But the mix of Krishnas, yoga, story telling, women and men’s groups, yoni steaming, salsa and circle dancing, cricket, Celtic animism, conservation, camping and kids, makes that shared ideology hard to pin down. That said, there’s a lot of hugging and no theft or unpleasantness, so perhaps Rainbow gatherings exemplify how, for all our differences, it is possible for folk to come together in peace, harmony, freedom and respect.
Something that’s stuck with me from Labour club days, is how we don’t behave well when power is concentrated: money’s a good example. Judging by the vehicles in the field, those attending were not wealthy. A week’s full camping ticket was £30/day, in comparison, a ticket for Lattitude (sponsored by Barclaycard) costs £70/day. With Latitude ticket sales estimated by Bard to generate £11.5m in 2023, that festival’s contribution of £100k to “good causes” smacks of green washing. Extrapolating this thought to global politics, I wonder if those living in the Donbas region of Ukraine would be destroying their homes and crops without the sponsorship of Raytheon, BAE et al.
Rainbow can galvanise one’s faith in humanity and inspire different perspectives. With tickets limited to around three hundred, it’s small enough to foster relationships and a sense of community. The anthropocene era may be short lived as we rush to embrace AI and a cyborg future (justified by “well if we don’t do it first, China or Russia will”), but it’s nevertheless damaged the Earth’s diversity and fertility.
I believe we can live in peace, nurture, and evolve how Yin and Yang work together.
I believe we can enjoy life without being a scourge upon each other and the planet.
And if these views are inspired by camping in a field for a week, then that seems like £230 well spent.
The purpose of life is not to live it more quickly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Looking forward to next year already and in the meantime I’ll try and pin down that shared ideology –
third age, new age hippydom without the psychedelics or soundtrack?
Something about boys 