Balancing the Ten Principles–Gifts from God?

Moses receives the Ten Commandments

Are the Ten Principles Deontological?

In ethics, deontological principles are inviolable rules, duties one is bound to follow regardless of the consequences.  Famous examples of such principles are the Ten Commandments or Emmanuel Kant’s categorical imperative which says:

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

Living a “good” life, according to deontology, involves knowing what the rules are and following them.  Frequently these rules are seen to be of divine origin and therefore, by definition it is impossible for the rules to be in conflict.  If the rules appear to be in conflict, we just lack the larger understanding to see how they fit together.  Interpretation of the rules that resolve these conflicts has historically been assigned to wise elders in the community, such as rabbis in the Jewish tradition, imams in the Islamic tradition, or judges who preside over the courts of many legal systems in the world.

The Debate at Burning Man

In Burning Man communities, a vigorous debate over the primacy of the Ten Principles is always in evidence.  Many note the obvious irony of having rules at an event which whose original design and inspiration was radical self-expression in an anarchic environment.  While some are mollified by the pragmatic view that the sheer size of the event requires some amount of rules to keep people safe, others have chosen to spurn the event citing the hypocrisy of the founders and organizers.  At an event which claims to celebrate diversity, elements such as the entrance fee create insurmountable barriers to entry to many of the people the festival would most like to attract.  While there may or may not be a “high priesthood” of Burning Man, there are many wonderful stories of creative and collective conflict resolution at the actual event, as when a participant who physically could not sit rankled the mood of other participants whose view was obstructed at an event.  The participants invoked the principles of self-reliance, communal effort, and radical inclusion to help everyone move into a position where everyone could see and participate as they wished.  Not all situations are as easy to resolve, however.

Our Take

The principle of Radical Self-Reliance would suggest that reliance on some external arbiter of the rules, such as a rabbi, shaman, president, yogi, or even a community of fellow travelers is inappropriate. We all have to decide for ourselves how to act within our communities.  Furthermore, upon reflection, we felt that it was absolutely clear that some of the principles must be more important than others in order for them all to hang together as a whole.  This raises new dangers, however–if anyone can decide at any time when a particular principle is right for them, how do we avoid a community devolving into a self-centered pissing contest?  We’ll comment more upon this in our next post when we consider the Ten Principles as Roadmap.  In conclusion, though, we rejected the notion that the Ten Principles are deontological in nature.