CSC Profile: Norva Bennett

I have wanted to do CSC profiles for a long time, but just like everything else, too much surfing got in the way of my productivity. “If you’re working in the business, you’re not working on the business,” is the old saying that Barry Green of Centered Surfing reminded me of the other day when we were on a call about a podcast he’s been working on (and which will feature yours truly — stay tuned). The first CSC profile features Norva Bennett. Norva has been a CSC mainstay. She is fun to work with because she really gets the holistic picture of surfing. By day Norva owns, runs, and practices holistic healing at ShenShuAcupuncture. Here’s an interview I did with her this week:

D: What brought you to surfing? How long was surfing on your radar and what pushed you over the edge to make it a part of your lifestyle? 

N: I have always loved the water. I was the first kid in and last out of any pool or lake. The year I turned 40, I decided to travel for one week every month, to do things I always wanted to. So I did some research and booked a Surf with Amigas trip. I always wanted to learn and finally had the financial ability to do so.

There was this one paddle out on the trip I which I totally messed up the timing and truly was smashed set after set. I had no idea how I was going to make it but I had no choice. The ocean was bigger than me ..... so I had to show up in that very moment completely. That’s when surfing became a part of my heart.

D: What has your practice and progress been like from your perspective? 

N: Well I was never in a sport before, so my progress may be on a bit of the slower side yet I feel I make up for that in the time I put in practicing. There is no finish line I’m working towards. It really just about having fun, getting proficient, and doing something that is just for me. When I’m out in the ocean nothing else matters, I can just be free.

D: What is the thing that you're currently trying to work through the most in your surfing? What is difficult about it? 

N: That’s a tough question, timing I would say. Just getting the timing down and what makes that difficult is that it will just click one day. I can’t force it yet I have to keep going out and surrendering to the process. This makes this difficult because I have to practice patience with myself.  Also New York is so inconsistent . . .

D: Do you supplement your surfing practice with any other kinds of preparation? 

N: Workouts, stretching, visualizing balance boards, yoga. Even bought a long board skateboard which has been fun to play with.

D: Who are your favorite surfers to watch videos of or to follow on instagram? What do you like about their surfing? 

N: Lola Mignot — dances with the sea. It’s how I want to surf with ease and grace; Carissa Moore — insert mic drop — because she is just amazing; Giulia Manfrini — between surf and skateboarding she is fun to follow; and Tiara Jones — she is a surfer that does not fit into the normal box. I don’t think she is a professional, just someone being authentic.

D: Do you have a favorite session or trip you have had with CSC? Why was it memorable? 

N: My trips to Costa Rica. Truly everyone equals a huge breakthrough. Literally just practicing everyday, focusing on one thing in every session and then accomplishing it to move on to the next. It’s a magical place.

Norva nailing a bomb in Costa Rica.

D: How do you think body type affects one's surfing progress? Have you come to learn things about how your own body reacts with different boards and waves? 

Body types totally affect surfing. It’s all about weight distribution. I’m a curvy gal, you put me on a nine foot board and someone who weighs 95 pounds on the same board the wave is going to carry us differently. Height and weight to matter as it changes the center of gravity. When we are surfing we are literally balancing ourselves on the wave.

Not only that there is the length of arms/torso/legs. All of this comes into play when learning.

D: Do you have a favorite surf buddy or two? Why do you like surfing with them? 

I do. Surf buddies help motivate you and push yourself to get better. They help you motivate in cold temps to even get in the water, see your progression, have compassion for yourself.

D: Where do you see your surfing in five years? 

N: Well besides being better I just want to keep having fun. Maybe in five years I’ll be able to hang 5. That would be totally fun.

D: Any advice or words of wisdom for other adult beginners? 

N: Remember to just have fun. If surfing was just about popping up on a board everyone would do it. But it’s about so may different dynamics. You have to learn the break, the waves, the wind, your board, keep control over your board, lineups, how to surf with others, the list goes on forever. If you ever feel stuck, surrender to what you’re working on and change you focus.

“No finish line”: just empty lineups!

CSC Is About Community: I Always Remember You

There are many things that people who engage with Conatus have in common: they want to learn to surf “the right way”, they are concerned with how their practice affects others (don’t want to get in the way, hurt others, or hurt self), and they want to connect with other surfers who have a similar mindset. I have always argued that part of what is ‘sustainable’ about the way I mentor people into surfing is the community aspect. Surfing is not a solitary activity — being human is simply not a solitary endeavor. All human endeavors, surfing included, entail other people, and are enhanced when we connect and share with others in a meaningful and intentional manner.

Another common refrain I hear in follow up emails — these are usually far after our first session or group of sessions — is, “You probably don’t remember me, but . . .” Give yourself more credit! I remember everyone! I usually remember the conditions of our session, the particular things you have to work on, and 9.5 times out of 10 I can put a face to your name. On the one hand, I may have something like a photographic memory — back in a former life as a fine dining restaurant server I didn’t write down multi-course orders — and per the Aristotle post, learning languages like Greek and Latin does come a little easier for me. On the other hand, I have a deep respect for anyone that comes to me either to learn to surf from the ground up or to gain new skills in their already established practice. Your dedication to self betterment and your humility in searching after a coach, guide, mentor, philosopher person (whatever you want to call me) are exemplary. So many of you come from interesting walks of life, have different things to work through in your surfing, but the thing that ties you all together is tenacity, focus, and a love of life long learning. All this said, when you email me next time just say, “Hey Dion, it’s ________!” I am always happy to get updates from you and to field questions.

I can’t provide an image of everyone that I have surfed with in the past 6 years, so here is a smattering of stoked CSC crew from 2019/20. Love how these images display a variety of locations and weather scenarios. Nothing stops us! I am working on some posts that feature different students and should have one ready for you soon.

