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Burning the American Dream

This year’s theme for the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada is the “American Dream”. Wow, the American Dream – what in the Hell is it and is it still alive? Is the American Dream an illusion? Did it ever really exist? Should we be chasing it?

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I think the American Dream is alive. But you can’t find or buy the American Dream. You can only dream it up. We can all have our own vision of the American Dream. At this year’s Burning Man Festival (August 25th to September 1st) 50,000 freaks will assemble in the desert to share their individual visions of the “American Dream”.

For me, if I had only one word to describe the American Dream, the word would be “Freedom”. The freedom to be who I really am and to roam free rather than be like a chicken in a cage laying eggs for a farmer.

This year will be my first time as a “Burner” and I will be sharing my vision of the American Dream by projecting 1,000 images from the past year’s Great American Road Trip on the side of my motor home “Destiny”. I call this showing “Visions of My American Dream”.

My travel mentor/guru Ed Buryn, author of Vagabonding in America, will be collaborating with me in promoting and presenting this show. We will also be showing movies related to this year’s American Dream theme, including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

In 1971 Hunter S. Thompson went through the desert and into the crass heart of Las Vegas looking for the “American Dream”, driving a Cadillac with a trunk full of psychedelic drugs. What he found or fabricated became the book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”.

In his book, the American Dream was hijacked by the privileged few sometime around Nixon’s reign. Judging from the current regime, they never gave it back. Hunter S. Thompson once said that his journalism beat was “the death of the American Dream”. By the time Thompson shot himself in 2005 he had largely pronounced the American Dream dead.

Perhaps his American Dream was dead. For others it has turned into the American Ream. But for those of us still living and dreaming it remains alive, even if endangered.

The pure canvas of the Black Rock Desert seems like a far more fitting place to dream the American Dream than the crass fabrication knows as Las Vegas. I will be painting my vision of this dream onto of this vast desert canvas by projecting 1,000 images onto the side of my motor home. Long live the American Dream and the freedom to create it!

Feel free to share your personal vision of the “American Dream” by posting your reply below.

A final thought from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that is fitting for the Festival -

“When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.”

I expect to be very professional.

Addendum/Update - I had an amazing and moving experience during the seven days I participated in the Burning Man Festival. View highlights and photos from the 2008 Burning Man Festival.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 am and is filed under Nevada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Burning the American Dream”

Monica AKA Shrimper Says:
August 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The Burning Man event sounds incredible – have fun – be crazy – enjoy – let me know how it goes! As for the question is the American Dream still alive? YES: but my take is that most people in this country are more alive when they are dreaming than during their waking hours. Be well!
Jaegs Says:
August 31st, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Today the phrase “American Dream”, typically conjures up images of wealth and status symbols like a bigger car or moving to a gated community. The dream is made up of iPhones and SUVs that must be replaced by the new model for fear of losing touch with this dream. The average American household carries over $9000 in credit card debt and their American dream slides further away with every credit card statement. It seems our dream has turned into a nightmare.

The historian and writer James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America; he stated, “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

The Digital Vagabond is someone I think who understands what Adams was saying. He’s someone who took the dream of meeting people and being mobile and turned it into reality. Now not everyone can go out, buy an RV, travel around the country and attend Burning Man but that’s ok. We all have the capacity to make our own American Dream into a reality because making our lives richer and fuller doesn’t have to come with a price tag.

My American Dream has followed a similar path but my journey is by water. I’m a kayaker and started a small community site called kayaktion, http://www.kayaktion.com. I started it after a trip I took to Vietnam in 2001. My friend told me to bring two items, Blowpops and a Polaroid. This seemed strange at first but then I quickly understood why. Vietnam is a very young country with 60% of its population being under 25 years of age. It soon dawned on me that the vast majority of this country wasn’t even alive during the Vietnam War or what they call the American War. The amount of kindness and curiosity they showed towards a past enemy was an eye opener to people’s capacity to circumvent politics and build bridges between one another.

I soon put those Blowpop’s and Polaroid’s to good use as we paddled from one floating village to another handing out candy and photos. We soon became the most popular people in the village and probably did more for American-Vietnamese relations than most politicians could ever hope.

Since 2001 I’ve been to 16 countries, I’ve been sponsoring a 14 year-old girl from Bangladesh and a 6 year-old boy from Peru and have helped build homes, schools and clinics in Asia. Meeting people from the far corners of the world and becoming amerced in new cultures is a rich and amazing experience. I couldn’t dream up some the experiences I’ve had and my life is richer and fuller because of it and I didn’t need an iPhone for any of it.

If you live to be 78 years old you’ll have had 28,470 days in this world, a metaphorical blink of an eye in the grand scheme of time. My hope is that someone will read this or James Truslow Adams and realize it’s not about stuff; it’s about the experiences you have and the impact you have on others that will make your American Dream a reality.