In 1998, the fifth year of the X-Games, the suits at ESPN thought the future of BMX freestyle was side by side dog piss airs. As a longtime rider and zine publisher, I had come to a different conclusion.
I was working full time as a furniture mover in 1998. I was also riding nearly every day, just for myself. I wrote up a zine that same summer called The Rise of the Warrior Sports, and took a bunch of copies to the '98 X-Games in San Diego, and passed them out. By that time, I was thinking that BMX freestyle, and all the action sports, were part of a much bigger shift happening in society. By riding, and shooting photos, making videos, zines, magazines, and starting companies, riders were actually helping to build the distant future of the United States. How does doing curb endos, airs, and jumping doubles affect a whole society, and the world at large? Here's the story.
My Warrior Sports zine started with a book I picked up on a trip to visit my parents in North Carolina, Christmas time of 1989. The book was called The Great Depression of 1990, by economist Ravi Batra. He based his prediction for a huge economic downturn on a social theory by a man from India named P.R. Sarkar. That theory, The Law of Social Cycle, said that there are four basic mentalities in any society. Those are the Warriors, the Intellectuals, the Acquisitors, and the Laborers. These mentalities aren't based on your race, gender, social class or anything like that. They're based on the way you earn your living in the world.
The Warriors earn their living with physical skills and courage. In Sarkar's theory, Warriors are NOT just soldiers or people who fight wars. Anyone who makes their living using some type of courage or physical prowess is part of this Warrior group. Examples include soldiers, police, firefighters, construction workers who do really dangerous work, and professional athletes, among others.
The Intellectuals are the people who use their brain power to earn their way in the world. These include professors, teachers, scientists, writers, artists, politicians, the clergy, and other serious thinkers.
The Acquisitors are also smart, but they use their smarts in business. Acquisitors include people in finance, landlords, business owners, entrepreneurs, stock traders, professional investors and others focused on making money.
The Laborers are the largest group of people, by far. They are the average, everyday working people with low to mid-level skills that work for other people's businesses. They don't excel at any of the above categories, but they are the largest part of any country, and are the masses in any society. These are the people who make up the body of a city, state, or country.
The cool part of this theory is that at any given time, one of these groups leads a society, and that society is shaped by their outlook on life. This affects every level and aspect of that society. One mentality can dominate a society for hundreds of years, there's no set time limit. But the interesting thing (to Ravi Batra, and to me, anyhow) is that these groups lead a society in a particular order. That order is: Intellectuals, Acquisitors, Laborers, Warriors, and back to the Intellectuals.
Batra, the economist born to Indian parents, took The Law of Social Cycle, which was virtually unknown in the U.S., and applied it to the United States, in the 1980's. He came to the conclusion that the U.S. had been in an Acquisitor Age since its colonial days. But in the late 80's, we were heading into the "Acquisitor cum Laborer" stage. That meant that the big business people leading society were getting more and more corrupt. They were siphoning off the wealth of the middle class, the wealth of the nation, and totally screwing over the everyday working people. Not every business person did this, but a fair amount did. Batra blended this concept with a whole bunch of data on economic cycles, and predicted we would have a Great Depression starting in 1990. He was wrong. Sort of. Those of us old enough to remember the early 1990's recall that we went into a recession in 1990, and we were in tough financial times through 1996. But it was officially called a "double dip recession" at the time. So what Ravi Batra predicted actually happened, it just didn't get as bad as he predicted.
I was always interested in the future, and became interested in economics in high school. I found his book fascinating, and I started paying attention to the financial markets and the "big picture" of the world after I read the book.
I produced my own bike video that year, in 1990, The Ultimate Weekend, the 8th BMX freestyle video I produced or edited, and went on to work on several TV show crews in the early 90's. I worked as a furniture mover or video store clerk in between shows. I was also out riding my bike every day, just for fun at that point. I also got into rock climbing, and became a boulderer, climbing small but technical cliffs with no ropes.
