The Symbiosis Experience

I left Los Angeles at 8 a.m. on a Thursday and started my drive to the Woodward Reservoir in Oakdale, Calif. Sixteen hours later, I arrived at the tent my friend had set up for me the night before. For the next four days, I slept in this oasis and attended a festival called Symbiosis. Joining me were 20,000 other campers.

Symbiosis was my fourth transformation festival. To understand the purpose and ethos of the gathering, I had to think outside the judgment of mainstream humor and YouTube spoofs.

Transformational festivals including Symbiosis are different than music festivals such as Coachella or the Electric Daisy Carnival. In fact, music stages are about the only things Symbiosis has in common with those events. Regular music festivals have very few art structures and center around concerts and beer lines. Sponsors are everywhere, trash covers the floor, strangers don’t tend to interact—and there’s no focus on connecting with the natural world.

Symbiosis, like other transformational festivals, is based on living in nature. I got to know most of my neighbors, and some of them will be friends in the future. There was no sale of alcohol. There were no sponsors. Attendees brought their own food and living essentials and were expected to remove their own trash.

The artwork at the festival was so vast that even after four days of walking around, I found new art pieces and structures I had not seen before. Every day, classes were offered, including yoga, meditation, activism and community building. At other transformational festivals, such as Lightning in a Bottle (also based in California), grey water is sprayed on the ground to prevent dust and clean, so fresh water isn’t wasted.

One of the hopes is to bring awareness to living a more conscious lifestyle and if that’s what you’re interested in, “you get exactly what you come for,” said Kae Vogal, a veteran of transformational festivals. This is what makes Symbiosis so special—and so threatening for the status quo.
One of the tents—Hacktivist Village—had leading political hacktivists from around the world. The list of speakers included Paolo Cirio, a cultural critic who espouses values such as open access and has uncovered more than 200,000 offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Other speakers included Noah Swartz and Yan Zhu. Swartz, brother of the late internet pioneer and political activist Aaron Swartz, works on software such as Privacy Badger, which blocks spying ads and invisible online tracking. Zhu works on security tools such as Tor, SecureDrop, Let’s Encrypt and HTTPS Everywhere. The events at Hacktivist Village one day were in honor of Chelsea Manning.

Presenters at the festival also included Vandana Shiva and Brian Wallace, who exposed the world of corrupt farming and outlined how to live without relying on the food industry. They explained how they work and fight for fair-trade farm deals, and they described their experiences battling corporate powers such as Monsanto. Shiva ended her talk by saying, “They feel they can bury us underground and that we will go away. What they forget is that we are seeds.” Other topics ranged from solutions for climate change to the economic policies that created the 2008 collapse.

A fire circle featured people sitting next to a huge sign that called for solidarity with the Native Americans at Standing Rock. Only one flyer was distributed during the entire festival, on the drive out. It solicited donations for the Standing Rock protesters.

I felt at home. As a millennial who has become disenfranchised with the political landscape, Symbiosis presented a ray of hope. Sure, some people came just to party, take drugs and act foolish in a beautiful natural setting. But that’s no reason to deny the potential of a growing movement.

I don’t know whether an anti-corporate movement as powerful as Occupy or the Vietnam protests will develop. However, if one does, some of the seeds will be planted by the experiences and people at transformation festivals.

Not everyone is a fan of these events. Some pundits on the right and left ridicule them, refusing to look at their purpose or outcome. “I don’t want to go to Burning Man ’cause I like to shower,” said Ana Kasparian of “The Young Turks.” Kasparian claimed that if Burning Man (which espouses many of the same views and philosophies as Symbiosis) believes in radical inclusion, it should even include corporations such as Quiznos.

Another critique of transformational festivals is that the rich and the bourgeois have hijacked them. Because of this, detractors say, there is no real value to these events. Many of the same attacks were used against the privileged white during the hippie movement of the 1960s.

At Symbiosis, there was virtually no separation between rich and poor. Some people paid money for tents to be built beforehand or came in RVs, but except for having nicer living quarters, those festival-goers shared the same experience as everyone else. There was no VIP access or special area where they could stay and the rest couldn’t.

Anyone searching for activist initiatives, a feeling of community and information about how to live outside corporate mainstream culture can find all this—plus more—at transformational festivals. For others who want to party, listen to music, dress in costumes and see art, they will also find what they seek. By the end of my four days, I found that both have validity.

Related Entries

• September 20, 2016 The Ugly Truth Behind Apple’s New iPhone 7
• September 17, 2016 Information or Disinformation? Only 32 Percent of Americans Trust the Media