It avoids a self-conscious relationship to the act. We live in the most self-conscious society in the history of mankind. There are good things in that, but there are also terrible things. The worst of it is, that we find it hard to give ourselves to the cultural process.

What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach soon became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990 in collaboration with the SF Cacophony Society the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert where it has grown precipitously from a 3 day 80 persons "zone trip" to an 8 day festival with over 50000 "participants.