Dynamic Relationships
Community mores are the unwritten dynamic rules of social groups and how they relate to their community and each other.
Most of the time community mores are inferred by the reactions of people, sometimes they evolve into principles that guide the community mores. These dynamic and shifting rules of social engagement are guidelines of etiquette, social bonding, and community development.
Mores define subtle and dynamic social boundaries. It can sometimes be confusing to navigate between various community groups that embrace similar mores with variations of theme. Some community mores seem obvious and people say “That’s common sense”, others are much more subtle and varied from occasion to occasion. (“Common Sense ain’t so common”).
Principles
Sometimes as organizations develop they will layout some core principles that drive the community mores of their projects. These principles usually relate to an overarching cultural paradigm and vary slightly from group to group, and organization to organization.
Burn BC and the community mores we foster, relate to the paradigm of “The Burn”. This paradigm evolved from a collaboration and convergence of fun, chaotic spontaneity, and creative exploration. Emerging from experiments by the Suicide Club, and evolving through the Cacophony Society to give birth to the spirit of Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert; “The Burn” is wildly expressive and radically self-reliant.
A Cultural Paradigm
A common root of The Burn, to similar paradigms, is the idea of “self-management”, where we take responsibility for our personal experiences and seek out unmediated relationships to these experiences (sometimes called “Immediatism”).
Early experiments with the paradigm of The Burn were discovered by the Suicide Club and later explored during The Zone Trips of the Cacophony Society. Eventually the paradigm gained it’s name from the convergence of cultural expressions around the Burning Man project. These events and projects have contributed greatly to this experimental cultural paradigm of fun and playful collaboration, community, self definition, and creativity.
Immolation of Art has defined the most notorious act of The Burn, but the idea is not limited to the literal act. There are more figurative interpretations like this wonderful poem by Jack Kerouac.
“Everyone’s Mad”
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
– Jack Kerouac