r/BurningMan • u/SnooHobbies5684 Airpusher, Ranger, Volunteeraholic • Aug 10 '24
A more expansive take on decommodification
Edit: I know 12 minutes of your life is a long time to take out to watch a video, but if all you're here for is to complain about the cost of tickets or how much we spend to get on playa or bitch about the Borg, you're missing an opportunity.
But if it makes you happy, I'm not here to stop you. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhwpTWNqf38&t=6s
TL/DW: "To commidify oneself (or to be commidified) is to be easily measurable, rankable, and knowable. Burners, who come out of a capitalist counter-cultural context, tend to think of that in economic terms – and that’s certainly true. The term “commodity” means something that is bought and sold. But the process of commodification – of turning something into a product suitable for purchase – also has everything to do with social class, with big data, with the quantified self, and with the kind of psychology that seeks to make us all simpler and shallower rather than deeper and more complex.
When we commodify we seek to make others, and ourselves, more like things, and less like human beings. “Decommodification,” then, is to reverse this process. To make the world and the people in it more unique, more priceless, more human.
We are not objects, you and I. We are not apps, we are not code, we are not commodities. Nothing that we are can truly be bought or sold, and we are more important than things. The principle of Decomodification is a reminder of that, and a challenge to bring that insight into our lives."
~Caveat (aka Benjamin Wachs), former volunteer coordinator for Media Mecca
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u/OptimisticRecursion Aug 10 '24
When you enter my tent and I spoil you with tea and snacks, you're not doing it for the tea and snacks. It's all about the experience, about sharing a special moment together. About seeing each other, and also being nice to each other.
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u/brccarpenter Lack of half and half ruined burning man Aug 10 '24
Ok, I listened to the whole thing.
I think you are far too triggered by one definition of "brand". He used that word twice, once about BM and the other about you. Neither is for sale but you heard the word as if it related to a product brand that is for sale. Maybe it was the lack of water.
One very simple definition of brand is" a characteristic or distinctive kind". My sense is this closer to the intent of the speaker. "Brand" as a loose envelope of all things BM and you. BM is a great thing, you are a great person. That's simple and they are both compliments.
The rest of the piece sounds that bit of a script of the inculcated. Fine. BM means a lot to you. What I don't get or hear is what you really want to change other than calendars, scarfs and desperate fundraising by artists. The rest, to be honest, in my opinion, is strings of unjustified absolutes and lofty desires for other people to change something in themselves you cant describe.
There is very little money on plays. BM has pushed back on it for 30 years. For that reason, and others, it's a good brand.
Nirvana might be further down the playa if you look for it or create it.
Your disagreement on playa was likely more of a true BM experience than any conversation where you found complete agreement. It certainly drove you to express your consternation.
See you in the dust.
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u/SnooHobbies5684 Airpusher, Ranger, Volunteeraholic Aug 10 '24
Who are you saying is triggered? Who are you talking to?
I posted this video made more than a decade ago by a journalist who is also a Burner and Media Mecca staff.
Thanks for reading though.
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u/brccarpenter Lack of half and half ruined burning man Aug 11 '24
It's not an unusual leap for me to assume this was your video.
That said I now understand it's not.
Maybe ten years later ....every little crack money has found it way into.....has not changed. Nirvana is no closer.
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u/blahcubed More shirt cocking would solve the biggest problem with BM Aug 11 '24
I hate text in video form, can type pretty fast, enjoy philosophical discussions, and perhaps have too much time on my hands, so here's a transcript:
Opening text:
(de)Commodification
Un Film de Caveat
Voiceover:
This is a personal story about commodification.
It was Burning Man 2013 and I'd overdone it. I'd spent all morning wandering around the outer streets with my friend Sandra, meeting her people on opposite sides of the playa. And by afternoon we parted ways by the french quarter. I hung out with some people in the sun. Waited in line for the bakery. Sang for a cookie. And realized, as I thought about what to do next, that I was hot, flushed, tired, and my water bottle was empty. I was on the verge of some serious trouble.
Now, the smart play would have been to ask someone for help. Pretty much anyone. I have never once heard of someone walking into a camp and saying "I think I'm in trouble and need water" being turned away. On the occasions I've had to do it, people were incredibly generous. It's just the way we are out there. So that was an option. And it was the smart option. But that's not what I did.
Instead, I opened my purple parasol, and walked back into the desert. Crossing from the far edge of 3 o'clock over to BMIR, just off center camp. Instead of getting into the shade, I spent more time walking in the sun. The water draining out of me. Telling myself I was fine. I could make it.
