The Five Best Burning Man Principles

Whether you’re a fan or a foe, you’re likely to find some of the principles for exploring the values of a community, as put out by the Burning Man collective, intriguing and interesting.

Larry Harvey, the man who co-founded this interactive extravaganza, put pen to paper back in 2004 in an attempt to create some principles for the event and the ever-growing movement. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture, as it had organically developed since its inception.

Below, we’re sharing five of our favorites.

Radical Inclusion

Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Communal Effort

Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Leaving no Trace

Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation

Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy

Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

Do you have a favorite principle from Burning Man, or maybe one of your own? We’d love to hear about it.