About giving its place back to localism
ABOUT SERIES
Surfing might be one of the toughest sport cultures to be a part of. Belonging to your local surfing community takes time, skill and sacrifice and the rights you earn in one place don’t transfer to the other. Every place you go to becomes a new journey of gaining the respect and acceptance of the people that precede the line-up.
In a time where society increasingly demands inclusion for the sake of inclusion, localism is furiously criticized as a toxic behavior, and while we should agree that violence and blatant disrespect shouldn’t be part of the interactions of a healthy society, the core guidelines that rule localism are inherent parts of any culture and tribe.
Every culture, no matter how small, has a hierarchy usually preceded by a selected few that through experience and knowledge have come to gain the respect of their community, earning the right to make decisions when needed.
Rituals and rites of passage are at the core of most tribes, a set of skills and abilities separate the girls from the women and the boys from the men. Those that feel ready, prove their skill to the community through a series of challenges and tasks, the ones who succeed earn the respect of their peers and those who fail will need to prepare again to prove themselves at a later time.
Rivalry and competition have always been present between tribes and defending territory has historically been one of the main components of dispute. Failing to stablish presence as custodians of a space meant the loss of your place to others, be it by wit or force, this lesson has been well documented over time.
In a reality driven by survival, failing to display some of these behaviors would endanger the safety and prosperity of a community and lacking to have the right knowledge, the right people or the right attitude was of grave consequence. Surfing is not about survival and our society is far from being guided by this need, but we can still see that places where these inherent parts of culture lack, seem to be ruled by instability and chaotic dynamics.
Is no casualty that places where localism is most enforced are also the places we revere as having the strongest surf cultures, cultures where surfing is so engrained in society that all the above-mentioned characteristics are heavily guarded by their members.
With surfing every day being more a mainstream sport than a lifestyle, the culture of surfing and the culture the line-up is losing its place to a new crowd taught to be more obsessed with just performance and technique. Fast tracking people through surfing seems to be the new norm as more and more surf schools teach their students just enough skills to ensure they get their Instagram post. Beginners are instructed to “do the right pop up”, “do the right arm movement”, “have the right hip position” then thrown in the water where their minds zero in on following their lesson, completely disregarding everything that’s going on around them, a behavior that seems to become the standard as they continue to progress.
People that learned to surf on their own can probably attest to an entirely different experience, one where you’re so overtaken by what’s around you, that understanding the ocean and the line-up takes priority and the knowledge of your surroundings grows hand in hand with your skill level. It’s a slower progress…yes, a scarier one… yes, but one that leads to people experiencing surfing not just as a physical activity but as something far more complex.
Creating blueprints for people to learn surfing faster or understand how to surf better is not inherently a bad thing, what seems wrong is creating blueprints that make personal performance and technique the single lesson, subtracting the other elements that actually make surfing what surfing is. Granting space for new people to experience surfing is not a bad thing, what seems wrong is granting space for people who don’t care about understanding or sharing the culture. This might be about surfing, but this last point usually holds true for any culture and subculture that wishes to preserve its values.
To grant instant inclusion into cultures is to rob them of their essence and un-recognize the people that have earn their places. Localism is surf culture and if you truly see what’s going on around you, you’ll find that there is respect, one that is unspoken and silently agreed, one that has taken time and dedication, and if you’re not willing to understand how its earned, then you shouldn’t expect a rightful place in the line-up.