Arrogance and humility among divers

[Compressor]

This is turning out to be a great thread. Lots of nice, smart people making meaningful, honest remarks.

 

[gypsyjim]

Common courtesy and politeness are sometimes maligned as political correctness and being too sensitive. There are some unfortunate individuals that never learned the value of diplomacy and therefore incorrectly view it as a sign of weakness. Those that are able to communicate without insulting and offending others are at a distinct advantage in this world. Those that are not often fail to recognize how many opportunities they miss when people just refuse to include them.

I am encouraged that as a society we are continuing to evolve socially. When I see people ridicule others for expecting common courtesy it is an indication that they are uncomfortable with our changing society. It's a process.

Arrogance on the other hand is an indication of lack of self confidence. We can perhaps help these people by assuring them that they are indeed good enough to deserve our respect rather than fall into the trap of wanting to tear them down which only makes them try harder to inflate their own image. This being human stuff isn't all that easy.

Common courtesy, politeness and respect are things that come from within.

Political correctness is when someone decides to force others to act in a certain way.

 

[horsediver1]

Wouldn't it be nice if a few may look in a mirror and say to themselves- What kind of person am I vs. What kind of person do I want to be? just a thought

 

[ScubaJill]

I was always amazed at the number of men who told me they were former Navy SEALS. I would think that would be something they would probably want to keep classified. Also, none of them looked as if they could have ever been in shape to pass a Navy diving class.

There's a "retired navy seal" who is part owner of the Krispy kreme up the street from me. He works the swing shift. He told me about his credentials then asked me to come back another time so he could give me a shot of hot chocolate.

 

[Steve_C]

My next door neighbor is an ex navy seal. Quiet guy that never brags or boasts. I found out the first time chatting with his wife. We have only discussed some of the diving aspects while he watches his son and I my grandson in the neighborhood pool. His 3 year old, not yet swimming, wanted to go deep one day. It was amusing watching it. He was under and behind the boy, holding him, and doing a strong smooth frog kick. There was a relaxed control under the water that I rarely see in swimmers even life guards. I know he shoots regularly a variety of weapons. Doesn't brag but I made a joke over a couple beers about him helping me with my squirrel problem and asked if he could take out one. He said sure, which one, and realized he was looking at one a couple yards away that I could barely see.

 

[KevinNM]

I have a friend who is the NAUI rep for Hawaii. She was on the WKPP, dove with GI3 and is a NAUI IT. Most assuredly not a stroke. She was bounced from her fundies class. Her instructor said "No one passes the first fundies class". I guess it's a thing.

I know the person who for years was the only GUE instructor in Hawaii, and she gave me a rec pass 1st time out. Though admittedly it was not in Hawaii, maybe it’s an island thing.

 

[Captain Swoop]

The most arrogant divers I meet, are the photographers with big expensive cameras. Always looking down on people that just have a normal one, thinking they are new divers, that they will be in their way, stir up the sand, make it impossible for them to make the money shot. Sometimes I feel like going and just do that then... Be in their way the whole time...

That happens wherever amateur photographers gather. There's always one guy (and it's always a guy) with a telephoto lens half a yard long whatever he is photographing. Usually a tripod big enough for a Vickers gun and a flashgun like an arc light.
Because of this he assumes he is the best photographer and expects deference from those with lesser cameras and assumes that everyone will move out of his way so he can take the best spot.

 

[Captain Swoop]

I was always amazed at the number of men who told me they were former Navy SEALS. I would think that would be something they would probably want to keep classified. Also, none of them looked as if they could have ever been in shape to pass a Navy diving class.

Ask them what their BUD/S class number was.

 

[Diver0001]

I've enjoyed almost everything about diving since I started. I liked the classes, the novelty and newness of it all, and find an enduring enjoyment and sense of wonder in the underwater experience. There have been minor setbacks -- mistakes, dives that weren't fun, gear that didn't work out, times I felt I'd been ripped off -- but nothing serious or enduring.

Except the arrogance.

It was worst when I was considering diving and had just started. I ran into it at one of the LDSs, where the employee was not taking seriously my questions about gear since I had not completed my certification. I've run into it on boats and other groups of divers. So many divers want to talk about how deep they've dived, how little air they use, and other things that they perceive as accomplishments. Dealing with people in the dive industry, I've encountered egos so large they are incapable of entertaining the idea that, perhaps, they may have made a mistake at some point. I encounter technical divers, cave divers, and rebreather divers who seem to think that people curious about their specialty should be seen not heard.

