dBMblog
ACT AS IF (or, Kant's Categorical Imperative and How Your Ticket Will Find You)
February/20/2012 Filed in: back in the default world
"Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature." -- Immanuel Kant
You didn't get a ticket. You didn't get a ticket for your partner, friend, spouse or parent. After all these years of going to The Event In The Desert, you got that email. You know, the one that, more than possibly any and maybe all of your life's cumulative college application rejection letters, grad school rejection letters, breakups-via-email, post-interview-we're-gonna-pass letters, pink slips and denial of parole notifications came across as a rejection of you as a person.
How can this thing that has welcomed you when you were needing it most, transformed you into who you are now, been fertile field where your creativity has grown beyond measure...or been your hope and dream or best chance give you the middle finger....so callously, with such disregard to who you are and what it means to you?
I am not going to comment on the workings of the ticketing system, or if it is good or bad or evil, or what we should all do *instead* of burning man, now that "most of us" "didn't get" our ticket.
I will tell you, in four simple little words, how you will get your ticket. You ready?
BELIEVE. ACT AS IF.
You are going. You've got the time off work. You've submitted your art app, your theme camp is going full steam ahead. You've got $400 in cash or whatever in an envelope for your ticket. You tell everyone that you're going, you get the blinky stuff for your bike, you get a roof rack for the truck.
WORK YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK. You tell everyone that your ticket hasn't found you. But it will. You know it. No specific notion of how it will get to you, but it will find you. It wants you to find it.
DON'T PANIC This is Panic's high season, this is the time when it is the least likely that tickets will change hands. But between the STEP program and the open ticket sales coming up, a lot more people who sincerely believe that they're going to Burning Man will get tickets.
BE PATIENT. A week before the event, ticket prices will plunge. Most folks who need tickets will get them then. And damn near all of them will be people who believed that they were going, and acted as if they already had a ticket in hand.
So. Come to potluck. Act as if. Believe.
See you tonight.
Luckily yours,
Michael
Caveat: I might be full of shit. You might believe. You might not get a ticket. Your milage may vary. Items may not be as pictured. Measured by weight and not by volume. The camera adds ten pounds. Get your ass to potluck anyway.
You didn't get a ticket. You didn't get a ticket for your partner, friend, spouse or parent. After all these years of going to The Event In The Desert, you got that email. You know, the one that, more than possibly any and maybe all of your life's cumulative college application rejection letters, grad school rejection letters, breakups-via-email, post-interview-we're-gonna-pass letters, pink slips and denial of parole notifications came across as a rejection of you as a person.
How can this thing that has welcomed you when you were needing it most, transformed you into who you are now, been fertile field where your creativity has grown beyond measure...or been your hope and dream or best chance give you the middle finger....so callously, with such disregard to who you are and what it means to you?
I am not going to comment on the workings of the ticketing system, or if it is good or bad or evil, or what we should all do *instead* of burning man, now that "most of us" "didn't get" our ticket.
I will tell you, in four simple little words, how you will get your ticket. You ready?
BELIEVE. ACT AS IF.
You are going. You've got the time off work. You've submitted your art app, your theme camp is going full steam ahead. You've got $400 in cash or whatever in an envelope for your ticket. You tell everyone that you're going, you get the blinky stuff for your bike, you get a roof rack for the truck.
WORK YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK. You tell everyone that your ticket hasn't found you. But it will. You know it. No specific notion of how it will get to you, but it will find you. It wants you to find it.
DON'T PANIC This is Panic's high season, this is the time when it is the least likely that tickets will change hands. But between the STEP program and the open ticket sales coming up, a lot more people who sincerely believe that they're going to Burning Man will get tickets.
BE PATIENT. A week before the event, ticket prices will plunge. Most folks who need tickets will get them then. And damn near all of them will be people who believed that they were going, and acted as if they already had a ticket in hand.
So. Come to potluck. Act as if. Believe.
See you tonight.
Luckily yours,
Michael
Caveat: I might be full of shit. You might believe. You might not get a ticket. Your milage may vary. Items may not be as pictured. Measured by weight and not by volume. The camera adds ten pounds. Get your ass to potluck anyway.
Notes from the unfolding adventure