Organizations
How companies, institutions, and movements embody the sixteen values.
Burning Man
Aliveness for one week, then you go home
Burning Man began as a beach bonfire in San Francisco and became the largest annual experiment in radical self-expression and temporary community in the world. The ten principles governing the event - radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, immediacy - are an organizational statement of values built around the premise that human vitality is suppressed by normal social conditions and can be released by temporary suspension of them.
Burning Man
Aliveness for one week, then you go home
Burning Man began as a beach bonfire in San Francisco and became the largest annual experiment in radical self-expression and temporary community in the world. The ten principles governing the event - radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, immediacy - are an organizational statement of values built around the premise that human vitality is suppressed by normal social conditions and can be released by temporary suspension of them.
Art at a scale and ambition that no commercial venue supports. Temporary community organized around gifting and participation rather than consumption. Personal transformation that participants consistently describe as genuine. A counter-model of social organization that has influenced intentional communities, corporate cultures, and event design well beyond its direct participants.
Silicon Valley capture concentrating resources and social status in the event in ways that contradict the decommodification principle. Ticket prices making the anti-capitalist festival increasingly accessible only to people with significant disposable income. The gap between the leave-no-trace commitment and the environmental footprint of 80,000 people gathering in a desert.
The first burn on Baker Beach in 1986 - Larry Harvey and Jerry James igniting a wooden figure for no specific reason, discovering that the act had emotional resonance that neither of them could explain and that others wanted to be present for.
Cirque du Soleil
The body as the thing that amazes
Cirque du Soleil was built on the premise that human physical capacity expressed at its maximum, presented as spectacle and integrated with theatrical narrative, produces a form of shared delight that transcends language and culture. The company took the circus format, removed the animals, and replaced them with the human body as the primary object of wonder. For 30 years it was the most commercially successful entertainment company in the world that owned no intellectual property whatsoever.
Cirque du Soleil
The body as the thing that amazes
Cirque du Soleil was built on the premise that human physical capacity expressed at its maximum, presented as spectacle and integrated with theatrical narrative, produces a form of shared delight that transcends language and culture. The company took the circus format, removed the animals, and replaced them with the human body as the primary object of wonder. For 30 years it was the most commercially successful entertainment company in the world that owned no intellectual property whatsoever.
Performances that produce a physiological response - the gasp and involuntary silence of an audience watching a human being do something they did not believe was physically possible. A company that employed and trained performers from across the world, converting athletic ability into professional artistic opportunity. A touring model bringing the experience to cities that could not support permanent theatrical infrastructure.
A growth model expanding from 1 show to 44 simultaneously touring productions, diluting the quality and distinctiveness that made the original product exceptional. A bankruptcy in 2020 revealing the financial fragility beneath the commercial success. A workplace culture treating the bodies of its performers as production assets with insufficient attention to long-term health consequences.
The first performance in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec in 1984 - a troupe of fire-breathers and stilt-walkers with no venue and no investors, demonstrating that the experience of shared wonder was commercially viable before they knew it was.