Max Giraldo and I discuss not getting womped by set waves on the best day we had in July 2019.

Kevin Roberts scored the most epic sunset on his first surf in Costa Rica April 2019.

Deb Altman stoked after a scorchingly fun session in Rockaway July 2019.

Karen Ingram and Tracy Obolsky psyched on our call to press go on this evening session August 2019.

Chris Slover and I in NJ, June 2019, just before he made the big move to CA.

Karen Shih and her gorgeous Tyler Warren board on its maiden voyage in Cape Cod April 2019. What you see to the right of her is the memorial for the kid that was eaten by a great white shark while he was boogie boarding in the fall of 2018.

Brant Weil in his ride the lightning suit — he has a pretty close connection to Metallica — fall 2019.

McNair and Mariza, Santa Cruz, CA February 2020.

Zac and I at the start of a great session July 2019.

Sonny, me, Dante G, and Andrew Dolan at the Moss Landing Cafe February 2020.

Me, Soyoup Lee, and Izzie the dog. Rest in peace Izzie!! She was the CSC Costa Rica mascot and will be sorely missed (eaten by a snake unfortunately).

How Spinoza Helps Us Do Away with Mind/Body Dualism and Why We Should Endeavor To Do So

I have been enjoying writing these posts that exhibit how I incorporate my philosophical work into my surfing practice. This — surfing and philosophy — is the topic of my PhD dissertation, which I hope to turn into a book or publish as a book soon after I defend it. I was going to defend it this spring, but due to my health insurance coverage through graduate school, I’m going to wait until the fall so that I have health insurance throughout 2020. Seems like a pretty critical year to have health insurance.

As some may know (from reading the ‘About’ page), the name of this thing I have created — Conatus Surf Club — comes from the philosophy of Benedict (or Baruch or Bento) Spinoza. I dedicate a whole chapter to his theory of the ‘conatus’ and how it pertains to surfing. One of the difficulties I am having in finishing that chapter — I have 4 versions of it so far — is getting tangled up in trying to explain everything about Spinoza’s philosophy. I want to fill out all the nuanced ways in which his ideas intersect and interlock with one another. It’s a classic writing mistake! There really is not a way to cover all the bases, but you can come up with some interesting interpretations. If you’re not satisfied with them down the road because you discovered something new, you can update them to your new understanding.

I find Spinoza’s philosophy interesting for so many reasons, but one of the most pivotal is the way that he collapses any hard and fast distinction we may want to make between the mind and the body. One difficulty, evidenced by what I just wrote, is that this dualism is baked into our way of speaking about what it means to be the kinds of beings that we are. It is simply difficult and near impossible to differentiate between mind and body. What is most therapeutic about this dualism is the way that it makes it easier for us to comprehend our existence, even at the cost of not apprehending reality in all of its intricate depth. Mind/body dualistic thinking has roots in ancient Greek thinking starting with Pythagoras and in Judeo-Christian theology. The Pythagorean formula, “The body is a prison from which the soul desires to escape,” has dominated or insinuated itself in Western thought since at least its first utterance. That it was uttered at all is proof that it preexists Pythagoras and his sect. Plato took up this idea with relish, and to some extent so must have Socrates, in his theory of forms which holds that all things that are are only shadow images of ideal forms that exist on a transcendental plane — the realm of pure ideas outside of the cave. We may still want to inquire into the relationship between the cave — the world of the flesh and body — and the realm of pure ideas — the world of the mind. The hard and fast separation and the need of subjugation of the bodily realm by the mental realm is rooted ultimately in misogynistic and racist thought patterns. These thought patterns are especially insidious because they are ontological and metaphysical at their core. This furthermore means that a majority of the time they operate unconsciously. The basic thought is that the flesh needs to come under the subjugation of the mind. Or that whatever is bodily is necessarily in need of suppression and control. This amounts to a correlation between earth and sky or heaven and the idea of a soul that is more connected to this transcendent or upper realm, which is then distinguished from the material world in which bodies are born, live, and die. In Christian theology, the very notion that “the sins of the flesh” hold the soul back from reaching heaven is emblematic of this division. Hence the premium placed on virginity and celibacy — sex makes you less “pure” because it involves bodily pleasure. So too the idea of original sin in the garden where woman — Eve — and food — the apple — lure man — Adam — to deny god’s commandments. This embeds, even if unconsciously, an alignment between body-woman-food-sex-evil-punishment within the culture that holds such a myth to be foundational for its self understanding.

This bad dichotomy is not just bound to realm of religious or spiritual thought — it has also insinuated itself into scientific thinking (which is evident already in Pythagoras’ use of it). Rene Descartes, of “cogito ergo sum” fame, worked to ensure that the scientific community treats the mind and the body separately from one another. In his Meditations he writes things like: “. . . Our soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body . . .” He used such formulations to prove that this means that we can treat animals, which for him are all body, as if they don’t have souls and thus subject them to mutilations and experiments in the name of science. Spinoza took issue with much of Descartes’ method, and we can say with some confidence that he composes his Ethics with an eye towards overturning the problematic notions of both Cartesian rationalism and Judeo-Christian metaphysics.

Spinoza begins the Ethics with a geometrical proof for the nature and existence of “God” (Deus in the Latin). He wants to get this out of the way at the start since it is the largest question that ties all the other questions together. Following Anselm of Canterbury, for Spinoza “God is that which nothing greater can be thought.” There are multiple ways we can conceive of this “eternal substance”, but he wants us to strive not to think that whatever God is that it does anything with a particular eye to or care of human beings (such interpretations are superstitious, foolish, and lack evidence). We are merely one of its manifestations, as everything else is also a manifestation of it — or in Spinoza’s language everything is a mode or an attribute of what he will later call “God or Nature” — Deus sive Natura. We may also view this eternal substance as an activity: God godding or Nature naturing. We and the world around us are products of this activity — in the Latin we and the world around us are natura naturata — real material things constituted by an eternal process. Already here we can see how this basic natural theology starts to undo a strong distinction between ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’. The other upshot, I hope you can already see, is that it undoes hierarchies of being — we are all in this together, inextricably connected through nature to one another and our world. The philosopher Etienne Balibar calls this a concept of transindividuality.

