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In total, Burning Man has 248 official representatives, known as "Regional Contacts" (RCs), in 123 different locations. In addition to the kind of efforts listed above, the regional groups put on about 56-60 officially sanctioned Burning Man events (the parties) each year across 13 different countries. As of this year, about 30 percent of "Burning Man" events are held outside the United States.
All of them, to some extent, are trying to do what Gibson did: live Burning Man off the playa, in the Default World. But context counts. Burning Man is not a homogenous community where everyone is doing the same thing, but rather a global population inspired by similar things.
Nobody's "cloning" the Morris Burner Hotel. In fact, no two attempts to implement Burning Man culture look alike.
According to reports, the first regional Burning Man event in Japan had a problem: They couldn't get their "Man" effigy to light on fire. So the crowd stoned it instead.
The lesson: What Burning Man is may depend on where you are.
Every official regional group is supposed to adopt Burning Man's 10 Principles. That's a big part of what makes it a Burning Man event and links the culture together across the world.
"We encourage people to look at the 10 principles as a complete body of work," says Goodell. "We don't let events be affiliated events unless they pretty much hit all 10 of them."
The Los Angeles regional Burning Man community has all 10 — and then some. But they've also added an 11th principle that Burning Man doesn't have ("Gratitude").
The North Carolina regional also has 11 principles, too — but its 11th principle is different from L.A.'s ("Consent"). And they've considered adding a 12th ("Volunteerism").
NoWhere, the major pan-European Burning Man event, had only five principles until two years ago. They've added more since then (they're up to 10) but that's a result of "learning from our experience more than copying [Burning Man]," says Dario Battini, a Regional Contact for Italy.
Sam Bloch, director of Communitaire, the group offering a new disaster relief model in Haiti and the Philippines, is emphatic that his organization emerged out of Burning Man and is a part of the culture. But when asked about the 10 Principles, Bloch admits, "I'm actually trying to think of what they are."
When given a list, Bloch identifies four that he says are crucial to his organization's work: Radical Inclusion, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, and Participation.
A clear theme emerges from all these conversations: People at the "frontier" of Burning Man culture are taking what they find most relevant, using that, and putting the rest on the back ... um ... burner.
That wasn't originally the plan. "I don't think, organizationally, that we have an answer for that," Goodell says. How "Burning Man" the organization feels about it depends on who you ask.
DuBois says, "That's what any intelligent person would do. You take what's relevant for you and meaningful for you, and focus on that. Of course."
Goodell is less certain. "I wouldn't tell somebody that they can't be part of our community just because they want to focus on "Leave No Trace" and the rest don't do anything for them. But they'll probably be less engaged if that's what they're doing."
Athena Demos, an R.C. for Los Angeles, says engaging with all 10 Principles is vital for her group's work. "When you start feeling like a project's not working, pull out the principles and ask 'What's missing?' Are we not giving people a chance to express themselves? Is this not community based? Are we not focusing on the moment? Are we not being inclusive? When we've got all the principles covered, the project works and people are happy. They're kind of a road map."
By this logic, if L.A. has added "Gratitude" as an 11th principle, perhaps it's because in status-conscious Los Angeles they need to aspire to "gratitude" to make their community work, in a way that perhaps Idaho, or Argentina, or Burning Man as a whole don't. Adding a principle isn't like adding a law of physics: You're not saying "We've figured something out that needs to be added to our collective body of knowledge." It's an admission of a deficit, saying "Our community really needs to put this front and center to make 'Burning Man' happen here."
That's how Travis Lyle, head of communication for AfrikaBurn, describes the way its 11th principle, "Each One Teach One," came about.
"We've been faced with the runaway popularity of the event and it being viewed as a 'party in the desert,' whilst culture has to an extent lagged behind," he says by email. "That motivated us to look for a way in which we could raise awareness and encourage ownership of the culture, principles, and practical information-sharing. We looked at existing cultural maxims and found 'Each One Teach One' to be a neat fit."
As Burning Man culture grows around the world, as event attendance threatens to burst population caps, as the Burning Man organization transitions to a nonprofit specifically intended to support "Burning Man"-style community projects wherever they emerge, a good case can be made that Burning Man culture has never been stronger or more engaging.
But with that growth has come institutionalization, bureaucracy, and hierarchy, making Burning Man a kind of paradox: The world's biggest symbol of radical self-expression, self-reliance, and decommodification also has a human resources department and a team of intellectual-property lawyers.
This paradox has been pointed out and vigorously criticized at every stage of the organization's development. Its most recent change, into a nonprofit entity called "The Burning Man Project," is no exception.
One prominent member of the Burning Man community, who asked not to be named, was witheringly critical of the new organization. The change has served, this person with knowledge of the organization says, only to confuse and frustrate the people looking to it for leadership.
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