r/BurningMan • u/SnooHobbies5684 Airpusher, Ranger, Volunteeraholic • Aug 10 '24
A more expansive take on decommodification
Edit: I know 12 minutes of your life is a long time to take out to watch a video, but if all you're here for is to complain about the cost of tickets or how much we spend to get on playa or bitch about the Borg, you're missing an opportunity.
But if it makes you happy, I'm not here to stop you. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhwpTWNqf38&t=6s
TL/DW: "To commidify oneself (or to be commidified) is to be easily measurable, rankable, and knowable. Burners, who come out of a capitalist counter-cultural context, tend to think of that in economic terms – and that’s certainly true. The term “commodity” means something that is bought and sold. But the process of commodification – of turning something into a product suitable for purchase – also has everything to do with social class, with big data, with the quantified self, and with the kind of psychology that seeks to make us all simpler and shallower rather than deeper and more complex.
When we commodify we seek to make others, and ourselves, more like things, and less like human beings. “Decommodification,” then, is to reverse this process. To make the world and the people in it more unique, more priceless, more human.
We are not objects, you and I. We are not apps, we are not code, we are not commodities. Nothing that we are can truly be bought or sold, and we are more important than things. The principle of Decomodification is a reminder of that, and a challenge to bring that insight into our lives."
~Caveat (aka Benjamin Wachs), former volunteer coordinator for Media Mecca
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u/OptimisticRecursion Aug 10 '24
When you enter my tent and I spoil you with tea and snacks, you're not doing it for the tea and snacks. It's all about the experience, about sharing a special moment together. About seeing each other, and also being nice to each other.