A World of Contrasts
“Yeah, we spent like $7,000 on ice cubes…” said the Spotify employee as I was led into one of their extravagant parties last year. The irony was lost on her — they are far more generous when it comes to parties than when it comes to artists, the pay rate being around $0.003 per streamed song. The figure was a stark reminder of the kind of dough that flows freely in certain industries — tech, finance, weapons — and how little of it there is to go around in the noble pursuits of music, art, literature, and surf culture.
Why is that? I’m not the Almighty One, I cannot say definitively. All I can do is offer some musings…it’s funny how riding out a tropical storm in Fiji can make you sit and ponder just how — and why — we got here.
By ‘here’, I mean 2026 and the poly-crises we humans face: record high armed conflicts (Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Sudan, Yemen), food insecurity, declining humanitarian funding, water shortages, housing shortages, and severe financial inequality. All of this is underwritten by a volatile climate and shadowed by an imminent AI revolution that could leave us all without jobs… or possibly even wiped out as a species entirely.
What a time to be alive. It helps to believe that, at some point in space-time, we chose this. It also helps, at least in some regard, to be a .
Embracing the Practice of Surfing
Yeah, yeah, yeah: crowds suck, good waves are rare, or expensive to reach, and there can be an overall feeling of diminishing returns — but that is the wrong attitude. Surfing is not to be viewed as a publicly traded company — there is no such thing as unlimited growth — it is a practice. No one is forcing you to get better and, ultimately, nobody cares if you do. It is for you, and you alone, to revel in the triumphs and tribulations.
Let’s zoom out for a second and return to the bigger picture.
To trace the current situation back to its roots and, in the process, try and untangle the multiple threads of this crazy tapestry that is our current reality, we must go back to the Victorian Era. Beginning with the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837, lasting until 1901, it was defined by the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the British Empire. To put it simply, it was a gnarly time.
Q: What about the native peoples around the world, their ancient traditions, and the harmony with which they lived amongst their environment?
A: Forget about them — have you even seen the Dow?!
Yes, it was then, in London, that the powers that be deemed that the modern man was far superior to all other peoples and that it was their duty to spread civilization to “savages” around the globe.
Now, it should be noted that London in the 1800s was, if anything, the most savage place on Earth. As the first city to reach a population of 1 million, and home to radical inequality that left the poor fighting for scraps and the wealthy living in mansions, it was home to terrible pollution due to the coal-fueled industry that was rapidly taking the world by storm.
It was also at this time that the value of the ocean and sunshine were recognized and realized by the elite — “sea bathing” and coastal holidays were prescribed as remedies for the general poor wellbeing of Londoners. Nothing like escaping the dread of the city for some fine ocean breeze and a hit of vitamin D.
Ironically, it was around this time that Calvinist missionaries from New England were attempting to erase surfing from the map. God bless the Hawaiians who demonstrated resistance and defiance and maintained their practice of He’e Nalu (surfing). Then, as now, they recognized that surfing is far more than a sport to be commercialized — it is a recognition of the ocean as a sacred space.
Unsurprisingly, not long after The Duke introduced surfing to the world, the industrial spin of surfing began and nearly reduced it to a pursuit reserved for privileged men alone. Those forces still exist, perpetuated by those who think that paradise is something that can be bought and sold. But nature keeps its own ledger. The arrogance of empire, the ignorance of industry, the assumption that the world exists to be exploited — all of it eventually meets a reckoning that no amount of money or power can buy its way out of.
The ocean doesn’t know what you make, and it doesn’t care. Neither should you. There’s a lot wrong with the world, and most of it is above any one person’s pay grade to fix. But awareness matters. Kindness matters. Gratitude matters. The ocean has a way of reminding you of all three — if you let it. The rest has a way of sorting itself out.
Related: Cutting Edge: Lucas Lecacheur’s Violent Eye and “Perfect Designs”
