people join in on that conversation.
00:42:03 ►
Pretty soon you have a group of people that you might call a community,
00:42:08 ►
but even two people can be a community.
00:42:11 ►
Where does it go from there?
00:42:13 ►
As the community grows, there are elements of the community that need to come into place.
00:42:19 ►
One of those elements is a common language, a common understanding about what that core is that bonded people together to begin with.
00:42:30 ►
In a sense, communities develop education systems to bring forth those elements.
00:42:38 ►
There could be spiritual elements that go with that as well.
00:42:41 ►
Historically, intentional communities, most intentional communities were founded around spirituality. So the community developed some system for
00:42:51 ►
bringing forth concepts of process or value. What happens from there? Probably a strategic
00:42:58 ►
conversation. A conversation begins to come into place that wants that community to continue on, to live into the future.
00:43:10 ►
The conversation presences the future today.
00:43:16 ►
This is something that Jerry was talking about earlier.
00:43:20 ►
We begin to visualize something in the future, and we begin to live into that visualization today as a community.
00:43:29 ►
That’s a strategic conversation.
00:43:31 ►
We, as a group of people, the people who are participants in that community, we begin to move along that track in that direction.
00:43:41 ►
What happens next? Well, the community that begins to exist in time, not just
00:43:49 ►
in the moment, but in time, that community wants to find space in which it can live. That space may
00:43:58 ►
be geography. It may be land, as occurred in the 60s with many of the communities that evolved then or it may be space in
00:44:08 ►
Virtual space it may be it may be space in other ways those other ways those other ways are
00:44:16 ►
space
00:44:18 ►
inside of the society in which
00:44:21 ►
The community exists ultimately the community wants to influence those communities around it.
00:44:29 ►
It wants to push into those other communities so that it can create safe space for itself.
00:44:36 ►
This does not live if the laws around it are formed to cause it to non-exist. The conversation must ultimately become political.
00:44:49 ►
It must ultimately become political. It must move into influencing, teaching, evolving the society
00:44:58 ►
around it. It starts with evolving the communities around it. Then it moves into evolving the societies around it.
00:45:06 ►
We spoke earlier about how our community has evolved.
00:45:10 ►
One of the things that we evolved was coursework inside of our community.
00:45:16 ►
David and Jerry are co-founders of what I might call a school,
00:45:31 ►
of a, what I might call a school, but it’s more of an artistic experience in which the core elements of value of our process inside of our community are taught to new people
00:45:38 ►
coming in. We evolved a mechanism called Raise the Frequency, which is a clearing where we go out and ask other
00:45:51 ►
communities to join with us in events and create together, much as we do here at Burning Man,
00:45:58 ►
but we do this on a smaller scale. The result of that is a village with five other communities creating together,
00:46:06 ►
which I think is the fifth largest village in Burning Man this year.
00:46:11 ►
It’s the result of the idea that we need to reach out and touch the other communities around us
00:46:18 ►
in order to find the commonalities that we have among us,
00:46:25 ►
find that which we value together, bring that forward.
00:46:30 ►
I think in our village what we found is the commonality is heart.
00:46:33 ►
The village expresses heart and love in a beautiful, beautiful way.
00:46:41 ►
That’s a commonality for this experience at this Burning Man with
00:46:45 ►
those communities. It’s part of our continuing conversation that we are
00:46:51 ►
generating and regenerating and regenerating into the world. We are
00:46:56 ►
moving into politics. We are beginning to, people in our community are working for
00:47:02 ►
the presidential candidates. They are moving the conversation forward into the society in general.
00:47:10 ►
It’s essential.
00:47:11 ►
It’s our responsibility.
00:47:13 ►
It’s our obligation.
00:47:14 ►
Once you feel this energy, can you really go back?
00:47:20 ►
Can you really deny this to yourself, to your families, to your friends?
00:47:28 ►
Can you deny this to your world?
00:47:31 ►
Can you live outside of this?
00:47:33 ►
That’s what you need to ask yourself.
00:47:35 ►
What compels you as human beings in life?
00:47:40 ►
What is your personal purpose in life?
00:47:43 ►
What gives you meaning as an individual?