The second chapter of the Ethics is titled “Of the Nature and the Origin of the Mind”. And guess what? It begins with a definition of the body: “D1: By body I understand a mode that in a certain and determinate way expresses God’s essence insofar as he is considered an extended thing.” “Extension” is a scholastic philosophical term that means literally that — a something that is extended in spacetime. If you’re being you have extension. Just look at your hand. There it is. So it is not mind first that “gives” you being, but extension or being bodily extended in spacetime. This is literally the opposite of Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum.” Extension, furthermore, is necessarily an attribute of the ultimate reality, God or Nature, by virtue of its very existence at all. Again, have a look, listen, smell, or feel around — we exist in a world. Our particular bodies also come equipped with these organs called brains and we perceive that we have thoughts or that we think. For Spinoza this capacity to think must preexist us in the natural world from which and into which we emerge. A mind is a physical/extended thing that thinks. It is affected by its environment, history, and the words and actions of other beings.

It has been a convention in philosophy to call Spinoza’s conception of the interrelation of the mind and the body “parallelism”, but I think this is a misnomer. Things that are parallel run alongside one another and what Spinoza is suggesting is far more radical than this. He is suggesting that the body and the mind — extension and thinking — are completely intertwined, interdependent, and enmeshed with one another. The adage “mind over matter” must be thrown in the trash bin. Instead we may want to phrase it, “Mind with matter, working together in the unified existence that they necessarily entail.”

The ‘conatus’, as the basic drive for continued existence, joy, and homeostasis, can be seen as a principle of unification of these modes of existing. In Chapter 3 Of the Affects, Proposition 7, Spinoza defines the ‘conatus’ as the essence of our existences: “The striving (conatus) by which each thing strives (conatur) to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” And in Proposition 12 he shows how this striving links the body and the mind together: “The mind as far as it can, strives (conatur) to imagine those things that increase or aid the body’s power of acting.” And it is not just us human beings that have this conatus. Everything that nature natures or god gods — all of natura naturata — has a conatus. Waves have conatuses. Sharks too. Trees. Viruses. Everything desires to persist in existing with all of its being. We are particular in our awareness and ability to reflect on this fact. Reflection and imagination, too, are bodily.

Surfing is an exemplary practice that forces us to consider the truth of Spinoza’s claims. It is impossible to separate mental and physical activities from the surfing practice, and in fact one’s surfing improves the more one is able to integrate their reading and judgments of both the ocean waves and their dynamic interrelation with the land vis a vis the bottom topography or bathymetry and the social reality of any given surf spot on any given day. Combine this with an increasing ability to enter and navigate waves successfully and gracefully, and you have the image of a flourishing surfing practice. But there are plenty things that will attempt to thwart the conatus. When a person yells at you for getting in their way that affects your entire system. Fear and anxiety radiate through your limbs, inhibiting physical ability to move more quickly and effectively. Same goes for when you’re looking down the face of a scary wave and every signal in your system communicates a variety of fright/flight responses. This is not a hallucination. Your initial thought that putting yourself into that position with your whole being has the capacity to bring you greater joy — because it will increase your body’s power of acting — is correct. But other parts of your system communicate the idea that if you fail you may die, which goes against every fiber of your being — on the deepest unconscious level you want to continue existing. But overall, you endeavor to exist with ever increasing powers for acting. If you learn to see the wave and enter it, to take time on your entry, and direct your being in different ways down its path, you will increase your powers for acting and for joyful existence. Your example also illumines the path for others to share in this joyful existence.

This concords with Spinoza’s theory of knowledge. He lists three ways that humans come to form knowledge or universal notions: 

1. Opinion or imagination. We get this kind of knowledge from random experience and from simply coming into contact with things (ab experientia vaga). This kind of knowledge forms memories and helps us imagine, but on its own, i.e., w/out reflection, it cannot provide us with certainty. 

2. Reason. Reason comes from common notions and adequate ideas. Does not need to go as far as seeing the common source of all things, but does constitute basic pattern recognition, reflection, and projection of future feeling. 

3. Intuitive scientific knowing. This is the kind of knowing and acting that is able to trace all things back to Deus sive Natura and the interconnectedness of all life. 

We can think about the three kinds of knowledge in the experience of the surfer: 

1. Surfing ab experentia vaga. When you first start surfing there are so many “external objects” affecting your senses for the first time. You see waves breaking but you cannot tell the difference between lefts, rights, and closeouts. You see the ocean and waves but you do not yet recognize patterns in them. You see a surfboard and you have a vague notion of how you’re supposed to paddle it out into the lineup, but you have not yet tried to do it so you’re only relying on your imagination of watching Blue Crush when you were a teenager. You lay down on the board and realize you have no clue what to do with your body. Then you start getting crushed by waves. There is simply too much information bombarding you at once for you to make sense of it. You are going to make bad decisions simply out of ignorance to the common notions that are everywhere around you, but that you cannot yet recognize as such. 

2. Surfing ex notiones communes. You have had more experience, hired a teacher or found a mentor, and learned how to name phenomena that you have been experiencing — waves, peaks, channels, lefts, rights, closeouts. You start recognizing patterns and this makes it easier to navigate the environment. You can accurately guage the possibilities for catching waves in terms of their frequency and the amount of people in the water and their adjacent ability levels. When you make an error of judgment you reflect on the situation and try to see where you went wrong so that the next time something similar should happen you will do the better thing. You can see many other sources of danger and strive to avoid them. You start experiencing more confidence in your practice. You will still have confused ideas, especially as regards your own body and its interactions, and you may still even developed confused notions about your entitlement to the waves and your relationship to others in the water.

