modern hippies fail at hippiedom, exhibit 37
I read the news every day. Any given day in my life you can be sure of two things. I will drink coffee and i will read the news. To be honest, i mostly just glance the headlines because that's enough to give me general overview of what is going on in the world, but there are always a couple of articles a day that warrant a clickthrough.
This morning there was an article about climate activists blockading Burning Man, and even the headline made me cackle with glee: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-protest-climate-change-environment
This is an intersection of so many of my interests, i had to read it. Burning Man is a legendary counter-culture festival held in Nevada, which in recent years has gotten so popular that it's now more well-known for attracting Silicon Valley tech bros and other libertarian tosspots.
I first heard about Burning Man in the 90s i suppose, when i was part of the rave scene in Europe, and then Australia. It fell into the same bucket for me of one of those American "desert raves" like they apparently used to have in SoCal and i always wanted to go to because i love raves and i love the desert. But i never ended up going, although over the years quite a few people in my orbit did. First ravers i knew in my personal life, then tech industry workers i knew in my professional life. Weird place for my two lives to overlap. I keep them so separate.
Anyway, by the time i had the money and freedom i could easily make it there, it was already over as far as i was concerned. No doubt it's still an awesome gathering of artists and other creative-minded people, if you steer clear of the douchebags, but it's extremely expensive - which implicitly results in a certain crowd - and also i have only become more of an environmentalist as i got older. The idea of tens of thousands of people driving internal combustion vehicles into the desert and then running gennies all weekend seems a lot less cool now than it did 20 years ago, and it already seemed a bit gratuitous back then.
So when i read this article about a small band of oldskool ravers and environmental activists parking a trailer across the highway and backing up festival traffic, i thought it was the greatest thing ever. Utterly hilarious. Completely in the spirit not only of outdoor hippie gatherings but also the classic American psychedelic druggie/prankster crowd.
And then you read further and all these guys backed up in their vehicles are butthurt that they can't get to the festival on time... like... bro! How many times we all been backed up in festival traffic because the organizers couldn't get their shit together, or some idiots at the front had a car accident, or the police were stopping and searching vehicles, and now finally festival traffic is blocked for a good reason and you can't laugh about it? What a bunch of sad sack motherfuckers. It's not a happening if it all goes according to plan! Come on!
But you know you're reading a truly American story when there's another paragraph about the local indigenous community also getting into it. Then there's a video of the tribal police driving a pickup truck through the middle of the barricade, then jumping out of their vehicle and drawing a fucking gun on the kids who were already handcuffed to the barricade they just smashed through. You can't make this shit up. Like, i get it, these white assholes stole your land, stuck your people on a reserve, then built a road through the so-called reserve, and now they're blocking that road to make a point to a different bunch of white assholes... But come on, this isn't the wild west any more, Jesus. America is so fucked up, it's ridiculous.
I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. It is just too absurd.
And through it all... Americans still own cars, and drive them to festivals all over the country, they deliberately build isolated and impractical communities where it's near-impossible to survive without driving, or air conditioning for that matter, drill more oil than any other country in the world, burn more oil than any other country in the world, eat more meat than any other country in the world, and they just don't give a fuck. Nobody gives a fuck. To be fair, nobody anywhere gives a fuck. US Americans on average probably give slightly more of a fuck than South Americans or Asians or Africans, but that's not saying very much, considering the US is supposed to be the model for the rest of the world, the shining city on a hill.
I guess it's only shining due to all the fire belching from the damn flare stacks.
But who am i to talk, eh? I am getting on a transcontinental flight in a week or two because my company has decided it's a great idea to fly everyone to Greece for a corporate meet-up. That one flight will trash every ounce of carbon i saved from not driving, never even using a taxi, eating mostly vegan, only owning a handful of items of clothing, rarely using air conditioning, not having kids... One flight and i'm a hypocrite.
Well, i'm not really a hypocrite because i'm not claiming to be perfect. Not even claiming to be better than anyone else. I'm just conscious of it, is all. It's why i can't fault anyone for gumming up the system to make a point about how oblivious other people are. Often protestors piss me off because i feel like they're inconveniencing other people for stuff that at the end of the day really isn't very important, but one thing has always felt important to me and that's keeping the environment in a state that humankind can continue to thrive. I am not against man-made stuff, i am not against development, i love living in the future, i love sci-fi gadgetry. Back to nature greenies are the worst, they're practically no different to preppers. Bring on the flying cars! But jeez let's run them on something a bit kinder to the biosphere than goddamned fossil fuels, you know?
