DIR: God's gift to diving or Hell spawn?

[Thalassamania]

Yes, I found it knee-jerk and snide. If that's not what you had in mind then let others be the judge of how it comes across.

"It is also very easy to see what you want to see in a response rather than what the sender is trying to convey."

See ... snide. Say what’s on your mind rather than implying it. My expectations were along the line of what I got from Peter.

It is MUCH easier to have some of these discussions face to face, but when you can't I have found it's often better to try and believe that a poster is being helpful first, and only then decide that they are being snide/thoughtless if I am proved wrong about the helpful bit.

I always give folks the benefit of the doubt. I did in that string. But that changed in the end when turned out that your "helpfulness" was not only (in my opinion) knee jerk and snide, but (objectively) dead wrong.

 

[Otter]

You have certainly made the point about people posting on here being derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner; however, its clearly not just the DIR crowd.

 

[KMD]

Yes, I found it knee-jerk and snide. If that's not what you had in mind then let others be the judge of how it comes across.

See ... snide. Say what’s on your mind rather than implying it. My expectations were along the line of what I got from Peter.
I always give folks the benefit of the doubt. I did in that string. But that changed in the end when turned out that your "helpfulness" was not only (in my opinion) knee jerk and snide, but (objectively) dead wrong.

Ok as a disinterested third party, you are way off base here. He wasn't being snide. a GUE instructor gave you an honest answer from what he thought. It sounds like you didn't like answer so decided to discount the messenger. You found someone else who gave an alternate opinion that aggreed with yours and have automatically dubbed it the objectivly correct answer.

 

[Thalassamania]

You have certainly made the point about people posting on here being derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner; however, its clearly not just the DIR crowd.

It was not my intent to be any of the three. I was just trying to provide a specific example, for discussion, of the particular behavior that we were discussing, without naming names, in rather plain and simple language.

Surely you can't describe what I've said as insinuating. I have insinuated nothing, I've done little more than provide examples. If the examples are expressive (by me) of a low opinion, then guilty I’m guilty of being derogatory, if you find the examples (as expressed by me) sharply unpleasant, then I’m guilty of being nasty. But if you find the examples themselves, as I did, snide, expressive of a low opinion (to wit: “something that could be solved with skill and practice.&#8221 and sharply unpleasant (to wit: “a person having difficulty with equalizing techniques while task loaded may lack the experience for the given dive&#8221 then you should find, as I did, those original answers to be derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner. The absolute worst that I may be accused of is simply following suit.

 

[daniel f aleman]

This is by far the best thesis that I have read, anywhere, on the subject; each diver interested in DIR needs to copy this to a hard drive. Posted by Thalassamania:


"Not really, he's just the most extreme case. Irvine needed to build a competent and cohesive team for WKKP and did so. WKKP's accomplishments and safety record speak for themselves.

Irvine, in my opinion, overused tried and true, well documented concepts (see: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment; Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, Carolyn W. Sherif [1954/1961]) and fell into a trap of hyper-amplification of In-Group vs. Out-Group attitudes, especially those that involved mistaken judgmental indices of performance estimates.

The cause of this hyper-amplification is unknown, I suspect it stemmed from the intersection of a new media (the internet) Irvine's personality type and an extremely challenging and dangerous undertaking which featured highly definable (and thus demonstrable) goals (e.g. penetration distance and survival). This, coupled with a lack of organizational checks and ballances, would tend to produce a positive feedback loop forcing the members of Irvine's immediate circle to become ever-increasingly insular or be excluded and similarly effecting his surrounding "fringe" group, who would either be excluded or become more and more dogmatically supportive. This is often seen with charismatic leaders that have no counterballance within their organization.

"Doing It Right" should have been as just another piece of diving bumph, like "Teaching the World to Dive." Sheer puffery and nothing more, but it really pissed people off with its sneering in-group/out-group undertone of, "you're doing it wrong, you STROKE!"

And that's really too bad, because HOG and DIR have a great deal to offer which gets overlooked by many who are put off by the rhetoric. After all, being a thinking diver is, at the core, a DIR value. Frankly Irvine had his failings and so do we all. His were more public and obvious than most, but at least he did something and built something of lasting value, unlike most of his critics (or ardent supporters)."

