“Get yours, fuck the haters, and let the devil take the hindmost–this is Hobbes’ view of humanity.” Photo: Patrick “Tupat” Eichstaedt
I go to Wilmington, North Carolina, once or twice a year to visit my parents. When I’m there, I try to get in a session or two at the south end of Wrightsville Beach, near Crystal pier. If there is any swell at all, I can usually count on seeing a local guy who has been around for about as long as I can remember. He’s originally from Hawaii and although he’s been in Wilmington for years, he retains a bit of the islands in his accent. During the summers, he’s often hanging around the beach, teaching surf classes to young kids and sneaking out into the lineup for a wave or two any time the Nor’easters start blowing. He’s quite a dude. Of all the people I’ve surfed with, I can’t ever recall seeing anyone as friendly in the water. He seems to know regulars and neophytes alike and is happy to sit and chat with anyone between sets. In the self-consciously grave atmosphere of the lineup, his booming laugh seems like a reminder of some lost age or place.
More than ten years ago, I was paddling out on a decent-sized day at Crystal Pier when my Hawaiian friend started to paddle for a wave on the outside. There was another guy paddling on his inside who appeared unaware that he would be dropping in if he went. I watched in horror as this sloppy, oblivious surfer dropped in on my friend and lurched to his feet. As I paddled over the shoulder and looked back expecting to see anger and confrontation, my friend began to encourage the guy that was burning him, shouting and hooting him on until they both kicked out and shared a laugh. To date, I have never witnessed anyone else, anywhere, at any time cheer for a complete stranger in the process of burning him. I certainly haven’t ever done it. It requires a mindset that is perversely at odds with the self-interested ethos of the modern lineup which is as close of a depiction of pure anarchy as exists in the 21st century.
“Anarchy” is the key term today because it points to the deep link between modern surfing and the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Yes, I know, political philosophy a bit much over your morning coffee. But let’s dabble for a second: Hobbes and his Leviathan, the patron saint of poli-sci 101 and his gospel of self-interest. Drastically ahead of its time when it was published in 1651, The Leviathan has become one of the founding texts of our capitalist age. Like most enduring prescriptive texts, it’s pointedly vague, allowing readers to pull a range of conclusions from it, but the heart of the argument is that everyone is a mutual threat to everyone else because we all desire varying amounts power and are all roughly equal in our abilities to get it.
“…if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavor to destroy or subdue one another.”
Get yours, fuck the haters, and let the devil take the hindmost–this is Hobbes’ view of humanity. Coincidentally, there is probably no better philosophical description of the modern, crowded surfing lineup than the section of the Leviathan containing the above quote. It’s chapter 8, “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning their Felicity and Misery.” Take fifteen minutes and give it a read.
Power in most lineups is measured in wave count and it’s guarded zealously by the most able, unencumbered by any higher regulatory power or authority besides their consciences. The hierarchy established by this is skewed more towards brawn than brains. Fit and aggressive young men sit at the apex, followed closely by the aging locals growing soft around the middle; youngsters on the come-up nip at their heels. Then come the youthful but physically ungifted, then the women of all ages, and finally the weekend warriors and dilettantes. The only thing that can make up for lack of physical prowess is guile, or what Hobbes calls “machination.”
In Hobbes and in surfing, there isn’t much compassion for the less able. Youngsters are taught from a very young age that the only way to get waves is by taking them. In this supposedly egalitarian, non-competitive activity, the only way to actually participate is by outwitting and/or out-paddling everyone else in the water. Free market, baby.
Hobbes’ solution to the state of nature is The Commonwealth–a system of social contract that, instead of trying to counteract human self interest, embraces it and uses the mutual threat of predation to force people into a sort of grand prisoners’ dilemma. It’s still about getting yours, fucking the haters and letting the devil take the hindmost, but with a thin skein of taxes, police, and inheritance laws to counteract the most blatant thievery. In a world where everyone is trying to fuck over everyone, there is a certain twisted security in turning your adversaries into your business partners. The really troubling thing about the Commonwealth is that it isn’t based on rights, it’s based on power. Put another way, you aren’t entitled to anything, but whatever you own or rightfully acquire will be protected by the governing power. So it is in the lineup.
What Hobbes never envisioned, or perhaps couldn’t have envisioned, was that his ideology didn’t lead away up and away from the state of nature, but right back into it. As our world groans under the predations of financial institutions gone wild, calcified and exploitative class structures and entire societies weighted to ensure that only the wealthy can count on ever retiring, we find that the state of nature and the state of shared interests look suspiciously similar. In such a place as this, the rules eventually lose their authority and dropping in on your fellow man is as good an option as any. Hell, you know he’ll do the same to you when the time comes. Best get yours while the getting is good.
But there is a third way. The lineup could be a community based on rights instead of one based on power. Every surfer could be entitled to a wave or two. Every surfer could be entitled to a bit of fun. It might even mean sharing some waves. Even as I write that, it sounds disgustingly utopian–a positive copout tacked onto the end of a thousand words pointing to some final debased state of pure pandemonium. But what other option is there besides a radical change in outlook from the darwinistic, narcissistic, one-wave-one-surfer model to something a little more egalitarian? Look at Trestles, Far Rockaway, Snapper, or God help us, Pipeline – those places are what every lineup will look like sooner than later. You can move to the ends of the earth, but that is only a stopgap. When the lineups are all full–and they will be soon enough–they will either be ruled by a tyranny of thieves, or maybe, just maybe, something with a slightly more communitarian mindset. The main thing keeping us from a more positive alternative is the rampant miserliness of this self-obsessed age. Counteracting that is not a question of when you should or shouldn’t burn your fellow surfer, but how you react when he or she burns you.