Fuck.
And a bunch of so-called hippies getting butthurt over kids making that point. I can't. I just can't.
This morning there was an article about climate activists blockading Burning Man, and even the headline made me cackle with glee: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-protest-climate-change-environment
This is an intersection of so many of my interests, i had to read it. Burning Man is a legendary counter-culture festival held in Nevada, which in recent years has gotten so popular that it's now more well-known for attracting Silicon Valley tech bros and other libertarian tosspots.
I first heard about Burning Man in the 90s i suppose, when i was part of the rave scene in Europe, and then Australia. It fell into the same bucket for me of one of those American "desert raves" like they apparently used to have in SoCal and i always wanted to go to because i love raves and i love the desert. But i never ended up going, although over the years quite a few people in my orbit did. First ravers i knew in my personal life, then tech industry workers i knew in my professional life. Weird place for my two lives to overlap. I keep them so separate.
Anyway, by the time i had the money and freedom i could easily make it there, it was already over as far as i was concerned. No doubt it's still an awesome gathering of artists and other creative-minded people, if you steer clear of the douchebags, but it's extremely expensive - which implicitly results in a certain crowd - and also i have only become more of an environmentalist as i got older. The idea of tens of thousands of people driving internal combustion vehicles into the desert and then running gennies all weekend seems a lot less cool now than it did 20 years ago, and it already seemed a bit gratuitous back then.
So when i read this article about a small band of oldskool ravers and environmental activists parking a trailer across the highway and backing up festival traffic, i thought it was the greatest thing ever. Utterly hilarious. Completely in the spirit not only of outdoor hippie gatherings but also the classic American psychedelic druggie/prankster crowd.
And then you read further and all these guys backed up in their vehicles are butthurt that they can't get to the festival on time... like... bro! How many times we all been backed up in festival traffic because the organizers couldn't get their shit together, or some idiots at the front had a car accident, or the police were stopping and searching vehicles, and now finally festival traffic is blocked for a good reason and you can't laugh about it? What a bunch of sad sack motherfuckers. It's not a happening if it all goes according to plan! Come on!
But you know you're reading a truly American story when there's another paragraph about the local indigenous community also getting into it. Then there's a video of the tribal police driving a pickup truck through the middle of the barricade, then jumping out of their vehicle and drawing a fucking gun on the kids who were already handcuffed to the barricade they just smashed through. You can't make this shit up. Like, i get it, these white assholes stole your land, stuck your people on a reserve, then built a road through the so-called reserve, and now they're blocking that road to make a point to a different bunch of white assholes... But come on, this isn't the wild west any more, Jesus. America is so fucked up, it's ridiculous.
I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. It is just too absurd.
And through it all... Americans still own cars, and drive them to festivals all over the country, they deliberately build isolated and impractical communities where it's near-impossible to survive without driving, or air conditioning for that matter, drill more oil than any other country in the world, burn more oil than any other country in the world, eat more meat than any other country in the world, and they just don't give a fuck. Nobody gives a fuck. To be fair, nobody anywhere gives a fuck. US Americans on average probably give slightly more of a fuck than South Americans or Asians or Africans, but that's not saying very much, considering the US is supposed to be the model for the rest of the world, the shining city on a hill.
I guess it's only shining due to all the fire belching from the damn flare stacks.
But who am i to talk, eh? I am getting on a transcontinental flight in a week or two because my company has decided it's a great idea to fly everyone to Greece for a corporate meet-up. That one flight will trash every ounce of carbon i saved from not driving, never even using a taxi, eating mostly vegan, only owning a handful of items of clothing, rarely using air conditioning, not having kids... One flight and i'm a hypocrite.
Well, i'm not really a hypocrite because i'm not claiming to be perfect. Not even claiming to be better than anyone else. I'm just conscious of it, is all. It's why i can't fault anyone for gumming up the system to make a point about how oblivious other people are. Often protestors piss me off because i feel like they're inconveniencing other people for stuff that at the end of the day really isn't very important, but one thing has always felt important to me and that's keeping the environment in a state that humankind can continue to thrive. I am not against man-made stuff, i am not against development, i love living in the future, i love sci-fi gadgetry. Back to nature greenies are the worst, they're practically no different to preppers. Bring on the flying cars! But jeez let's run them on something a bit kinder to the biosphere than goddamned fossil fuels, you know?
Fuck.
And a bunch of so-called hippies getting butthurt over kids making that point. I can't. I just can't.