00:47:47 ►
I would propose that the thing that gives you meaning is finding the truths inside of yourself
00:47:56 ►
and inside of the societies in which you live, the communities in which you live.
00:48:01 ►
Finding what is truly real, embracing that and moving into that space
00:48:07 ►
and finding ways to shed everything else.
00:48:10 ►
Kind of to go back to your, I mean, I think what Ken is saying is great and I want to
00:48:16 ►
bring it back to kind of on a personal note.
00:48:18 ►
So if there are these folks that you want to get to vote and they don’t want to vote,
00:48:24 ►
you’re not dealing with their lack of desire
00:48:26 ►
to vote. You’re dealing with a ton of history that they’re speaking from. And what Ken is talking
00:48:34 ►
about is a way of altering history, of shaping history, of literally, if you look at the
00:48:42 ►
hundredth monkey syndrome, who’s heard of that?
00:48:45 ►
Who knows what I’m talking about?
00:48:47 ►
So look at Burning Man as one monkey, one of the 100th monkeys.
00:48:53 ►
And if 100 Burning Mans happen, just think of what that perpetuates out in the world.
00:49:01 ►
Where else does this occur?
00:49:03 ►
Where else does this touch?
00:49:04 ►
If you’re altering the consciousness here,
00:49:07 ►
and I want to use that phrase not so loosely.
00:49:11 ►
Got to remember where we’re at here.
00:49:15 ►
Shift the consciousness consciously here,
00:49:20 ►
and enough people do that, that ripples out.
00:49:22 ►
And what David was talking about,
00:49:24 ►
about consciousness and waking up,
00:49:25 ►
the more people that wake up, you know, the more people…
00:49:29 ►
I think The Matrix was a brilliant movie.
00:49:31 ►
I think it had a lot of interesting themes that kind of…
00:49:34 ►
If you look at The Matrix as like our life now, it’s very similar.
00:49:38 ►
The more you get conscious, the more you really do fuck with the society that we’re in.
00:49:45 ►
Because the society that we’re in
00:49:47 ►
and all of the media that we’re presented to,
00:49:49 ►
all the advertising is based on our unconsciousness.
00:49:53 ►
So the more conscious you become,
00:49:54 ►
the more you fuck with the system.
00:49:56 ►
And not in a way that the 60s was doing,
00:49:58 ►
which was pushing against it.
00:50:00 ►
You’re just bringing more awareness to it.
00:50:02 ►
And over time, the more and more awareness, the more and and over time the more and more awareness
00:50:05 ►
the more and more consciousness
00:50:06 ►
the more and more that spreads
00:50:07 ►
the more and more
00:50:08 ►
you’re going to run into people
00:50:10 ►
that are wanting to vote
00:50:11 ►
because they’re going to realize
00:50:14 ►
that their vote counts
00:50:15 ►
what you’re dealing with is that
00:50:17 ►
people don’t get their vote counts
00:50:18 ►
we’re acclimated in this culture
00:50:21 ►
that our vote doesn’t count
00:50:23 ►
we’re resigned to a whole world of politics that no matter what you do,
00:50:30 ►
you’re going to get some schmuck in there that’s going to take it down the wrong tunnel
00:50:33 ►
and not be responsible and all that shit.
00:50:37 ►
So no one really gets that their vote counts.
00:50:39 ►
And if they did, if the world, like our whole country,
00:50:43 ►
every single person got their vote counted
00:50:46 ►
and everyone held everyone accountable to what they said they would do,
00:50:50 ►
we’d have a totally different country.
00:50:52 ►
And we’re probably 1,000 years away from that.
00:50:54 ►
But every action you take now consciously could contribute to what your vision is.
00:51:00 ►
I just finished this book called The Shadows of Power of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline.
00:51:04 ►
I just finished this book called The Shadows of Power of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline.
00:51:08 ►
And it was written in 88, and it said at the time the book was published,
00:51:11 ►
only one in 500 Americans knew about the council.
00:51:16 ►
And it was created by Nelson Rockefeller and J.B. Morgan in 1914.