3. Surfing as a scientia intuitiva. You have reached the point where all of your actions are informed by a body mind integrity that expresses the understanding that you have of Deus sive Natura. You recognize patterns extremely well through your finely tuned mental-physical memory. Your ability to see waves emerge ahead of time is advanced and for this reason you are not persuaded by waves that will only drain you of energy and thus will not help you add more power and joy to the world. You give waves to others out of your awareness of the eternity of time and your connectedness to all others within this eternity. Even with this kind of knowledge you still err — part of this knowledge is knowing that no matter how hard to try to live virtuously, you will continue to err. You are constituted by striving not by arriving. 

For the fun of it, I wanted to illustrate body/mind integration in surfing with some images. I will start with the image of me about to take off on a wave from this January in CA. I think from the initial image the connectedness of my whole being is evident. I used previous pattern recognition to pick that wave, find the place of entry, and trusted in the capacities I have developed to enter my being into its curving wall. It is of note that I have chose a wave without another human on it — this is a great skill to develop for becoming a surfer with scientia intuitiva. I follow this with images that show potential paths I could take on this wave to show how a surfer with scientia intuitiva uses his past experiences to project real imaginative possibilities into the future. Check it out.

Here I am at the peak, looking down the line, considering possibilities with my whole being. Pic: Richard Mattison.

Here is a potential scenario where I imagine myself doing a top turn, then an end section hit.

Here is a simpler line, which is always an option. Here I would take a mid line and aim for whatever that end section has in store for me.

Here I imagine a roundhouse cutback, where I race to the shoulder, making sure I have plenty of speed and room to do the turn, redirect back to the white water, rebound off it, then aim for the end section.

In this scenario I am considering one big “cut down” maneuver before dealing with the end section. I’d take an angled path, slight bottom turn, then just before I arrive at the lip, I direct the whole board back down the face with just enough force to complete the turn, but not so much force that I skip out.

In the Spinozist spirit this kind of practice isn’t “mind surfing” but instead is conative memory and imagination surfing. Here we simply may want to substitute ‘conatus’ for 'mind/body complex’. Our conatus is our essence, that part of us that endeavors to push ourselves to see and to gain new powers of acting joyfully. We rely of the help and guidance and examples of other conative beings to show us new possibilities. It doesn’t mean that we can all become Italo Ferreira, but it does mean that we can strive to become the best version of ourselves possible. In one of his most famous lines Spinoza writes, “We don’t even know what a body can do.” Ethically speaking, more bodies that realize their integration and connection with other bodies, the better the overall political body is capable of functioning. Surfing, as a human practice, is by nature political, which means that like all political endeavors, it works better the more reflective and imaginative its constituents become. This is what drives the CSC motto “more waves, more joy.”

Obviously there is much I have left unexplained here. I cannot possibly do the entire Ethics justice in one blog post. For this reason I am offering an 8 week seminar on Spinoza on Wednesdays from 7-830 starting April 22nd. To get involved simply email me, order a copy of the Ethics (linked above), and we’ll get started soon. I am also offering private consultations where we can go through similar conative imaginative practices with your own surfing — I will guide you through a “surfing meditation” — so that you can learn to integrate your overall surfing practice into the very fabric of your being. And once we can go back to our usual program of physically distant but socially responsible surfing, you’ll be able to put this into practice. In closing, I want to urge you to keep considering the ways in which your mental and physical state of being is completely intertwined and to resist interpretations that urge you to consider them separately.

Step Inside: Physical Isolation Surfing

As my content of late has revealed, I have been thinking a lot about the ethics of surfing during a pandemic. When I first arrived from Costa Rica and was on quarantine in my room I was in state of extra heightened anxiety and determined that surfing had to be out completely. After 12 days my gills started itching and I was flopping around my room like a fish out of water. I broke down and went for a surf, and it did relieve my stress. Then I wrote the post on Aristotle and Akrasia, coming to the conclusion that whatever you decide to do you need to go through a thoughtful and deliberative rational process in order to justify your actions. In the Aristotelian vein, I have decided to take the middle road and surf in moderation. I have developed rules for myself:

1. Wear a mask when not inside the van or in the water

2. No giving rides to friends or clients (major bummer of Covid times)

3. Limit all conversation, and if I talk to a friend, client, or acquaintance, I do so from a safe distance, preferably both of us wearing masks

4. No stopping for food or coffee — I was already prepared for this as I always bring my own

5. Only surf where I can surf mostly alone — this means a lot of checking around and low expectations — if there are 1-4 people out and it looks like I can keep clear of them, seems acceptable to me — if I can’t find a surfable uncrowded area then I am prepared to drive home or wait in the van and check again

6. If a peak I have decided to surf gets crowded, find another peak or simply go in

7. Have shorter sessions in general — get my wave count in then exit the water to make room for other surfers

8. Pay particular attention to etiquette norms and observe them in a heightened manner, especially because it is not a good idea to talk through any beef you might have with someone in the water

9. If for whatever reason surfing does not feel fun or satisfying/anxiety reducing, go home and stretch, meditate, and write

10. Aim for off windows of time when it may be less crowded

I follow many of these rules — 4., 5., 6., 8., 9. — when surfing not during a pandemic. Because I’m coaching and some of my clients aren’t totally in control of their equipment and wave judgment yet it is imperative that we stay away from other surfers. If you’re going to make mistakes — and if you’re learning anything you’re going to make mistakes — it is crucial that you surf around as few people as possible. When in coaching sessions with me, we practice lineup rotation and turn taking. In pandemic times, this is still possible, except we just need to keep a larger distance now while waiting our turns.

