Monday, October 8, 2012

Dr. Cliff





Dr. Cliff was a dental student - probably is a dentist, by now - who wrote a piece called "Burning Man is Dead" which the Black Rock City local booster club didn't like one bit. We're fascinated by their attitude: "don't be negative, or we'll rip your throat out". Not that Burning Man invented this mentality. Our Heathen or Traditionalist friends will know what a "fluffy bunny" is, right now, as some of the rest of us can be sure because we've heard the stories, and Wiccans aren't exactly scarce at Burning Man. It's a sad comment on a subculture when it can't even come up with its own brand of stupidity.

In broad terms, Dr. Cliff writes about the dumbing down of Burning Man. He talks about the kind of people who, as he puts it, think that "if they get naked and fu**ed up, they're participating" (asterisks ours), deconstructs some of the manipulative rhetoric in "the Jack Rabbit speaks", and introduces us to some of the idiots who wrote back to him. We suspect that philosophically speaking, he would not see eye-to-eye with us, and we do take strong issue with at least one thing that he has said, but he does make a lot more sense than his detractors tend to.

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