00:51:21 ►
So since the Wilson administration and since the Federal Reserve was created,
00:51:27 ►
there’s been kind of a think tank of international bankers, lawyers, and media people that have kind of a club that, so no matter who’s in
00:51:35 ►
the government, these are the people that fill a lot of positions that aren’t elected.
00:51:41 ►
And so no matter who the head of state is, these are the people who advise
00:51:45 ►
them on what to do and where to fight or whatever.
00:51:49 ►
And that’s another byproduct of the lack of consciousness, of unconsciousness. People
00:51:58 ►
aren’t conscious that that’s there. There was an unconsciousness that that got created
00:52:04 ►
out of, and there’s a reason that that that got created out of,
00:52:06 ►
and there’s a reason that that’s there.
00:52:12 ►
And when enough consciousness is raised and elevated on this planet, on this country,
00:52:15 ►
you’ll see systems like that, they’ll start to crumble,
00:52:18 ►
like the Catholic Church has been crumbling and the Enron scandal. All those things, they come when people become aware.
00:52:21 ►
Look what happened.
00:52:22 ►
People became aware that what was going on and it started to crumble.
00:52:26 ►
So it’s going to take time.
00:52:28 ►
A couple of things that might be different but I think are deeply related.
00:52:33 ►
One, going back to this idea of memes.
00:52:36 ►
And I used to think that things like People magazine and football
00:52:40 ►
and a lot of things that this culture is obsessed with
00:52:42 ►
were evidence of just how banal humans were.
00:52:47 ►
And then I thought about it for a while and I realized that for most of human evolution,
00:52:52 ►
the most important driver has been what the other humans think of us.
00:52:57 ►
If we’re in a little tribe, our standing in that cluster is, for most of history, our
00:53:03 ►
survival trait.
00:53:06 ►
And so I think means have a lot to do with what people think it’s OK to believe.
00:53:11 ►
We’re sort of instinctively have this radar up for what it’s permissible to think or act or do.
00:53:21 ►
So I think one of the things that’s incredibly powerful about Burning Man is it
00:53:25 ►
creates this milieu where, you know, you sort of have collective permission to just be as
00:53:31 ►
spontaneous and unique as possible. It’s very rare. The other thing that I think is a sort of
00:53:36 ►
abstraction of this, and I really think has a tremendous amount to do with practically what
00:53:42 ►
waking up means in this culture is money.
00:53:45 ►
It’s like the water that we swim in is fish.
00:53:48 ►
We can’t really see it.
00:53:50 ►
It has such a deep grip on our belief system.
00:53:55 ►
And it’s the thing that prevents us as a sort of social game rule from operating in the ways we would wish to from the heart.
00:54:04 ►
rule from operating in the ways we would wish to from the heart. So one of the things that Burning Man also does is it creates a sort of temporary autonomous zone where we’re not functioning that way.
00:54:12 ►
And we get this little taste of what it’s like to be with each other, not bound by those sort of social game rules.
00:54:20 ►
And one of the things I like to visualize is that that system may be very close to collapsing on its own.
00:54:28 ►
And that’s going to be, if it happens, a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous danger of how that could collapse into something else that’s not violent energy.
00:54:37 ►
And Burning Man and Rainbow and various these things may be very good sort of practice runs for us,
00:54:43 ►
learning how to function with
00:54:45 ►
each other and how to step into something different.
00:54:49 ►
There’s a couple of danger areas that I would say that we all have to be aware of, of phenomenon
00:54:56 ►
that occur just because it occurs.
00:55:00 ►
One of them is that we talked about how a whole group of people can create unified consciousness.
00:55:08 ►
But the other thing that happens is that there’s something created out will advance to allow its own survivability,
00:55:27 ►
its own existence, even when it’s not helping the individual people who created it in the first place.
00:55:36 ►
That’s a really huge danger that happens all the time.
00:55:39 ►
I see it all the time, and it’s scary.
00:55:42 ►
It’s really scary because everyone has the right intention and yet all of a sudden this superorganism is created
00:55:47 ►
that’s just looking out for its own survival.
00:55:50 ►
And so how we kind of see through that, I really don’t know.