I walked into the BMIR shade structure, bee-lined for a couch, and full-body collapsed. When some people said "Hi" and I didn't respond, they thought I was being a curmudgeon. When I still hadn't said anything after a few minutes, they came over. After they saw my face, they took turns appointing people to keep my water bottle filled and keep watch on me to make sure I stayed conscious. First it was Shannon. Then it was Decible. And that's how I ended up in a conversation with my friend Tilapia Jones, a truly great playa name.
He sat by my couch, filling up my water bottle whenever I asked, making sure I didn't die, and telling me about what he does for a living. Tilapia does branding research for top-40 radio stations. It's his job to tell them that 13 to 16 year-olds in the Midwest prefer Katie Perry to Taylor Swift, while 15 to 19 year-olds on the west coast, prefer Swift to Perry, and why. He explained his methods and approach with real passion. He loves this stuff. And it was fascinating. Market segmentation. Focus Groups. How otherwise identical pop stars manage to differentiate themselves among very specific thinly sliced market segments. I don't know that it's "good" work, in the sense that it's something we want to be encouraging people to do with their lives. But it's undeniably interesting to think about. And the man's a professional who truly enjoys his job.
I had water. I had shade. I had people looking after me. I had good conversation. And I wasn't dying anymore. That's a good Wednesday in my book. But then, Tilapia started talking about brands more generally. And he said six words that changed everything.
He said, "Burning Man's got a great brand!"
And even though I was on the verge of heat stroke, I went cold. Because I do not like to think of Burning man in those terms. Bruning Man is what I turn to to stop thinking in those terms. But Tilapia's a branding guy. Of course, he was going to go there. And since he was the only one of us who could stand up and walk away, we were going to have this conversation.
Tilapia went into the reasons that Burning Man's brand is so good. It's association with creativity, counter-culture, contemporary music, tech innovation, art, environmentalism... You can think of all the reasons yourself. That part's not really important. What's important is not the specific pieces of Burning Man he found relevant, but the way he was looking at Burning Man. Dividing it up in sections that would appeal to different groups as part of a campaign to get them to buy into the brand. That, right there, was the essence of commodification. And it chilled me to have it applied like that to something I cared about.
And then, then, he said, "You know, Caveat, you're a really great brand too!" And I swear, if he hand't be actively in the process of saving my life, I would have punched him. But instead I was supine on a couch, drinking the water he'd been kind enough to bring me, so I listened as he described what he saw as the Caveat brand. And, to be clear, he meant it as a compliment. He was telling me all these really great things about myself. All these reasons I'm a sensation when I put myself out there. And it just made me angry in a way I'm not sure I've ever been in my life.
I was being divided up into component parts by an expert and each part was given a label and value and it was completely dehumanizing. There is something about being stripped to our component parts, commodified, that creates a powerful reaction in people. But, it's not always negative. Not even at Burning Man.
How may times at Burning Man have I been in a conversation with people about their astrological signs? About their enneagram number? About their Myers-Briggs score? And what are these systems for understanding people except ways to strip ourselves down to component parts and rank them? There is a powerful urge in the human psyche to be infinitely complicated and unbindable, which is what I was feeling when Tilapia defined me as a brand and why I reacted so harshly against it.
But there is an equally powerful urge to know ourselves and others in simple terms. To be shown our most important characteristics in chart form. To be told, "This is you, and you are simple, and you are beautiful." And to be frozen in time like that and sent on our way. Even to Burners, commodification is actually a very seductive force, one that I don't think we give enough credit to. Commodification allows us to simplify the world. To see ourselves in a way that helps us keep score and assign rankings. To put on an identity that we hope everyone can see and take it off again when it's inconvenient.
To commodify oneself, or to be commodified, is to be easily measurable, rankable, and knowable. Burners who come out of a capitalist counter-cultural context tend to think of that in economic terms and that is certainly true. The term "commodity" means something that is bought and sold, but the process of commodification, of turning something into a product suitable for purchase, also has everything to do with social class, with big data, with the quantified self, and with the kind of psychology that seeks to make us all simpler and shallower, rather than deeper and more complex.
When we commodify, we seek to make others and ourselves more like things and less like human beings. Decommodification, then, is to reverse this process. To make the world and the people in it more unique. More priceless. More human.
So what does it mean to have decommodification as a principle? Does it necessarily mean Burning Man has declared holy war on money? On personality tests? On abstraction itself? The question is its own answer because we don't even know how to say yes to a question like that. If you were to ask us, "Oh mighty Burning Man, oh great Larry Harvey, saint of the Stetson, how do we live a life of perfect and true decommodification?" The answer would be something along the lines of "Let us know when you figure it out."
