We Make Cities and Cities Make Us

When it comes to emergence, we have to understand the difference between protocols and plans. The former enables order to emerge, while the latter limits emergence.

In Esmeralda, city of water, a network of canals and a network of streets span and intersect each other. To go from one place to another you have always the choice between land and boat: and since the shortest distance between two points in Esmeralda is not a straight line but a zigzag that ramifies in tortuous optional routes, the ways that open to each passerby are never two, but many, and they increase further for those who alternate a stretch by boat with one on dry land.  
— Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities

Most of us walk around on planet Earth with certain programming. Biases. Tendencies. Preferences. Cultural baggage. In your first experience at Black Rock City, you’ll, at the very least, become acutely aware of it. You can suspend the programming for a few days, maybe even leave some of it behind. Some of us need a bit of deprogramming—a few of us desperately. After all, it invites us to acknowledge all the counterproductive memories, mores, or mental monsters and ask what can be left out there to burn.

A great temple there invites you to come in and pray, reflect, or meditate. When you do, pictures of people have been tacked up as makeshift shrines all around. Look up, and a fractal of wooden beams climbs into the sky. Though it is breathtaking, in another day or so, the temple will burn. Something else equally compelling will take its place next year, and it, too, will burn.

Buddha smiles.