00:55:55 ►
The other one is, again, something that I think is hardwired in us
00:55:59 ►
from an evolutionary point of view,
00:56:01 ►
and that’s competition or pecking order, back to what this gentleman was talking
00:56:07 ►
about, how we really care about what other people think of us.
00:56:12 ►
And it really is important to us who’s on top.
00:56:15 ►
It’s like monkeys or dogs have the lead dog, and humans are not that much different.
00:56:22 ►
And so we’ve got this you know this pecking order thing
00:56:26 ►
that we do to each other all the time and it’s uh you know it’s scary and it’s dangerous and how we
00:56:35 ►
you know but but it’s also hardwired that’s how we do things and i don’t know how what we’re
00:56:40 ►
supposed to do but it’s just a couple of things that are, you know, we have
00:56:45 ►
all these great idealistic ideas and plans, and we also have to understand that there
00:56:49 ►
are very, very powerful forces working against that.
00:56:53 ►
I think if we look at the hardwiring and the programming, we’ll see that we’re dealing
00:57:01 ►
with, as someone mentioned before, a lot of polarities.
00:57:05 ►
Each of these polarities gives us a choice.
00:57:08 ►
The choice is negativity or positivity.
00:57:11 ►
So then you want to find the truth, which is sort of somewhere in between these two things.
00:57:17 ►
But beyond the truth, you can find friendliness.
00:57:21 ►
And to me, personally, I stay awake by staying friendly. To me, friendliness is the
00:57:27 ►
closest thing to godliness. And if you can, every time you get negative or pissed off about something,
00:57:34 ►
you just say, get over it. You don’t need to do this. It’s like clenching your jaws on me.
00:57:40 ►
You don’t need to do it. Just intend not to do it. And the same thing with friendliness.
00:57:45 ►
You can be friendly to everyone all the time.
00:57:48 ►
And that breaks down the system of precondition negativity.
00:57:52 ►
Thanks.
00:57:53 ►
So there are two major elements that make an event like Burning Man possible.
00:57:58 ►
There’s abundance and brevity.
00:58:04 ►
So if all of us had to exist out here for six weeks or eight weeks or ten weeks with what we
00:58:10 ►
brought for one week we would find a lot of those old elements coming back the fear the scarcity
00:58:15 ►
the jealousy the competition those things would return and what i want to presence is that
00:58:22 ►
burning man is looking toward the future a future way of being in community, and it also has elements of the past.
00:58:29 ►
In many indigenous societies, including those of old Europe,
00:58:33 ►
there were regular abundance festivals where everyone got together, all work ceased,
00:58:38 ►
they gathered the abundance they had, and they had a huge party for a week or more,
00:58:41 ►
usually around the solstices or the equinoxes.
00:58:43 ►
And these parties were events where normal social rules were suspended. People got dressed in costume.
00:58:50 ►
The normal rules of work or marriage were let go. People were very free sexually, spiritually,
00:58:55 ►
and otherwise. And this event is, in a sense, a modern recapturing of that old tradition.
00:59:02 ►
And our industrial culture has kind of gotten away from the fact
00:59:05 ►
that these festivals are part of what makes life worth living.
00:59:08 ►
You can’t just work and work and work endlessly.
00:59:11 ►
This is really what it’s about.
00:59:12 ►
And the more we can bring that abundance consciousness
00:59:15 ►
into our regular day-to-day interactions
00:59:17 ►
and engage with each other with the same level of playfulness,
00:59:21 ►
friendliness, enjoyment of life in the workplace,
00:59:24 ►
in our homes, in our homes, in our
00:59:25 ►
marriages, with our families, the more everyone will enjoy life overall and the less need we’ll
00:59:32 ►
have for addictions and warfare and jealousy and other forms of competition that inhibit our ability
00:59:38 ►
to enjoy each other. Yeah, you said something a few minutes ago about what a bitch it is to stay present and to keep our heart open.
00:59:47 ►
And that’s a paradigm or a way of looking at it, but I think it’s not such a bitch.
00:59:51 ►
It’s ultimately very easy if we can just remember to come back to our heart
00:59:57 ►
and take a breath.
01:00:00 ►
And friendliness is a good mantra.
01:00:02 ►
One I use is, how can I help in this moment?
01:00:05 ►
Take a breath, clear mind, how can I help?