I see the arguments against going surfing altogether right now — the largest proponent of these on Instagram is Santa Cruz pro turned Volcom sales rep, Ken “Skindog” Collins, @skin_dizzle. Santa Cruz has had a bit of surfing crisis since people have been flooding in from “over the hill” — Los Gatos, San Jose, Silicon Valley — to surf while they’re working from home. Many of the spots there have only small take off areas, so in those kinds of situations social distance surfing is simply not possible.

Coaching video session with Brant Weil last week. This is proper isolation surfing. Brant surfed completely alone. We never talked face to face. I filmed the session, edited it at home, and communicated with Brant about his form and wave judgment via texts and email.

With beach breaks we have the advantage of searching for empty peaks and spreading out since the waves do not only break in the same place every time. To those people that feel the absolute need to bunch up at the tips of jetties right now, I get that that is a fun wave right there, but you may want to think about how to space more while waiting your turns. I know that in non-pandemic times people out here have little to no etiquette, so for those of us that want to try to surf a little for sanity and not catch or spread Covid, it’s probably just best to avoid those kinds of people full stop. Forgive for they know not what they do, but stay far away from them as well.

The mask is a must right now. Thanks to Luca for this stylish one! And I’m adjusting my glasses here — all my glasses are prescription and currently stretched out. They fall off my face. Not ideal, but also I can’t get new ones at the moment.

Skinny’s overall logic is sound: if a majority of humans stay home altogether for an extended period of time, the better chance there is of crushing this thing. But I think it’s not just about staying at home — it’s about limiting contact with people who do not live with you. In every case of Covid contraction I have read about, it’s human interaction or touching surfaces, not washing hands, and then touching the face. Staying at home ensures that this stuff doesn’t happen, but I also think that some people are self regulating and self controlled enough to move about — go for the occasional bike ride, run, or surf — without interacting with other humans or touching things, all while wearing the proper protective gear. Saying everyone must stay home is a very cynical view of human nature and also not an economic reality for many — I see road workers still on the grind on my drives to and from the beach. As inessential as some may think a surf coach might be, I am a small business owner and still need to do what I can to stay afloat — this means getting in some coaching versus none. I rely on myself and my clients to be self regulating, self controlled human beings, which is why they hire me in the first place — to get their shit together vis a vis surfing so that they are not a danger to self and others.

No need to surf with other human beings when waves like this are breaking in isolation.

Obviously we do not have enough room at our beaches should everyone decide to go surfing right now, which is again why I want to emphasize moderation. Limit expectations. Have shorter sessions. And turn around and go home (with your mask on) if it’s just too crowded. Sorry that other people are ruining the fun you might have, but you’re doing the right thing by taking precautions and not opening yourself up to infection or contagion.

I must say, however, that complete anti-social surfing is less fun. I miss riding out in the van and having conversations and rocking out to music with my friends and clients, which is why I made the above video. I made it for two other reasons: 1. To share some music with you; 2. To show how it is possible to get from home to car to beach to car to home again without coming into contact with other human beings. In all of those “to’s” we’re talking about a 1-2 block walk with a mask on. Big ups to my client, Luca Ackerman, for sewing me the mask worn in the vid! If you like the music you hear go follow me on Spotify: Doctor Dion. This playlist is called Obsessions. I am into goth, new wave, and ambient music. I used to DJ in goth clubs — I had a night in SF called Ceremony and one here in NY called Natura Morte. Part of my quarantine work out regime has been goth dancing alone in my living room at the end of the night. I know I don’t have the most gothic aesthetic but I love the music and the dancing style, and really appreciate how members of that subculture commit to their look.

Feel free to follow me on Spotify (I don’t have any followers yet lol)!

While it remains impossible for me to coach at the volume I have been pre-Covid, I am available. We need to establish a dialog via phone, text, and email in order to determine the proper course. I am developing a few online workshops and seminars, which I’ll announce in upcoming newsletters. In closing, moderation, caution, conscientiousness, joy, and sharing from distance are the keys to surviving this thing. I was careful here not to say “in order to to keep us healthy in mind and body” because in Friday’s post I will talk about how we need to do away with mind/body dualistic thinking altogether. Stay tuned!!!

SURF VIDEO HOMEWORK: GET ON IT

As I wrote in the last newsletter (sign up below if you haven't yet), I am at the point where student vids stoke me out more than highly produced surf movies. I like seeing the gritty parts of learning surfing because I am obsessed with figuring out common issues and better articulating how to work through them. But before I came to this phase in my own practice I was an obsessive surf video watcher. If you know me, you know that I am just kind of obsessive in general. From the age of about 8 years old I’d watch everything surfing related on TV: Gidget, Ride the Wild Surf, Surf Nazis Must Die, Beach Blanket Bingo, Back to the Beach, North Shore, Big Wednesday, Point Break, and the ESPN coverage (way after the fact) of what was then the ASP World Tour (now the WSL). The Hollywood surf films are pretty corny, but they’re worth a watch to get a handle on surfing’s cultural history, which is something I always recommend!

Bali High was on high rotation in the Mattison household throughout the 1980s. Hard to find on the inter webs as of now.

My dad had a few 1970s surf movies hanging around, the most pivotal one for me was Bali High (1978), which was made by his good friend Steve Spaulding. When I was 13 my uncle, Ted Satterthwaite, gifted me Ripcurl’s The Search (can’t find it anywhere on the inter webs), and that would change my surfing forever. The next summer my mom lived in Stinson Beach down the street from an ice cream/video store called Odyssey. They stocked all the shred flicks by Tony Roberts and Josh Pomer of the Northern Californian (mostly Santa Cruz) pros shredding our local waves. Friends at the beach would burn VHS tapes and share them around too. Then Dvds came out and I had quite the surf video collection. I’d watch 2-4 surf videos a day, and watch some of my favorites — Litmus, The Search, Bunyip Dreaming — multiple times a day. This lasted well into my 20s.