By the mid-1990's, after seeing much of what Batra predicted actually come true, I started thinking more about Sarkar's Law of Social Cycle. If Batra's assessment of the U.S. was correct, then the theory hinted at other things happening in the future. First, the corporate world, the major Acquisitors, would keep getting more and more corrupt, and keep gaining in wealth. The American Middle Class would start to die out as a greater percentage of wealth shifted to the super rich. This would eventually cause a popular uprising among the everyday, working people, the Laborers. That's the Acquisitor cum Laborer era. The working people get sick of being screwed over, and a populist uprising, or a series of uprisings, start to happen.
The Laborers stand up, but they don't have the skills to actually lead society for any length of time. So things get really chaotic and crazy as average people rise up against the corporate overlords. At that point, one of two things happen. Either the society completely collapses, or gets overthrown by a stronger neighbor, or the Warriors mentality rises to power, and The Warrior Age begins.With the Warrior age comes a different set of values, like more respect for courage and physical abilities. There's also a big push toward individualism and doing your own thing, rather than fitting in with mass culture.
With this theory in the back of my head, rattling around, I lived at the infamous P.O.W. BMX House, was a long time roommate and sidekick to Chris Moeller, I saw the rise of Sheep Hills and dirt jumping, and I edited the first two S&M Bikes videos for Chris. As I burned out of the TV production world and faded away from the BMX industry in 1995, I started to realize something else was going on. BMX freestyle, and the action sports world as a whole, were part of the Warrior mentality rising up in society. As our weird activity turned into a sport, a lifestyle, and then a trend, so did skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, and... OK, even inline skating.
I realized that I was an Intellectual with Warrior tendencies. While I would never be a great BMX pro, but my deep thinker side saw the bigger picture that we were all a part of. We were one aspect of the Warrior mentality, people who wanted to push ourselves physically, who often did daring stuff, who looked up to physical skills and courage more than a big bank account. We wanted to actually get out there, do our own thing, and really EXPERIENCE life. We just weren't interested in working for someone else just to buy a bigger house, a newer car, and have a hotter wife than our neighbor.
Most interesting to me, the action sports world was a totally new type of Warrior mentality. We blended art and creativity with physical skill and courage, and created "sports" where winning a game wasn't the point. Progressing as a rider, and as a human being, that was the point.
I typed up these ideas in a zine of about 20 pages, added a few Xeroxed photos, and I passed out a bunch of copies to people while walking around the 1998 X-games in San Diego. Like most zines, I eventually handed out every copy I made, most people flipped through it for a minute or two, then put it in their backpack. I handed one to photographer Mark Losey, and he put it in an outside pocket of his camera bag. I hung out, watched the competitions, and headed home to Huntington Beach. I didn't think much more about the idea, and went on with my life.
In the summer of 1999, I decided I wanted to get back into the BMX world, and I scammed a press pass to the X-Games in San Francisco. I stayed at some relatives' house in San Jose, and drove up and shot behind the scenes video all weekend. At one point, I got to the deck of the vert ramp during BMX practice. A whole new generation of riders that I didn't know had taken over, for the most part. Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist were going through their trick bags. I was shooting video, and getting some really cool, up close footage.
Then Dennis McCoy flew out near me after e run. We came up at the same time, in the AFA days of the mid-80's, and I knew him pretty well. Out of nowhere, Dennis turned to me and said, "I read that warrior thing you wrote, that was really cool." I didn't know what he was talking about at first. I'd forgotten about the zine a year earlier. "I got one of your zines last year from Losey," Dennis said. Then I remembered. And I was blown away.
A zine that didn't seem to have much impact, or even get read much, a year earlier, had left a lasting impression on Dennis McCoy. The old school rider who was still hanging with the kids on the vert ramp in 1999. Let's face it, getting compliments about something you write feels good. But getting a compliment out of nowhere, from Dennis McCoy, DM fucking C himself, A YEAR after I wrote the zine. That's insane. I'll remember that one til I die. Or 'til Alzheimer's sets in from rotting my brain by drinking Diet Coke every day.
More than just the compliment, though, I realized I was right. The BMX freestylers, the whole action sports world, really was a part of the P.R. Sarkar's Warrior mentality coming up in society, and growing into a worldwide influence. That's why the concept really resonated with Dennis, he was one of the best examples of the rising Warrior Sports mentality in the world.
