The Social NetWorker

Alternative Social Values for the Real World

(This is a guest post by Megan Elizabeth Morris.)

At the moment you read this entry (ah, the magic of post-dating!) I will be heading out of Austin with a car-full of camping gear. I'm on my way into Texas Hill Country to participate in a thing called Burning Flipside.

Flipside is a smaller, younger cousin of the Burning Man festival you've probably already heard of. It happens about an hour west of the city and like Burning Man (on a much smaller scale) it's an annual alternative arts and performance festival -- but it's not just about enjoying artwork or performance pieces; it's about being them.

The social conventions of burn events make me particularly thoughtful about the world we live in (and the world we could live in). Some of Flipside's core values are particularly poignant. For instance, self-reliance is a value that I see diminishing more and more in the civilized world at large. I could write a set of encyclopedias on the power of self-reliance and personal responsibility, and the deterioration I see in the world as these things become less abundant.

Another example: Burning Flipside is a gift economy, a term I'd never heard before 2008. In a gift economy, there is no commerce at all (the sole exception in our case being ice, since the best way to distribute it there is to truck some in and let us buy what we need). Even bartering is generally discouraged. Each person brings enough food, shelter, water, and anything else to take care of themselves, and then some to give away. You can try to imagine the environment this creates -- but I guarantee you the real thing is even better. Even outside of the event, I've noticed that my burner friends are some of the most caring, generous people I've ever met.

Another favorite: "Leave No Trace." We hear this all the time in Austin, because any event that overlaps with the burn community tends to be affected by it. When we occupy a place, we always clean up after ourselves, and when we're gone there's no sign at all that we'd been there in the first place.

Of course, some participants follow these maxims better than others, but that's how it goes. And what if these values were more prevalent in our normal, everyday society? What if instead of having to depend so much on others, we were able to depend more on ourselves? What if we gave to others as a matter of custom, without necessarily expecting something in return? What if we made a special effort to be kind to our environment -- physically and emotionally?

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Megan Elizabeth Morris (email)
Ms. Morris writes at Personal Revelations of the Magnificent Megan M. Megan Elizabeth Morris, or The Magnificent Megan M., [proper noun]: Superhuman font of knowledge, skill, determination & resourcefulness. Exudes enzymes that cause others to surpass their potential. Master thinker; writes, designs, manages, ideastorms, markets, inspires, connects, grows, teaches, makes things happen, changes the world, and throws a mean right hook. (Okay. Not the last one. Well! Not literally.)