Forces of Nature vs Abstractions of Man
Nearly every religion foretells the same story: Once upon a time, a great civilization of humanity on earth became corrupted by their self-created vanities and dramas that they pushed their own society to extinction through a great apocolypse, the rapture, the "end of the world," or at least end of the world as we know it - and just a few survivors (think Noah and the great flood) were left to restart society from the precious wisdom they were able to preserve and pass on.
It’s an age old story, told earth-wide, transcending language, religion and culture.
It’s my thesis that this is the story of humanity, and there is a lesson to be learned from it, which sort of explains the nature of life itself: the human drama of politics, economics, status, wars, our highly perfected lifestyles of modern convenience - nature doesn’t give a fuck!
Does a wave care how pretty a surfer’s board is or how much or little other humans may think of him? No. Nature doesn’t care.
Life - real life - is both subatomic and intergalactic. Life is going on in the vast universe of organisms that live just within our blood. There are entire societies of life existing within the microbiomes of our mouths, stomachs, and in our asses.
Not just us. Our pets - our dogs, cats, fish, parrots and ferrets all have millions of species living just within them. We are all part of the great food chain of life extending beyond our own planet, beyond our own solar system.
Do the ant colonies know about global warming? Is the queen bee addressing the possibility and consequences of human nuclear war to her hive? Do they have a plan for it? Almost certainly they are fighting their own wars with other colonies over valuable resources essential to sustaining their own existence.
My point is: the all-important forces that drive us to war, those things we value to power our industries which allow us to focus on: convenience, sex, power, money, social status, accomplishments and achievements and the glorious conveniences of modern technology - they mean nothing to nature. The waves don’t care.
The End Of The World
And eventually, what will come is a wave. A wave of energy from outer space - intergalactic forces - will shut the power down on our precious electronics. Our precious batteries will no longer function, all our phones will turn off, and all our refridgerators, and all our gas pumps, and all our charging stations, our solar batteries too. Everything electronic. It will all be due to some energy wave from outer space, from the planets moving, or the sun moving - or we will more likely cause it ourselves by doing something to try to alter nature (to move the planet, or to change the weather, or to power our electronics-driven lives, or to 'defend ourselves' by sending nuclear bombs to outerspace) that we will effectively destroy human civilization to the point that we will have to start over from scratch.
Not only do I believe we shouldn’t do anything about it, I actually think there isn’t anything for us to do about it. In fact, all our efforts to "advance" life or "improve" life are largely responsible for the disharmony with life described in the paragraph above.
Quite simply, the greater tapestry of life in which we are all a part as species in nature, that is the point of life - not our human drama, not the things we value as a society or a civilization. Life, thankfully, is way more precious, more special, and more wise than mere humanity.
Just as the ocean drowns even the most accomplished swimmers, nature drowns even the most advanced societies. I believe, if anything, life is best lived (and died) in harmony with the rhythms and waves of nature. Arguably, that is the only way to actually live. And that’s why I believe a wave of nature (a wave of light, or a wave of sound, or a wave of electromagnetic energy, or a wave of heat, a wave of nature’s great power by the name of a solar flare or some other such phenomena) will eventually wipe-out the society and 'advancement' and electronic solutions so many of us worship as our God. God, the force and source of all life, oversees and transcends any other power we may worship. All “false gods” are defeated and their followers live shallow lives of misery.
I feel I am living in a society that worships electronics, worships sex, worships entertainment, worships science over nature, worships science over art, worships financial wealth over spiritual wealth, worships the synthetic over the natural, worships prescription drug solutions instead of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and physical, mental, and spiritual activity.
Surfing
I feel the things most celebrated and talked about in our great “civilization” - they don’t matter to the wave.
In surfing, all that matters is that you are in harmony with the wave. That’s it. If you’re in harmony with the wave, the water will push you. That’s paddling in, getting in tempo with the waves speed and angle, then the wave picks you up. And with balance (another word for harmony) you can stand, you can steer, you can stay within the pocket of the wave, you can shoot tube, you can walk on your longboard and hang ten, or you can cut a bottom turn and pop an aerial on a short board, or you can just riiiiiiide, smooth and easy.
I feel the society and civilization in which I live, which I believe (since the industrial revolution) is (and has been) run by multinational corporations and global banks financing/influencing/corrupting elections and oligarchies have no intention whatsoever of harmonizing with nature. Quite simply, those games weren’t built around those values. Those games were built around what the Rastafari people refer to as the ‘Babylon System’ of commercialization, investment banking, the promise of retirement investment plans, the blind profit seeking of corporatization and the lack of ethics its spreads down to the doings of individuals to one another.
Put simply, I believe our society and civilaztion are just out of harmony with nature as they ever been in human history. Will I or people of my generation live to see the apolocypse or the rapture? I do not and cannot know. But I do believe every society eventually reaches the point that it is so out of harmony with nature that the big wave comes and wipes it out.
The High Tides of Life
So my belief is that life is best lived in harmony with the great universal and subatomic life force that is God, not because it prevents the big waves, or allows us to live forever, but because it allows us to ride out the big waves, and to pass on as we should, our egos fading into nothing as our bodies decompose and rejoin the great intergalactic subatomic life force bound back for outerspace. My intention is to live in harmony with God, in zen, to run my life that way, in business, with my employees, in how we serve our customers and community, in how l paddle out into the ocean and into life everyday.
That’s one thing I like about surfing, and about cannabis, and about mushrooms, and about old books on philosophy - I feel like they all are paths toward the that same ethos; they are all about harmonizing the mind and body and spirit with the greater waves of nature. And that’s why I write for HighTides Journal. That’s actually why this is called the HighTides Journal - because we’re riding the tides, and celebrating the high points of human existence.
May the force be with you. And may you do whatever necessary to harmonize with the waves and ride the tides. From my limited experience as just one person living one life on this giant planet full of humans, I say living by principles of nature and philosophies derived of them is worth the cost. Because in the end, our electronics, our accomplishments, the great achievements of man, they don’t matter to the wave. And the most joyous way to be alive is to be surfing the wave, appreciating the blessing, enjoying and expressing oneself, alone or with friends and family!
Agree 💯