Sometimes you get an idea and you think you're the only one who's thought of it but then Shazam! (would it not have been cool if Google has been named Shazam!) with a few clicks you discover you are part of a movement. I'll bet the Pronoid Movement is still so small that you haven't heard of it, right? Very simply a pronoid is someone who believes that the world is conspiring to give him a good time. Is it not ironic that we spend so much time believing that we are surround by overlapping problems large and small only to be topped off with our sure knowledge that we have our own personal Armageddon aimed right at us. Yet the Universe has been chugging along for approximately 13.765896785 billion years, continually perfecting its act, with you as the result. Looking back in the short term, hominids descended from trees to invent art, language and the great vending machine of modern existence full of everything from kidney transplants to carmel corn, all here for you to enjoy and then, to top it off, you were given a pocket full of quarters.
My view of the pronoic landscape had been just a collection of vague notions until reading Rob Brezsny's book Pronoia (we aren't carrying it but you can get it online). Rob uses the illustration that as we go through life, almost everything works and works well. He asks us to examine a typical day. You get up out of a comfortable bed, walk though your well equipped house with its hundreds of working systems from TiVo to toilet rolls, you step into your car which starts, you press buttons to open doors, activate music, air-conditioning and communication as you whisk to a job in a building with all its systems functioning well and do generally interesting things for which you are paid so you can go shopping in yet more complex environments where you exercise free will to further your own desires. Then BAM! flup flup fluuup fluuuuupppp (that's the sound of the tire slowing down) You get a flat tire or someone is rude and the day is tainted. But look around. Almost everything went very well. The sun didn't explode, the poles didn't flip and your body clicked right along.
The ancient Greeks said, "Kids are no damn good today and the world as we know it is going to end in our lifetime." I hear all the time that kids are fundamentally different now than they were "in the old days." You've heard it or even said it. Computer games, Myspace and STD's have warped a generation! But let's look at the forces that haven't changed. Gravity, weather, the diurnal/nocturnal cycle, love, biology and so many interlocking systems as to quickly be incalculable. Myspace wouldn't even be on the top 1000 list of Big Stuff.
Rob points out that living life is like driving a car at night. We can't see beyond our headlights but our reliance on our beliefs and our intelligence allow us to travel through the darkness with confidence.
And all this brings us inevitably to Burning Man. Rob and I share this event with thousands of our friends. I developed this Pollyannaic attitude (right here I must tell you that as a kid I had a big crush on Hayley Mills the child star of the Disney movie Pollyanna about a girl so unaccountably happy that the word has come to mean unreasonable optimism. A few years ago I ran into her son and I told him that I had the hots for his mother and he admitted that he did to, "…But not in that way!" he stammered. In what way? I was ten) at Berkeley in the 60's were we envisioned a world which resembles Burning Man is so many ways. Many of you have seen the TV stories about Burning Man and assume it is a giant naked bacchanalia. Certainly that is true but it is 40,000 other experiences as well. I can say this with certainty. Burning Man is an experiment in living in the moment for an entire week where humor and kindness reign. It is the ultimate pronoid city. In thousands of encampments religions, stores, bars, clothing bazaars, soothsayers, truth-sayers and tall-talers camp side by side, everybody giving away their product, service or ideas. Basically a WalMart for hippies where everything is free. The currency is not really barter but is rather a step beyond. If you take more than you need and you give it away in a crowd this size you end up with all sorts of things both real, like food, or surreal like a feeling that there are 39,999 people conspiring to give you a good time.
Now Rob has been known to sit and welcome the sun and celebrate the rising of the moon. He writes a syndicated astrology column freewillastrology.com (the column is heavy on poetry and whit and light on mumbo jumbo) and is an all around seeker of spiritual truth. He's a Zen-slinging pronoic priest (I know you are thinking that he is spending a lot on weed. Not true. The man is long over that). Me, I'm a literalist, a transreligionator, a scientific free thinker who believes astrology is a tragic mental junkfood for misguided nitwits. Yet Rob and I come together around the core belief that the world is… shall I say it?...Groovy. If you weigh all the bombs, disease and ennui on one end of the scale against all the roses used to tint glasses, the positive side is not only much heavier it is all just waiting for us to dig it. (deep voice) "Come away from the dark side, Luke."
One might reasonably ask what difference does all this really make in everyday life. Like most of us I look at the overly cheerful with a certain degree of skepticism. "What is that guy on?" The religious zealot who wants to bestow a blessing on you or the gum smacking teens who are grooving to the beat in a boomingly loud car generally annoy a sane person, right? Or even the person having a spirited, cheerful conversation on a cell phone in a pubic place sets many of us on edge. So if one person's good time annoys us the antidote is not to straighten them out and let them know that "kids are no damn good today." But rather to give ourselves an even better time.
So bear with this notion for just a minute longer. The next time someone messes with you, the telephone solicitor, the hostile in-law, whatever the very next thing is that comes along to annoy, quickly bring to mind five things that went right in the last hour. The primo parking place, the friendly restaurant server, the very wind in the trees and see how your problem really stacks up.
Optimistic drivel from an over the hill hippy? Yes, sure, but remember the definition of a hippy is someone with long hair having more fun than you are. So have as much fun as you can stand, go to Burning Man and always over-tip.