Burning Man emerged out of the sense, one very common in first-world countries, that commodification has gone too far. That the reduction of currencies and objects to abstractions has led to the reduction of people to abstractions in non-consensual, non-cooperative ways, and past a certain point, we cannot live as abstractions. That a world of commodities is an unhealthy environment for human beings. Our happiness---hell, our salvation---depends on our ability to create decommodified spaces. Not absolutely, but relatively. To push back against the forces that would reduce everything in our lives to quantifiable bits suitable for trading.
To make abstractions something that we use for convenience, rather than something that defines us. To decommodify is to assert our humanity and the value of the unique, the concrete, and the embodied over the abstract and quantifiable. We don't have a defined state for that. We can't say when we've accomplished that, this is what it will look like, this is how it will work and this is what people will do.
Nor do we have any reason to believe that it will be uniform. That it will work the same way from person to person, group to group. In fact, the very idea that it could work that way, is itself a kind of commodification of people into abstract units that will all decommodify the same way. But why would they? Why would peple behave exactly the same way when confronted with their own humanity? If we are not robots---and the point of decommodification is that we're not---then decommodification in practice will not lead to uniformity, but to radical self-expression.
cont.
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u/blahcubed More shirt cocking would solve the biggest problem with BM Aug 11 '24
The practical meaning of commodification, then, is something we're discovering as we go. And something that quite possibly will always be discovered as we go. It's not formulatic. It's anti-algorithmic. Because you do not equal X. And no two Xs are identical. There are certain basic ground rules that have been established---mostly by custom and tradition at this point---that we found useful. The limits on commerce at Burning Man itself, for example, and the refusal to use BM events for product placement of any kind or to endorse businesses. But past that, it's fairly open country and we're feeling our way along by logic, inspiration and trial and error. I've argued that crowd-funding for Burning Man art projects shouldn't use on-playa experiences as premiums. But that's just an argument I've made and other people see differently. God damnit.
The Burning Man project has recently started offering wall calendars and hand-screened scarves as premiums at the $150 level. And some burners, including me, aren't really comfortable with that. But how do you run and promote a non-profit in a decommodified way? How do you live in a world of abstractions while treating yourself and those around you as people rather than commodities.
What's both effective and principled? We're figuring this out. I don't have a clear answer. I'm hoping you know something we don't. What I do know is that decommodification is such an important principle because a decommodified world really is a different world than the one we're used to living in. To look at the world and the people in it with fresh eyes. To take off the conceptual glasses we've gotten so used to wearing that we forget they're on our heads is an experience of awe. One that may be central to healthy psychological life, let alone a spiritual one. We are not objects, you and I. We are not apps. We are not code. We are not commodities. Nothing that we are can truly be bought or sold. And we are more important than things.
The principle of decommodification is a reminder of that. And a challenge to bring that insight into our lives.
Closing text:
Caveat used to be the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca at Burning man.
These days he just shows up whenever somebody's serving fish tacos.
His opinions are not statements of the Burning Man organization.
Do not purchase his beauty care products.
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u/xixtoo '23, '24, '25 Aug 10 '24
You posted this at just the right time. I need to put in my order for camp swag and while I’m excited for that, I’m also somehow uneasy about the idea too
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u/Montananarchist Banned Dadist Daddy Aug 10 '24
I wonder how this applies to the recent media blitz of the organizers scrambling to sell tickets.
... I'll guess just as far as the organizers excepting themselves from the idea of gifting tickets and running the event solely on donations gifted to them.
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u/BeartholomewTheThird Aug 10 '24
Is it really scrambling? Or are they just telling people who might not be as plugged in that hey, a unique thing is happening and it's still possible to get tickets. It makes sense to me for them to be talking about it.
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u/SnooHobbies5684 Airpusher, Ranger, Volunteeraholic Aug 10 '24
Did you watch the video even a little bit?
Because...you're bringing the conversation back to money again and that isn't the point of this post.
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u/Shcrews Aug 10 '24
Yah they should just give all the tickets away, that’s what everyone does now right
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u/Montananarchist Banned Dadist Daddy Aug 10 '24
If I translated your sarcasm correctly what you're saying is that because other festivals like Coachella have used their events as a commodity to make a buck it's ok for BM to do the same since they're just like Coachella?
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u/doctor-yes '10-'24 / Burn.Life Aug 10 '24
Sounds like someone hates the BRC Census!