This year, the Burning Man festival celebrated it’s 25th year, in Black Rock Desert Nevada, with it’s annual celebration of the arts, 
wild self expression and in it’s own unique way of how to live together in community.
Amongst their often paradoxical and yet complimentary, ten principles for creating community there are many that are worthy of mention. Unconditional Gifting for example, where the gift given doesn’t contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value. Radical Self-reliance to encourage the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources. Then there’s ‘Leaving no trace’ – impelling us to take responsibility for the impact we have on the earth, and clear up our mess!
Yet, amongst these principles, there is no more radical than the first of the ten: Radical Inclusivity. “We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.” Radical statements to make about how we create community, however, neither part bears resemblance to how we create it today. We create groups based on class, wealth (or both), sexuality, gender, creed or culture and thanks to the myriad definitions of the word (sociologists had coined over 80 by the 1950s), we get to call it community.
Community today is all too often about defending the requisites for entry to the group, and blocking entry to anyone who might resemble a stranger, i.e who doesn’t have the requisites for membership. The exact opposite of the Burning Man’s radical inclusivity.
I suspect that the Burning Man festival is reaching for an altogether more Aquarian, inclusive interpretation of community, one which reaches for a higher ideal which potentially embraces all of humanity. One, which like the Blue Sky of Happiness, only requires your willingness to participate, which is ironically, principle nine of Burning Man’s ten principles. As they say in their manifesto: ‘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.’
The same is true with the Blue Sky of Happiness. The Blue Sky exists as a metaphor, to remind us that behind the grey clouds of our separative thinking, that we are in fact united, like the vast blue expanse of the heavens, all equal and entitled to the same opportunity to grow and flourish.
And yet conversely, we claim these rights for ourselves, by evoking this motif for others. This is how we participate in growing community.
It could be no other way. The only way to live the Blue Sky of Happiness, is through the principles of radical inclusivity, and a willingness to participate in sharing the principle of a collective mind and global heart.
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