I've always aspired to the sort of quiet competence demonstrated by airmen like Chesley Sullenberger, who was initially dismissive of his personal role in the safety of all on board when he was at the controls of the flight that had to ditch in the Hudson River.

What is it about the diving culture that leads to this sort of hubris?

Great post and yes, it's a serious issue in our sport.

I don't really have a good answer for you. I've had similar experiences.

I can only speak for myself but I found diving a lot less "political" when I was just learning. I made maybe my first 600 dives (first 10 years or so) blissfully unaware of the opinions of others. I had my group of friends, we went diving, we had fun.

Then I discovered the internet. For the first time I saw divers critiquing each others skills. It happened on un-moderated forums. Some good information was exchanged but there was a LOT of **** talking and a surprising number of threads devolved into discussions about politics and guns. In that time I certain discussion even ended in my receiving what I believed was a very credible death threat because I disagreed with someone.

Since then the politics have remained. I joined scubaboard in 2002 IIRC and the DIR wars were still smoldering. I think that the DIR wars did two things to our sport.

1) It made a large number of active divers aware of a new paradigm for safety and equipment configuration
and
2) It created a vast rift between like minded individuals.

DIR made arrogance OK. In fact, DIR made arrogance the norm in the mid to late 1990's. I would submit that during the DIR wars George Irvine was single-handedly responsible for alienating more divers than any other individual in the history of diving. He normalized arrogance as being equivalent to being right and he modeled a highly dysfunctional form of communication. The damage was severe in the least.

The flip side, however, is that he established, for the very first time, a coherent set of best practices in diving that we had never had before (or since).

The problem was that it was black and white. Either you were DIR or you were not DIR. At some point I even heard that "DIR divers never die, they just become strokes". There was little to no constructive dialogue possible between the DIR "community" and everyone else. To some extent this is still going on although the pressure on the community has been reduced a lot.

In my personal experience I was one of those divers who wanted to take the good and leave the bad about DIR, especially having come off the heals of the DIR wars. In my local community that was nonnegotiable. Conflicts arose as I tried to discuss the possibility of a middle-road and eventually I was labeled a stroke... "the UBER-stroke" because I dared to try starting a dialogue about it. I was ostracized and many very hurtful (and untrue) things were posted on the internet about me. This was the first time I really felt discriminated against due to arrogance. It was also the first time when I realized that scuba diving had been politicized by DIR.

Meanwhile on scubaboard we were locked in battle about "agency bashing". A new kind of arrogance had emerged, namely, which agency was best...... There were differences but people were making severe value judgments about those differences. I think the high point was when one of the directors (or soon to be directors) of CMAS came on scubaboard and posed as "just another instructor" and spent a year or more tearing PADI down.... while those of us who had any energy left corrected him time after time after time time after time after time time after time after time time after time after time

To no avail. This was the ultimate arrogance about agencies, if you ask me. GUE did their own thing and their message was not always easy to hear but this CMAS guy is the one who put the arrogance into agency bashing.

Thankfully CMAS directorate made him stop so at this point in time we have a PAX-SCUBA.

GUE is still doing their own thing. in DIR the politics are still strong but the best practices are much more accessible to the general public than in the past and agency bashing isn't being done at the executive level anymore....

To my way of thinking we had 10 or so bad years but that we are now profiting more from those years more than we suffer.

R..

 

[Steve_C]

Why fill students' heads with information they may never use, will likely forget,

I agree, that you cannot teach everything. And the more you try to cram in the more likely it is they will loose sight of what is the most important thing to remember.
Information heard once and then not seen or used again often disappears within a couple of years, if not less, time. I, and anyone else who teaches for while, can easily give you a few thousand personal examples.

I will add however, that it is nice to mention some of this information. It will stick with some divers. Just do not expect them all to remember it all. In my own OW, my instructor was also a Tech instructor, we also interacted socially. Also I was in a class of 1 and he owned the shop too. We had a lot of discussions and information provided beyond the minimum. Some of it stuck. But I am the sort who is curious about almost everything.

It depends on the student. Some are curious and like learning. Some just want the card so they can do a dive in a nice resort. Different strokes for different folks.