Perhaps it is the rarified air that the Elites breathe. Maybe they all were secretly given lobotomies. Could it be something in the water?

Or are these people nothing more than ridiculous gaslighters who (rightly, apparently) believe that their readers are so credulous that they can attach the words “climate change” to any event and their readers will freak out?

I think it is probably the latter, but given how bizarre the claims often made in the name of climate change, it could be a physical cause.

Climate change could be an existential risk to Burning Man, Matthew Hutson writes. “Logistically, financially, ethically, That Thing in the Desert might become untenable.”https://t.co/rWxHmL6pWu

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 15, 2023

Burning Man is a pagan bacchanalia held yearly in the deserts of Nevada, and apparently, the geniuses in the MSM are under the impression that “desert” and “rain” never appear in the same sentence. So when this year’s Burning Man was hit by a bit of rain, turning mud flats into a nasty soup and trapping the world’s rich, famous, and sex starved for a few days in the desert due to the impassability of the unpaved roads, the media have decided to declare the event ruined by climate change.

The Washington Post tells us that the rain is a “teachable moment,” from which we should all learn a valuable lesson about the fragility of Mother Earth. Obviously, every member of the lower classes should refrain from using fossil fuels so that our Elites can go out into the desert to drop acid and have random sex.

This year, thousands got stuck in the mud instead after about a half an inch of rain hit what is normally the driest state in the nation. Instead of leaving no trace, many self-described “burners” abandoned bicycles and vehicles on the drenched, muddy Black Rock Desert.
Once an underground carnival for free spirits, Burning Man today is famous as a party spot for Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley tech bros and other jet-set elites. The latest event offers a glimpse at how extreme weather can — and more frequently will — dramatically transform the environment in a moment’s notice.

“It’s a teachable moment, as far as climate disasters and extreme weather” go, said Anya Kamenetz, a Burning Man attendee forced to flee the festival. “This is very much just a trial run under really, really easy conditions for what a lot of people go through.”

YGTBFKM. It rained. Having grown up in Tucson, AZ, I can tell you it rains in the desert, and those rains can sometimes be devastating. Flash floods, drownings, cars swept away, arroyos turning into raging rivers. It is called weather, and it happens.

And apparently, Gaia isn’t as persuaded of the need for bacchanals as our tech bros.

Climate change could be an existential risk to Burning Man, Matthew Hutson writes. “Logistically, financially, ethically, That Thing in the Desert might become untenable.”https://t.co/rWxHmL6pWu

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 15, 2023

The New Yorker’s piece is written by Matthew Hutson, a science writer and apparently a pretty bright guy according to his bio. And like so many smart guys his connection to actual reality is a bit strained. This impression of mine is confirmed by the fact that he attends Burning Man himself, which is one part proof that he is a certified member of the privileged elite and one part proof that he lives in a world where signaling that you believe all the right things is necessary to getting ahead.

Last Thursday was a typically atypical day at Burning Man—the last before a series of atypically atypical days. It began, for me, with a bike ride with some friends to the Temple for an orchestral performance. Burning Man is named after a large effigy that burns in a raucous extravaganza on Saturday night; the next night, most of the same crowd sits in silence watching a wooden temple, of a different design each year, go up in flames. Beforehand, people fill the Temple with messages, writing on the walls and stapling photos and personal effects to the structure. I wandered inside and perused the community’s contributions. Many of them memorialized lost loved ones, but the ones that hit me hardest addressed the search for self-love. “To my past self,” one message read. “You are more amazing than you realize. We’ve made it.” The note ended with a hint at the future: “See you there. xoxo.”

I was in a receptive mood, and tears streamed down my face. I spent an hour reading.

Yuck. Just yuck.

Matthew is blown away by somebody’s narcissism. How profound. If I could write a note to my younger self I would write: “Buy Apple, dummie.” That would be good advice. I would be a multi-millionaire if I had bought Apple when I almost did in the early 90s. I would tell myself not to be so f’ing stupid all the time.

As you can see, Matthew is a perfect stand-in for how the elite thinks. Self-regard above all, and a pagan sensibility.

This was my eighth time at Burning Man, but my first in seven years. I’d stopped going because of the stress, the hassle, and the opportunity cost: at least a week offline, perhaps another week of travel and errands in Reno and elsewhere, and sometimes months of preparation. Once I get to the playa, I feel at home—more myself than anywhere else—but until that moment I’m racked with anxiety, thinking about every little thing that can go wrong, from faux pas to equipment failure to grievous injury. (During my second year, a toppling speaker broke my friend Suzie’s arm and she courageously stayed at the Burn in a sling all week before having surgery back in New York.) Going to Burning Man is a leap of faith—a bet that you can just deal.

In my early years, I did more psychedelics—LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, MDA, 2C-B, DOM—each trip also a leap of faith. My last few psychedelic trips at Burning Man, however, I felt overwhelmed and retreated to my tent to be with my own thoughts. I began sticking mostly to alcohol. This year, I decided to test myself again. Sitting around with my campmates in the muck on Saturday, I took half a tab of AL-LAD, a chemical analogue of LSD. The initial rush created a familiar anxiety—the kind that a high person feels when staring into a mirror that says, “Don’t look high.” I questioned the appropriateness of everything I did, and of core parts of myself. Then I reflected on the messages in the Temple about seeking self-love. Everyone questions themselves. We are all flawed, and it eats at us, yet we find ways to deal, hopefully.

I assigned myself the task of accepting what I could not control—the weather, the porta-potties, parts of who I was.

We get all this self-revelation to convince us to listen to him about climate change. An anxiety-ridden drug-addled narcissist is hoping we will look into his soul and join him in worrying about how climate change might ruin Burning Man.

Uh, yeah, whatever.

As those road-blockaders saw, Burning Man is not only a victim of environmental change but also a perpetrator of it. A friend—the one engaged to the ultramarathoner—recently described the festival as “the ultimate expression of a capitalist economy that throws off so much surplus wealth” that “tens of thousands of people can gather to create self-destructing artifacts.” In 2019, when the Burning Man Project last sought to renew its permit with the Bureau of Land Management, it faced environmental-impact requirements that it argued “would forever negatively change the fabric of the Burning Man event, if not outright kill it.” (At least some of the requirements were dropped, and the permit was renewed.)

The problem with Burning Man has little to do with capitalism, which after all is simply the most efficient economic system through which human beings achieve their goals and not a moral code; the problem is the narcissism of its attendees.

I have learned one important lesson from Matthew’s ruminations: for many climate change fanatics their concern for Gaia is simply an external manifestation of their neuroses, and their proclamations are simply an expression of their limitless self-regard.

Anybody who will tell us about his tears evoked by reading the results of others’ psychological onanism should refrain from giving us any advice about anything. He needs to see a therapist.

Only a narcissist can think getting rained on indicates a profound shift in the world.

No, it rained. It happens. Even in the desert. Now quit taking drugs and clean yourself up.