The original Jack McCoy trilogy was a staple of my 1990s.

I remember watching Jack McCoy’s Green Iguana in 1994 at a surf film festival that my local beach put on every year at the Elkhorn Yacht Club and there was footage of Luke Egan duck diving a wave at G Land in Indonesia. I had been struggling with duck diving all year and that was a huge lightbulb moment for me when I saw him put his whole foot on the tail of the board under water. I turned to my best bud, Andrew Dolan, and was like, “That is how you do it! You can put your whole foot on the board!” I had a similar experience watching Tom Curren in The Search and Derek Hynd in Litmus. With Tom it was like, “Oh I can hold the small crouch through the bottom turn.” And with Derek it was seeing his laybacks in the tube, and I thought, “So, you just kind of um, lay down on the wave!” I’d use all this visual info and go try it out in my surf sessions. Welp, it works.

As I like to say all of the time, if you don’t know what good surfing looks like then it will be hard to become a good surfer. You want to really think about why certain styles and moves are appealing to you and then take note of where on the wave the person is doing what they’re doing. What does the wave look like vis a visa their body? What are they doing with speed — slowing down or speeding up? What is the ratio of pressure from back foot to front foot? How much is the surfer moving their feet? Where are their eyes? What about their hands? Take note of everything. You won’t be able to do this in one watch, so that’s why I recommend a healthy and steady diet of surf vids to add to your quarantine regime.

Fortunately we now have the internet and Vimeo and YouTube, so you don’t have to go out and necessarily buy all that I mentioned above. You can get subscription to The Surf Network — they are running a free trial right now or you can subscribe at $60 a year — and find many (but not all) of the titles I list in this post, plus tons more of every kind of style and variety of surfing, surfing history, and other surf related stuff. Surfline has been posting vids to its news feed of late. Those are worth watching. New York’s own Pilgrim Surf + Supply — if you surf with me a lot you see the owner Chris Gentile in water with his smooth style — made a great surf film and put it on YouTube for free (see below). Thanks Chris!

And then of course you can always go the the Conatus Vimeo Channel and see more down to earth and humbling surfing sessions in our own waters. You may see mistakes that you often make and will find yourself rooting the person on when they get a good ride. You can go way back into the archives and see how people actually do progress! If you stick with it and keep up a strong whole mind body game you will get better bit by bit. And then there are the ‘Coach Vids’, which is my own surfing. I’m no Tom Curren, but I like to think that I have pretty solid, simple technique. I am surfing consciously in a way that I know that the material is pedagogical. I am also having a lot of fun. You can have fun and pay attention to form at the same time. In fact the more you actually work on form, the more fun that you have. Also in these vids we include the take-offs, which is something so sorely missing from many surf films. This is the hardest part of surfing for most beginning and intermediate surfers. It has to do with wave judgment, timing, positioning, and body mechanics all working in harmony together.

I’ve only scratched the tip of the online surf video ice berg in this post. Get out there and explore on your own and even share some of your favorites with me! Remember to press pause and rewind a lot to truly understand some of the basic mechanics. It is not unlike reading a difficult text of philosophy!

Surfing and Akrasia: How Aristotle's Concept of 'Weakness of Will' Can Help Us Right Now

In another incarnation, I taught ancient philosophy at Eugene Lang College. It actually was not even that long ago. I have been teaching at university throughout my time in graduate school in philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and only just stopped last year. I gave away one of my teaching fellowships due to the fact that CSC has become my full time job and also because I need to finish writing my dissertation. If you have ever wondered why my spring retreat to Costa Rica is always in January and/or March, it’s to fit the academic year calendar — winter break extends into January, and spring break is always in March (as we have been reminded all too painfully this year). It just so happens that I also spent the last four semesters of undergrad studying ancient Greek. I had completed all of my other requirements, had already studied Latin, and was advised to get good at Greek if I wanted a shot at ever teaching higher education in the fields I was interested in: religion, philosophy, and history. I once had a favorite surfboard — a 6’0” Doc Lausch Surf Prescriptions from off the rack at Aqua Surf Shop with a squash tail and single concave running through the bottom — on which I had written the complete list of Greek prepositions (you in fact use these prepositions almost every day whenever you use words that start with ana-, an-, apo-, dia-, en-, cata-, meta-, etc.). Since I surf so much this proved to be a great studying aid!

An example of some of my reading/lecture notes from when I was teaching college.

I am not sure whether or not I will return to teaching university classes. I do enjoy it. But I also enjoy the flexibility of being able to drop everything and go surfing. In recent weeks the ability to drop everything and go surfing has met a roadblock far more ominous than a university teaching schedule: the moral dilemma about whether or not it is right to go surfing during this peak moment of the SARS-COVID-2 (COVID-19) virus outbreak. Just last Monday I put up a video post about my decision to not go surfing. On the one hand there is always the risk of injury, and we don’t want to be crowding hospital beds for something like stitches. Then there is the simple injunction just to stay home as much as possible. Even if you live near the beach you’re going outside of the home to exert energy doing something that is indeed fun and healthful, but you are still opening yourself up to risk if you are not mindful of your every move. Also, some people may be going surfing more now because they have been furloughed or laid off or are working remotely. This makes the lineups more crowded, which nullifies the injunction for social distancing. On the other hand, some people, like me, have geared our entire lives to be in touch with the ocean and to be able to, well, drop everything and go surfing. So when I willfully abide by other social norms I can feel constrained and start to get depressed. Surfing also provides for my sole livelihood now that I am not teaching at university, so I feel an extra pressure to be in touch with the ocean and even get in some coaching. But then again, a lot of other people cannot do their jobs or their passions right now either or are having to rethink how to do them from home.

