Alma Burn Principles
The core principles, as written by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, helped to form the cornerstone of the Burn culture. As Burning Man is not inherently a sustainable culture, as a community we must envision how we can carry those principles into all aspects of our lives to foster a collective community.
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We begin the discussion with how we at Alma Burn view the ten principles:
Radical Inclusion
We all share this experience. We welcome and respect the stranger,
then lose or gain respect as our story together progresses.
Gifting
We cherish acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not
contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions or advertising. Therefore, we stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We seek spaces in which exchange comes in the hands of the individual or collectives within the community. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-Reliance
We encourage the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
A self-empowered individual empowers the collective.
Radical Self-Expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual.
No one, other than the individual or a collaborating group, can determine its content.
It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values 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 on a practical level. This facilitates interaction beyond the Burn.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members should remain aware of their responsibilities
to public welfare and endeavor to communicate those responsibilities to other participants.
Individuals must assume personal responsibility for behaving in accordance with community standards,
as well as local, state, and federal laws to maintain the integrity of the collective community.
Leaving it Better Than You Found It.
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 our endeavor and
whenever possible, leave spaces in a better state than when we found them.
Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformation,
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.
Alma Burn Values
While principals are steadfast clear clear tenants of a burn, our values are the relative behaviors we treasure within the community. There are a wealth of ways to demonstrate these and AlmaBurn is the place to explore and celebrate them.
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Enthusiastic Consent
Consent is a knowing, voluntary, and mutual decision among all participants to engage in an activity.
Consent can be given by words or actions, as long as those words or actions create clear permission
regarding willingness to engage in the activity. Silence or lack of resistance, in and of itself,
does not demonstrate consent. Consent itself is a status that may be freely revoked at any
moment by any participant as a matter of free will.
Expressed Gratitude
Gratitude is a natural feeling that rises up within us when we experience something pleasing that appears in our world.
It is the internal “WoW!” that escapes our lips and spills into the world as an expression of wonder.
It is warm and from the heart. It is a natural expression of our true nature
when we look beyond the confines of our thinking about the world.
When we truly see the world as it is: we cannot help but express gratitude.
Earned Respect
Respect is an essential aspect of relating with others and can be earned or lost. It is a way of feeling
and acting towards an individual, entity or yourself, when you perceive admirable qualities from them,
on a personal level. It acts almost as a social currency and exemplifies why you relate to people the way you do.
When expressed on a collective level, it acts as a means of communicating how people view one another.
General respect for another individual, comes from a recognition a shared Human Experience.
The measure for respect is often reflected in the golden rule of
“Treat others as you wish to be treated.”
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Crafted by The Ambassador