At a burn, there are usually tasks that someone thinks ought to get done, but that they don’t want to or aren’t able to do themselves. Picking up MOOP (Matter Out Of Place, also known as trash) is a common one. It seems like there is always the temptation to encourage desired behavior with rewards, but I  worry. In my fantasy world, the people at a burn would pick up MOOP because they believed in the principle of LNT, not because they wanted a cold drink. The person giving out the drink would do so because they wanted to express the principle of gifting, not because they wanted to get people to do something that they wouldn’t otherwise have done. Wait a minute! Burns are my fantasy world!

On some level, I feel like exchanging presents for work at a burn taints both the present and the work. I have the same uncomfortable feeling when theme camps want to give organizers cutsies in the food line, or a while back when somebody was talking about giving coffee mugs to people who volunteer. God damn it, organizing Alchemy is my vacation! I love being a board member. I love being a ranger. Thanking me for those things would be like giving me a slice of pizza and then thanking me for eating it. I just want to say, “No! Thank you for the pizza! It was delicious! Do you have any more?!” Rewarding me for eating delicious pizza that you gave me just feels weird.

Have I gotten special treatment because I help organize a burn? Sure. Last year, team leads were all given a unique piece of schwag. I don’t have a problem with people gifting to whomever they want to gift to. Where I start to feel wierd is when I hear people say, “Not enough people are volunteering to do X, so let’s set up an incentive in the form of a privilege or reward.” My ideal would be for people’s first motivation to be the love of the act, and if they get privileges or rewards as a result of that, all the better. But if people need to be incentivized, then that pretty much means that their first motivation is the incentive, and not the love of the act, and I’m not sure I want to encourage that type of interaction at my burn.

At this point, you are probably thinking, “Yeah right. Like people are going to pick up trash because they ‘love it’.” I get that. Picking up trash isn’t my favorite thing to do, but I can see how acting on the principle of LNT results in things that I do love. For example, we have gotten nothing but positive comments from the people who own and live on the land that we rent for Alchemy, and LNT is part of that. We’re leaving an impression of burners as, “Those people who put on an awesome party and clean up the land when they’re done!” That’s the kind of thing that I really love.

My philosophy is that when there is a task that people don’t want to do, the way to motivate them is to inform them of the effect of doing the task and not doing the task. If, with that information in hand, they still don’t want to do the task, then the right thing to do is to allow the task not to get done, and allow them to experience the outcome of not doing it. This allows people to be fully responsible for their own experience. If you’re going around doing things for people that you think need to get done when you’d really rather they be doing it for themselves, then you’re denying them the opportunity to take responsibility for their own experience, which isn’t doing them or you any favors.

For more on the effect of rewards and external incentives, check out Punished By Rewards, by Alfie Kohn.