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Re:At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another by ahlatimer on Thursday August 21, 2014 @12:18AM (#8205918)
I wonder if they picked that name ironically. Sherpas are probably best known for being porters and guides for Mt. Everest, a mountain that many in the mountaineering community consider to be, now, a playground for the rich.
Re:At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another by jmduke on Thursday August 21, 2014 @12:30AM (#8205937)
Because I never get tired of this fun fact: the Sherpa people have a great tradition of building new homes as a community whenever a marriage occurs, as Sherpa families generally are quite large and live together until such marriages occur. This is generally a pretty intense process, since the culture has a huge emphasis on household deities and that kind of thing [^1], so houses (and land in general) is a big deal.

I'm not saying that being a professional mountain climber isn't super impressive, I'm just saying that if there was only one thing we could steal from their culture I wish it was less about making it easier to reach high elevations and more about building things together that last decades.

[^1]: I don't mean to be dismissive, I just don't know that much about their religious beliefs.