Surfer gets barrelled; Fundamentalist says his prayers. Both feel something that challenges the soul.
Little did you know, but that bearded Arab hiding behind a sand dune with his rocket propelled grenade aimed squarely at your Qantas flight to Bali is actually your bro. Oh sure, he hates your guts and you hate his (especially after Lindt, after Charlie Hebdo, Bali, Madrid, Bali again and New York), but that’s just because you don’t know each other.
So, everybody extend hands… it’s time to meet.
Why surf? Every time you wax your board and paddle out, you kick the dominant Western ideology in the balls. Not the theoretical principles of individuality, freedom and happiness but the actual principles of work, cubicles and fluorescent lighting. Surfing is not about making money and it’s not about being efficient.
Frankly, it’s a fucking waste of time and money. It demands your heart and energy for an idea and a feeling that can’t be explained in any rational way to those who don’t surf. It’s about stoke, which can’t be bought, sold or traded on the international markets (unless you’re talking about the Stoke Exchange).
Surfing is an alternative discourse which asserts, “You bitches can make all the efficient capital you want. Go ahead and keep the Ikea furniture stacking up in your suburban homes, Landrover Discoverys needing baths and one billion overtime hours worked last week. I’m going to the fucking beach.”
Why back an Islamic fundamentalist revolution? Every time Mr. Beard-o Jihad goes to the mosque and takes his religion seriously enough to put it before financial upward mobility, he kicks the dominant Western ideology in the balls. These fellas don’t hate freedom or life. They do hate the reality of a soulless economic system that denies there is any more to it all than making capital in the most efficient way possible while destroying countless lives and claiming that it’s really a more evolved way to exist. Radical Islamic fundamentalism is an alternative discourse which asserts, “Try as you might by shoving McDonald’s down my throat, driving your bling bling Lexus over my family and putting me to work bottling delicious Coca-Cola for one penny a year. I will not repent for believing there is more to life than making efficient dollars, pounds and euros for you and/or your fat-ass bosses.”
You may think that Islamic fundamentalism is austere and hateful. Fundy-bro may think that you are frivolous and shallow. What you feel about each other – or each other’s tactics – doesn’t matter. In truth, surfers and fundies are both part of a broader revolutionary discourse, which percolates under the surface of capital-driven humanity. People wake up, drive to work, drive home, go to sleep and die, lost to any genuine feeling. Surfer gets barrelled; Fundy says his prayers. Both feel something that challenges the soul.
Surfer and Islamic fundy: side by side, lockstep, in conflict against a piece of shit dominant ideology that denies what’s important, the very essence of life, for a measly dollar.
Skip work, paddle out, punt an air, flip off the fucking man and know that in the hills of Afghanistan Mullah Mohammed Omar is flipping him off too.