You'll get a good run on that one Ron.
Surreal irony to be defending surfing on a website (inappropriately and unintentionally comically) titled RealSurf. Such is the peculiar reality of the day when truth wears the garb of criminality and is called on to defend itself; to horrifically mangle a great Camus quote.*
Surfing isn't unique, as it's adherents would like to believe, in inflaming the passions of man and becoming something of a ruling idea: at worst a tyrant which demands the slavish devotion of an everlasting infant, at best a unifying principle that leads to greater meaning through the deep and visceral engagement with universal natural forces and the acquisition and mastery of complex skill sets that enhance that engagement. But one finds that human desire intellectually anywhere in the natural sciences and physically anywhere in any activity that brings meaning and identity. For eg pigeon racing, bushwalking, mountain climbing, fishing, horse-riding, hunting, gardening, mountan-biking, martial arts, road biking, etc etc etc
ad infinitum not to mention Cross-Fit
Every one of those mentioned, as well as countless others, contains within itself the seed, flower and fruit of natural hierarchies, as well as the approbation or otherwise of those on the continuum of the hierarchy. Summed up perfectly by the opening paragraph of Tim Krabbes book on road racing: "Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non Racers.
The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
Noobs, dabblers, weekend warriors, white belts or what have you are lower on the scale; a harsh truth to the ears of modern middle class ideals and realities where money, narcissism and western capitalism's cult of individuality all conspire to produce an attitude of instant entitlement. Such is the modern world.
Surfing has had it's time in the Australian coastal cultural landscape. The zenith was long ago, probably around the time of the first Oil Shocks. The great Urban Reversal is already well underway, the nadir in sight. Cities demand, not deep engagement in the specific, but what Mellinger calls "civil inattention". They require, and produce, well rounded generalists, omnivores. A consuming passion, like surfing, arouses pity amongst these good folk. Social media, devices and the demands they make as well as middle class requirements for kids to be hyper-educated and supervised encroach on the free time necessary to master something as complex as surfing. Late starting beginners scramble on surfing's steep scree slope with low level lungs, occasionally glimpsing higher peaks and even experiencing giddy rushes of achievement from the vistas below. Or else they doggie paddle in the kiddies pool. But eventually the lack of dignity involved or the unrewarded effort, or just the sheer lack of suitability or resource limitation sends most of them back to the safety of other activities. And they have so many to choose from! The table is bountiful and packed with delicious meals which never end. No need to wait under the table for the odd crumb to fall.
The future is already visible in most Australian line-ups, and has been the new normal for ten years plus in the states. A great mass of lowly skilled beginners and intermediates and smaller and smaller crew of, to use the term ironically, "elites".
These are value judgements. There's no escaping them. It's an essential and inescapable part of being human. The notion that humans can somehow be in the world, interact with other humans, with the natural world without judgement is a fantasy, a function of the "therapy" speak and language which has infected modern discourse, a replacement for the magical thinking of religion.
I like this wine and not that wine, I choose this or that, I notice this and don't notice that. All judgements. The function of the mind, consciousness is judgement. We don't see things objectively. We parse reality through the lens of our perspective. All truth is subjective.
Tonks stated reason that he didn't want to chase waves because he found the people who did not 'well rounded" is a judgement.
Boo's call that he found people who chased their passion deserving of pity is a judgement.
Everything Carroll has ever written is a judgement, even more the things he decided not to write about.
I really couldn't give a shitt whether someone is good at surfing or not. In the end it's way of being in the world. I have respect and admiration for those who have expanded that being to it's fullest dimensions. But there are many other ways and means of that.
Pitiable? Shitty life choices?
When I look at the ones I know and have known: Greenough, Ian Cohen, Chris Brock,Kidman, Derek Hynd, Carroll, Peter Troy, Owl Chapman, I see a richness of experience, not a deficit, even if something in them is broken, or unhealed, or unwholesome. They chose an authentic version of themselves and had the courage to follow it to it's conclusions and in the end that's about all a human being can do amidst the bleak absurdity of a Universe wholly indifferent to our existence.
*"One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.
Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge. (Albert Camus on 'The Rebel')
Out of line? I'll give you out of line.
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