Also, the natural "evolution" of DIR has not escaped JJ's notice either. These are the last two paragraphs from an recent addition to the Evolution of DIR Principles, by JJ; from GUE.com:

http://www.gue.com/Equipment/Evolution/index.html

GUE DIVING

... continued...

The unavoidable division of DIR is the result of many factors, ranging from breakdowns in channels of communication, to differing interpretations, to personal agendas, to private experiences, to power plays, to simple disagreements among proponents. As individuals and groups appropriate DIR they will often make choices very different from those that I and other founders of DIR would have made. It is now necessary for us to recognize that DIR will be repurposed by those it has influenced in ways that serve their own interests. Nonetheless, in the end, I believe that these systems that appropriate DIR can only benefit the future of the diving industry. Even so, I believe that to enhance the safety, fun and efficiency we sought to ensure when we first started to build DIR, it is necessary for us to ensure greater standardization across a series of domains.

From the outset I believed that a diver's training, his/her equipment, his/her configuration, his/her knowledge and skill set should all contribute to greater safety and enjoyment in the water. For this reason, I founded GUE. The DIR system is at the core of GUE training. This is not surprising, given the extent to which my efforts helped to shape both DIR and GUE. However, with the passage of time, GUE has shaped its own identity, one that is not identical to that of DIR. And though being DIRis a necessary condition of being a GUE diver, it is not a sufficient condition; it is not enough. There is more to being a GUE diver than being DIR, among other things, it entails a standardized measure of competence (training) and commitment to both civility and non-smoking, aspects to which DIR in-itself does not speak. Over time, GUE Vice-President and long-time DIR supporter Dr. Panos Alexakos and I came to see that there was really no way to reign in the particular interpretations of the ever-growing numbers of DIR advocates and that it would be a waste of resources and energy to struggle with them over the correct interpretation of DIR. With this in mind, we have struck out on a new road, a distinctly GUE road that looks fondly upon DIR as the foundation that can empower the organization toward a new and unique future.

 

[roakey]

Mod hat on.

Thread merged with permission of the author of the base note. Same stuff, different day. You might save yourself some writing -- read this note from the beginning and see if your point has been made before -- it probably has.

Roak

Mod hat off.

 

[roakey]

Yes, I found it knee-jerk and snide. If that's not what you had in mind then let others be the judge of how it comes across.

An other here. I didn't find it knee jerk and snide. About the only critique about his response is he didn't detail the "other options" (or whatever terminology was used).

On the other hand, he's an instructor. So am I (not in the diving relm) -- there's only so much free effort I'll invest in teaching something that I'm normally paid to do.

But that changed in the end when turned out that your "helpfulness" was ...(objectively) dead wrong.

Sounds like your mind was made up and you went shopping for an answer. This of course is an objective analysis of your statement.

Roak

 

[Meister481]

It seems like the DIR line is evolving along with the equipment and as different ideas and people come in contact with the training regimen. The natural evolution is a good thing, it makes me think that the cool aid isn't a deadly as I originally thought.

My issue is that someone may be called a stroke for how they do something, then when GUE adopts it the same person doing the same thing is no longer a stroke. That's just not right, the stance of either it's GUE or wrong isn't going to help anyone or win any hearts over.

I've read the fundies book and it has some great info, especially the training regimen, but it's not for me. I'm always looking for a better way to do something.

 

[Ben_ca]

My issue is that someone may be called a stroke for how they do something, then when GUE adopts it the same person doing the same thing is no longer a stroke. That's just not right, the stance of either it's GUE or wrong isn't going to help anyone or win any hearts over.

? Please explain

 

[Meister481]

I apologize for not being clear. I was distracted- sick kids in my house today.

There was a change in the valve drill procedure as of this month. Had someone been doing their drills this way before the change they wouldn't have been doing it right, but because GUE has now adopted this specific method, the same person is now doing it right. BTW, I don't do my drills this way, I do them the way the instructor tells me to during the class.


My goal here is to show that as policies change, there may be instances where former policies that were frowned on by some may be adopted by the GUE. Might make some people think about calling stroke every chance they get.