Burning Man concludes in a chaotic stream of cars with drivers yelling at each other

So much for peace and love, which was supposedly the founding principle of the Burning Man rich man's bacchanalia out in the Nevada high desert.

One drop of rain and they all ended up shouting at each other.

According to the Daily Mail:

Burning Man has descended into chaos as fed-up revelers snapped and fought during the mass exodus from the washout festival.

Tempers frayed during the hours-long line of RVs and campers on the way out of the Nevada desert, with cops warning many had turned hostile towards each other.

Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said exhausted partygoers 'lashed out' at one another after finally breaking following a weekend of misery in the rain and mud.

Wait till they run into more environmental wackos, blocking the roads in protest.

While they were there dealing with the mud, one participant reported a "Lord of the Flies" vibe:

 

 

It just goes to show how empty this hedonistic festival of orgies, drugs, and dancing actually is.

From the very start in the late 1980s-early 1990s, the whole thing was an exercise in drugged-out self-indulgence. When the tech bros of the Silicon Valley got involved, it became a status-symbol, with a $10,000 price tag for all such conforming "non-conformists" to camp out in the desert without running water and burn an effigy like they were the Klan.

O.K., I know it's not everyone. I actually know some nice people from different quarters -- techies, libertarians - who go there and like it. That's their thing.

What's obnoxious is that as of 2004, they tried to put a sheen on it, like it was something noble, a bid to build a Better Man, a New Burner Man, eliminate commerce like the commies professed, change human nature, as if they had become a quasi religion.

It was pot haze.

But they came up with ten principles for this bacchanalia, which can be read here, all peace and love type stuff, and their website shows they set up a "philosophy center." 

Here are the last two principals:

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.

Transformative change? Nope, they're just a bunch of guys yelling at each other to 'move!' in a muddy parking lot trying to get away from one another.

Recognition of our inner selves? There you have it, their inner selves, cutting into highway lines which jams traffic, honking their horns, all to get there ahead of the next guy.

They ought to have just let it be as their baccanalia, and not gift-wrapped it with love-and-peace transformation. Nobody was transformed there -- they came, they ate, they danced, they orgied, they got high, they yelled at each other -- and then left in a cloud of trash behind them.

Which contradicts this dreamy principle here:

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.

Boy Scouts have always been able to manage that. Somehow they couldn't...

It goes to show how phony this whole thing is. There is no religion here, no human nature tranformation. It's just a bunch of city dwellers yelling at each other and getting into road-rage fights, honking their cars, shaking their fists, same as they do in West Coast traffic, taking their ways to the desert.Maybe a little humility here is in order.

Image: CBS News / Reuters video screen shot on Twitter

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