JimC:
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I answered this question. DIR-F is exactly that, a way to improve dive skills. I don't think any one will refute that DIR-F does that.
Agreed.
Takeing a GUE course does not force you to stop diving with anyone. Take it for what it is, learn what you can from it and make your own choices when your done. Most divers will take something from the course, even if they decide to leave most of it on the cutting floor. Having passed a DIR-F, my primary dive buddy is still a computer wearing, flutter kicking diver that does not pratice her skills near often enough.
Ok. In itself that's correct in your context (DIR in Canada). I'm not out to bash DIR-F but I don't like the assumption that it's necessarily the best way to proceed in every context. I appreciate that we have a difference of opinion about this and I respect your opinion.
Having said that, there is something about the context of DIR specific to the Netherlands that you need to understand in order to understand my opinion.
First of all, DIR is very much a fringe movement here. There are only a couple of hundred divers in the whole country who are trying to be DIR and probably a dozen or so who can claim to be even close to advanced at it. Of those there are probably 2 or 3 who pretty much hold their thumb over the rest of the DIR crowd. They decide who is DIR in Holland and who is not. Their stamp of approval is more or less necessary if you are to dive with the DIR crowd in the Netherlands and their stamp of approval is not easily acquired and is easily lost.
Think what you will about this but this is context of DIR in Holland at the moment this is very much a reality that a diver like Barry would have to deal with. In your case, if you were a Dutch diver then you would be ostracized an perhaps ridiculed for the fact alone that your regular dive buddy is not DIR.
The other option would be to do what you want. These divers will always have a schizophrenic position in diving circles. DIR divers will not fully accept them because they dive with str.o.kes and the typical non DIR diver will not fully accept them because they have become a little (to state it mildly) oversensitive to the arrogant antics of a few of the DIR trend-setters here.
In other words if you try doing it on your own, like you are doing, then you'll make yourself a permanent outsider. The DIR divers I dive with, for example, simply can't tell their DIR masters that they dove with me. They'd just be tossed out.
What Holland needs at the moment is a GUE instructor who is willing to break with the current DIR top and bring DIR up to a higher level. So far it hasn't happened and until it does I don't think that going DIR is the most helpful way to advance. If I won the lottery tomorrow I would commit the rest of my life to this because I believe that the DIR movement in Holland needs positive leadership.
So this all begs the question, what *do* serious Dutch divers do. To keep the argument simple, almost all of them go IANTD. The IANTD (Hogarthian) crowd here are more relaxed and are actually out there diving. A DIR diver who I know says he likes the IANTD crowd much better because they actually go diving instead of standing around talking intelligently about diving. This isn't a bash, he really said this and it illustrates to me the sad state of the DIR movement in Holland.
So getting back to Barry. When I suggested to him that he round out his set of skills with PADI specialties and prepare to go IANTD there was a well thought out reason for that. It's not anti-DIR but how to tap in to the positive thinking tek crowd that's already there.
R..