But... I realized... if that was right, then the other aspects of the theory would eventually happen. In time, somewhere down the line, average people would start rising up in a series of populist uprisings. And these uprisings would start small, but spread quickly. And they would eventually get bigger, and bigger, causing major shifts in the way society thinks and acts. And that would completely freak out the big money Acquisitor establishment that runs the world from the the corporate boardrooms, the traditional advertising agencies, and behind closed doors in our capitals. So I kept an eye out for something that looked like a legit populist uprising.
When the Occupy Wall Street movement sprang up, around 2014, I knew that was the start. Then it faded and went underground. But many of those people kept working in their local areas. When the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign first started, we all knew what would happen. We'd wind up with long time political insider Hillary Clinton running against longtime political insider Jeb Bush. Got ya, didn't I? If you can think back to the very beginning of the 2016 campaign cycle, that's what it looked like. That's what most everyone believed.
But then something crazy happened. On the Left, Social Democratic senator Bernie Sanders tapped into a huge populist uprising that was fed up with the mainstream Democratic Party. On the Right, egomaniac billionaire and reality TV star Donald Trump tapped into a huge populist movement that was sick of the traditional Republican Party. Things got crazy, Vladimir Putin added his evil genius to the mix, and Trump is now president, though probably not for much longer.
The people, the average, everyday people, the Laborers in Sarkar's theory, are rising up. While the Republicans have the political edge right now, all those Bernie supporters are still out there. In addition, we've seen other movements, like women standing up in the #metoo movement, and the #neveragain movement. As I write this (3/24/2018) there's a huge march in Washington D.C. happening today, sparked by a handful of Florida high school students who survived the recent mass school shooting. Over 800 satellite marches are happening around the world. Kids are tired of getting shot at school. They're tired of friends using guns to commit suicide or kill other kids in the hood. This is another populist uprising.
Attitudes are changing. Everyday working people are tired of getting screwed over. They're tired of working two jobs and still struggling to survive. The shit is hitting the fan. And the fan is on high. Hell, the fan's on HYPER. There will be more uprisings of different groups that will seem to spring out of nowhere and spread like wildfire. These groups will keep coming up, and we will see some really crazy, chaotic, and turbulent times ahead. It will be tough. But there are a lot of Warriors in the world now. Not just people who fight actual wars. But people who stand up and fight for what they believe is right. We look up to courage now much more than we did in 1998, or in 1990, or in 1984, when Bob Morales held the first BMX freestyle contest.
My belief is that if you ride now, you are part of the Warrior Mentality rising in society. If you rode years ago, or skated, or snowboarded, you are part of the Warrior Mentality rising in society. But us in the action sports world have created a whole new kind of "warrior." We have created lifestyles, and sports, where people can be individuals, and they can express themselves and conquer their fears with bikes and boards and other vehicles. But we've created ways to build your courage WITHOUT going into an actual war and killing other humans beings. That's HUGE.
That's the basic idea I shared with the world in my 1998 zine, The Rise of the Warrior Sports. Was I right? Was Ravi Batra right? Was P.R. Sarkar right? If this blog post helps you make sense of the craziness in the world today, then maybe all three of us were right. I'll let you decide.
What I do know is that I had some people ride in my taxi in 1999 and ask me specifically about this Warrior Age idea. I don't know who they were, or where they read my zine. But after that, my life got nuts. I became homeless, and have been struggling ever since. I've been turned downed for dozens of jobs I was completely qualified for since. It's been a tough ride. All kinds of weird shit has happened in my life. And I've wondered if my "Warrior Sports" idea really freaked out somebody powerful somewhere. I'll never know. But if it did. They lost. The Warriors of the world, the people willing to stand up and fight for what they believe in... they're winning. And if I'm right, all of us BMXers played a part in that. You don't just ride to progress. You're part of something much, MUCH bigger. You're a part of a fundamental shift in society itself. The Warrior Age is coming. You're helping to build it.
Now go ride.
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