Overall it seems the right thing to do is for all of us to stay home and not surf to the best of our ability until the virus peaks and starts to get under control. Even if it is relatively safe to surf and you are able to do so without touching anyone or anything (including the sand — wear booties), there is also the base COVID-mania-induced paranoia that you’ll pick it up on your path to and from the ocean, and then you really won’t be able to go surfing, and you’ll be super sorry you did go, if it was in fact from your excursion that you got the bug, and became yet another person to overwhelm our already overwhelmed health system. While all of this seems to be the logical and right reasoning, it can be difficult to not do one’s favorite thing. In full disclosure, I have already broken down and gone surfing. I went last Friday. It felt good to hit the lip and to get some pumps in, but it has had a bit of a bitter aftertaste. I was paranoid driving home that I somehow came into contact with the virus despite the fact that, unlike others, I wore a mask to check the surf, didn’t touch the railings or public pieces of property on the boardwalk, and after much hunting found a peak all to myself. There were waves yesterday (Sunday) and today (Monday) and I couldn’t bring myself to drive out there for them. I just could not rationalize the trade of some fun for the potential of contracting the virus. As I mention in the video, I’ve been injured for months at a time before, and in those cases I cannot surf even if I want to. Every time I have been done with an injury there have still been waves to surf! But I am not injured right now, so I don’t have physical pain to keep me in my place. As I continue to mull about the moral dilemma of surfing vs not surfing in these trying times, I am reminded of Aristotle’s concept of ‘akrasia’ or ‘weakness of will’.

My moment of akrasia last week: I was compelled to check the surf. If we do check the surf right now, we ought to be wearing masks.

Aristotle introduces us to his concept of ‘akrasia’ in his great moral work the Nichomachean Ethics. The treatise is supposed to serve as an ethical handbook for his son, Nichomachus, and for other young noble men who were set up to become leaders of society. Aristotle was the tutor for a young Alexander the Great. As some may or may not know, Aristotle did hold some rather unfortunate views on women and slavery, but I think that should he put his own philosophy to the test today, he would be forced to abandon them. I have a strict policy of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We should note where thinkers are wrong, mark them wrong in those places, and retain what is worth retaining. Usually these parts, the good parts, if they would have looked hard enough or had a larger historical perspective, is at odds with their more reprehensible views.

The first lines of the NE are memorable ones: “All skills (technai) and all methods (of inquiry) (methodos), in the same way as every action (praxis) and rational choice (prohairesis) is thought to aim at some good (agathou tinos); and so the good has been well described as that at which everything aims. But it is clear that there is some difference of (their) ends, in some the end is the activity, and in others it is some product (of the activity) (1094a1-5).” Here Aristotle is setting us up to not only to inquire after the highest good(s) in life, but also to show us how things both have particular and universal meanings (which forms the basis for deductive and inductive reasoning). All things aim at some good, but this good might look different according to the particular nature of each. His examples are: the aim of medicine is to produce health; shipbuilding, a ship; military science, victory; domestic economy, wealth. They are unique in their particular order, but are all in service to some higher good, which because man is a political or social animal, is a well ordered, fair, and just society. The highest good is political, and therefore for Aristotle the master science is politics. The Greek politikē can mean either social or political. The root word is polis or city, and what Aristotle is basically saying is that because we live together in relative proximity we need to agree upon the best ways to live with one another. This means that we need to agree on norms and laws and values in order for the polis to function well. Functioning well for Aristotle would mean that the most amount of people are all aiming at the good with their individual skills and methods and actions and rational choices. Agreeing on what these are and what this looks like and how it is organized and governed is usually thought of as coming to terms on a social contract. I will table for now what the best overall political structure might be, but will agree with Aristotle that seeking one is the highest of all possible pursuits.

In our quest for the highest good we should ask what kinds of actions are and are not in our control. For example, it is not up to us whether or not we can survive without food. We cannot survive without food, so we must eat. We cannot survive without human connection, so we cultivate friendships and romantic partnerships. We have various levels of appetites and desires that always move us along and organize our lives — drives in psychoanalytic language. Modulating these drives we may say is the task of human existence. Each person is set up in such a way that we all feel similar drives but in variance of degree according to many different variables (historical, sexual, class background, trauma, etc.). We can think of drives in the sense of the Greek word for power, strength, and force: kratos. In Aristotle’s language a person who is good at modulating his drives is enkrateia. Enkrateia is often translated as ‘self-controlled’ or ‘continent’ and is a virtue akin to ‘temperance’, which in Greek is sophrosunē. These are traits of character that Aristotle feels are most desired because the ethical habits they foster are based upon calm, rational decision making, which consciously aims at the highest good. The highest good is again, not what can bring me the most pleasure right now, but that which brings about the greatest political good — it is more community-minded.

Example of the Greek text.

The opposite of enkrateia is akrasia. Akrasia, the word, is created through the alpha-privative ‘a’, which means ‘not’, ‘without’, ‘lack’, plus ‘kratos’, so lacking strength, without power, weak vis a vis the drives. The more common translations are ‘incontinence’ or ‘weakness of will’. In Book VII, a discussion dedicated to ways of missing the mark, akrasia is defined as one of the three character traits most to be avoided. The other two are vice (kakia) and brutishness (thēriotēs). Aristotle, a thinker of the golden mean, is always more concerned with middle terms because they most represent the truth of human life. A truly bad or vile person, often called ‘intemperate’ (akolasia), is an extreme case — someone that willfully and rationally chooses bad actions in full knowledge that they will cause harm to self and others — as is ‘brutishness’. The word for ‘brutishness’ is thēriotēs which is taken from the word thēr for ‘wild animal’ or ‘wild beast’. This would be a person who somehow missed the civilizing process and acts only on base drives in a completely unreflected manner. Considering that there could even be such a kind of person is probably part of Aristotle’s more racist thoughts that should be tossed out. Where he shines is in his consideration of akrasia. Through his compassionate understanding he shows how this middle state of ‘badness’ seems to be a major part of, to use Nietzsche’s words, being human all too human.