01:00:08 ►
And that’s easy, accessible.
01:00:11 ►
We can do it.
01:00:12 ►
And that’s a practice you have.
01:00:14 ►
Right.
01:00:15 ►
Without the practice, it wouldn’t just happen on its own.
01:00:18 ►
And that’s what I was talking about.
01:00:19 ►
You have to take the action.
01:00:22 ►
And for a lot of people, myself included, taking that action is not first nature.
01:00:28 ►
First nature is, fuck you, right?
01:00:31 ►
And it takes a practice of, okay, how can I serve you?
01:00:40 ►
Right.
01:00:40 ►
And it takes at least 30 days for a new habit to form.
01:00:44 ►
And it takes a lot longer for
01:00:46 ►
it to really last in your life and to grow and expand. So, you know, that’s really all I was
01:00:51 ►
saying. I wasn’t trying to say that it’s a bitch, it’s hard, but really that it can be really
01:00:56 ►
difficult if you don’t have practice in place, if you don’t know how to put that in place. You know,
01:01:01 ►
if you’re just coming from what’s given to you, it’s not just second nature to be open.
01:01:09 ►
It’s not second nature to be open. Well, that’s true, of course, but then again, it’s not always
01:01:18 ►
wise to be completely open, at least with people you don’t already know really well.
01:01:46 ►
Thank you. narks infiltrating our ranks and snitching on us. It’s a fine line and a difficult one to walk.
01:01:50 ►
But as that old TV show used to warn, be careful out there.
01:01:52 ►
If you know what I mean.
01:02:00 ►
Ken and Jerry also mentioned a great wave of new consciousness coming through right now.
01:02:03 ►
And I think that’s what Terrence McKenna was also saying. Of course, he said it a lot more dramatically when he said, and I quote,
01:02:09 ►
We are to be the generation that witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos.
01:02:15 ►
What this means, for those of us who will live through this,
01:02:19 ►
is that we will be privileged to see the release of the greatest concrescence of change,
01:02:25 ►
probably since the birth of the universe.
01:02:28 ►
Now, that was Terence, and that’s a little heavier than a new wave of consciousness coming through,
01:02:36 ►
but I think they both mean the same thing.
01:02:38 ►
You know, something’s going on right now, something really big.
01:02:43 ►
And I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got a hunch we’re going to like it.
01:02:47 ►
At least that’s what keeps me going every day, is the hope that something good is about to happen.
01:02:53 ►
And I think that each one of us, all in our own unique ways,
01:02:57 ►
are beginning to feel that common sense of being that Ken and Jerry mentioned
01:03:02 ►
as the reason why Burning Man’s vibe has become so successful.
01:03:07 ►
You know, it seems to me that this same sense of being,
01:03:10 ►
of belonging to a large group of people who actually think and act much like we do,
01:03:16 ►
has finally taken hold.
01:03:18 ►
You know, you’re not alone.
01:03:20 ►
Even though it may feel like it at times,
01:03:22 ►
there are really millions of others just like you and me out there.
01:03:26 ►
And they have just the same desire to want to connect with like-minded souls as we do.
01:03:32 ►
I’m absolutely positive about this.
01:03:35 ►
And so, thank you, Ken and Jerry, for not just sitting back and letting the world come to your doors.
01:03:42 ►
And thanks for passing along your lessons learned.
01:03:45 ►
I’m sure the rest of our regulars here in the salon appreciate your work as much as I do.
01:03:51 ►
And to all of you out there in the cyberdelic space,
01:03:54 ►
hey, guys, thanks a lot for being here.
01:03:57 ►
And not just now, not just during this podcast,
01:04:00 ►
but thanks for being here all the time.
01:04:03 ►
You know, as the old Moody Blues song goes,
01:04:06 ►
I know you’re out there somewhere. And that, my friends, is a very nice thing to know.
01:04:12 ►
Just remember, as Ken and Jerry just said, where our attention goes, our reality is created.
01:04:20 ►
Speaking of creativity, I’d like to thank the highly creative Chateau Hayouk for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon.
01:04:29 ►
Thanks again, guys.
01:04:31 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:04:36 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.