Caveat Magister

For the last ten years, Caveat Magister, aka Benjamin Wachs, has been actively writing about Burning Man culture and engaging with Burning Man at the cutting edge of its philosophy, composing over 250 articles about it for the Burning Man website. By 2015, this work had made him, outside of Larry Harvey and his fellow founders, one of the leading interpreters of Burning Man within its own culture. In 2015, Larry Harvey asked Caveat, along with Burning Man’s Director of Education, Stuart Mangrum, to sit on a committee, officially called the “Philosophical Center” of the Burning Man nonprofit.

Caveat also served as the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca from 2008 – 2013, and the lead writer/researcher for Burning Man’s education program from 2016 – 2018. Caveat is the author of the the forthcoming book The Scene That Became Cities: what Burning Man philosophy can teach us about building better communities., which is now available for pre-order. He has also written several books which have nothing to do with Burning Man. He has finally got his email address caveat (at) burningman (dot) org working again. He tweets, occasionally, as @BenjaminWachs

Caveat Magister in Kosmos

Burning Man | What We’ve Learned

"We don’t need a blueprint, we don’t want a master plan, we just need to practice the skills and create the kind of spaces we want to live in, and share them."

Published in Volume 19 Issue 3

Coming Soon

The Village Way

Practices for Belonging in a Fragmented World

For thousands of years, we lived according to the principles of village life. Then, around the 14th Century, our lives were reorganized by rulers around growth and accumulation – often at the cost of community, equity, and the living Earth. What would it mean to return to simplicity, and mutual care?

Join us for a 9-month inquiry into this question, exploring how we participate together in a time that calls us back to community, resilience, and shared life,