We are all of us, at one time or another, akratic, or lacking in power over some action or another. In Aristotle’s view of the soul or composition of the human being, we are both logical (logoi) and illogical (alogoi) or rational and irrational. He is a rationalist and thinks we’re better off the more that the logical part of ourselves leads the illogical part, but he also understands the strength that the irrational drives exert in daily existence. Because the logical and illogical parts of us ‘communicate’, there are times when we behave irrationally — we get angry, we eat too much ice cream, we touch a railing with our bare hands then text on our cell phones during a pandemic — and then we feel bad afterwards. We regret having given into the drive because in the long run it did not make us more powerful or more fit to achieve the common good. We see that we did not act out of rational deliberation. For Aristotle this ability to reflect on those moments when we acted out of akrasia means that it is not even a vice because such behaviors, once conscious, can be changed by reflection after the fact. He also understands that some people may suffer akrasia due to early childhood traumas, which is kind of crazy for the 4th century BCE!

“The akratic person is not like someone who knows and is attending to his knowledge, but like someone asleep or drunk. He acts voluntarily (because he knows what he is doing and for what end), but he is not wicked; his rational choice is good, so that he is only half-wicked. Nor is he unjust, since he does not plan his misdeeds. Of the two, one type is not disposed to stand by the results of his deliberation, while the other, the excitable person, does not do wrong deliberately at all (1152a21-28).”

All these people are touching public property with their bare hands during one of the worst pandemics in human history. This is an example of akrasia. It’s nice to lean on something while you look at the ocean, but you also can stand up and not lean on it. Right now such unreflective action can harbor true societal ills. Hoping they all went home and washed hands, wiped down cell phones, and put clothing in a plastic bag. Our biggest concern in next few weeks is keeping people out of hospitals.

In surfing we see all kinds of akrasia in action. And in some cases we see vile wickedness, but more often akrasia. Surfing is fun. It gives so much pleasure. It is great exercise. It feels good to be in nature. But if you just caught a wave, for example, do you need the next one you see, especially if there is another person waiting for it? What is driving you to spin and go when you should be satisfied from your last ride? Or what about when the unknowing beginner paddles out to the most crowded peak because he doesn’t know to recognize where the best spot for him might be and instead simply follows his herd instinct and paddles out into a pack of people? This is not wicked, but is done, as Aristotle says, from a state that is akin to being asleep or drunk. He has some knowledge, but the knowledge he would require to act virtuously is not active or attended to. What about when you burn someone? Could you just not wait for another wave? Or did you not see the person taking off? Perhaps you are meting out justice for a past burn? Could that justice have been better meted out through a conversation? Anytime we act without rationally deliberating we are bound to fall prey to one kind of akrasia or another. And the decisions we make vis a vis our drives add up to our character, which because we are human, is bound to be mixed with good and bad qualities.

Ultimately, however, the goal is to lessen the bad pangs of conscience (bad faith in the language of Sartre) by acting less akratically and more enkratically. The more one habituates oneself to considering drives and motivations before acting on them, the more one becomes practically wise (phronimos). The more that people aspire and cultivate practical wisdom — this includes becoming virtuous at a skill like surfing — the better societies can operate.

The question is now: is it practically wise to surf right now? Is there an overall social political good that surfing brings about in this time of global crisis? On the one hand, it is good to have healthy, happy, and satisfied citizens. If surfing calms you in a way that makes you a better partner, father, mother, brother, sister, and friend, then you need to consider how much surfing is required to put you in that state. You must also consider the risk you may pose to society at large in engaging in surfing at the present moment. Can you truly get to the beach and back to your house while taking all the proper precautions to not contract the invisible enemy attacking the polis? Unlike in normal times, this means not taking public transit, not carpooling, not talking to friends at the beach, wearing a mask and gloves while checking the surf, and then safely getting in and out of the water without hurting yourself. It also means a heightened observation of the norms that already exist in surfing: not crowding around certain peaks, taking turns, observing rip currents, paddling out of the way of other surfers, not burning people, not snaking people. Just to observe these norms in non-pandemic times takes an immense amount of enkrateia and rational deliberation. It is in the observation of these rules of etiquette that we witness the most akrasia. If we cannot model ideal political behavior in the lineup then surfing truly is not a societal good on the larger view.

If you do choose to surf, the enkratic thing to do is to find empty peaks like this one. There is always a way to surf and observe appropriate social distance.

One of the main reasons I created CSC was to teach people the skills necessary to engage in the surfing lineup as virtuously as possible. This means that you are always engaging in a reflection on and overcoming of your akrasia. As you gain skills in wave judgment, lineup reading, and in general fluidity of navigating a board in the ocean and on and through waves, you become more empowered to make better political decisions vis a vis our surfing polis and the larger world polis. If you are constantly burning people in ignorance, crashing on your board all the time, surfing in an aesthetically displeasing manner, and crowding around a peak unnecessarily, you’re not making surfing better for the rest of us — you are not acting with the greater surfing polis in mind. It is not just your practice or your ocean. The pursuit is not just individual wellness and gratification — it’s communal, social, and political. When I see you surfing virtuously it inspires me to be a more virtuous surfer. This is the right kind of contagion.

It is also important to remember, however, that becoming a practically wise virtuous surfer is a process of continual work. We will continue to err. What is crucial is that we deliberate and reflect before we act. Then when we act we must act decisively. Whether you decide to go surfing or not, make sure you are attending to your knowledge.