After much thought and reading this thread in its entirety multiple times I wanted to make some clarifications and shed some light on my thought process. However first I want to thank everyone who has commented on here for their input.
First and foremost I want to say that I did come off as defensive at first and didn't mean to do that. Regardless why it happened, it did and that isn't really who I am at heart.
I have been a paid writer for websites in the past. One of the big sites I wrote for was a MMA website and the Editor-in-Chief was a Stanford journalism grad who used to ride my case about certain things; number one being the amount of comments I did NOT get after posting my pieces. This was for a mixed martial arts site that I was employed at for 3 years. I was told to keep writing the same types of articles but to make them a bit more controversial as MMA fans love to battle in comments. Plus, if they liked or hated it enough, they would likely share it on social media and in message boards to whip up a frenzy. This would in-turn lead to more site visitors and a war in the articles comments. It also led to me having thousands of people who could not wait for my next piece. Some wanted to stand with me while others could not wait to beat me down.
It has been quite awhile since I wrote anything other than for myself or that was related to anything other than Buddhism on a personal blog site of mine meant as an introduction to the teachings. Thinking back to when I was writing this and even prior to writing as I was formulating the ideas, I see it came from the old MMA way of writing. That was wrong.
It is sensationalized as I know very well that there is no black and white here.
I also, thanks to people like
@doctormike and
@Akimbo , realize that I could have been more specific as to what I meant and made sure to mention the areas this did not apply to such as hunting, etc. I made many assumptions as I was writing this. I assumed people would see the points I made reference to and know that those were the cases I was speaking about. That was a mistake.
As for why I posted the piece here: I am on, what I feel is, a wonderful journey with scuba diving becoming my life. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to not just dive but to teach. Add that in with the conservation I want to promote and picked up from my good friend Paul de Gelder and my enthusiasm runs quote high. When I created the piece I wanted to share it with others that I knew were as passionate about diving as I was which of course is all of you here. It isn't about gathering followers or to get more traffic to the blog. The traffic for me will come later but now I am trust developing my voice in what is to become my life.
The piece was really meant for the average Joe and not people who are as passionate about diving as all of you are and as I am. I should have taken the audience into consideration and made revisions. Hell, it should have been written in a totally different manner. You see, I am working on becoming an instructor and find that many days, the conversations I have irl are based totally around diving and teaching. I have spent hours talking with
@RainPilot about something like how to phrase things to my future students and I am learning a lot each and every day. This is now my life and my future. I gave up everything to catch this dream!
I said all that to let everyone here know I am going to keep writing but will be shifting my focus from pieces like this to pieces based on my journey. The journey of someone who is OW and EAN certified and taking the Advanced course on my way to hopefully one day teach technical diving with a focus on wreck penetration.
Without everyone here I could not have refined my voice and made this change in direction. I hope you enjoy the things I write in the future as I will continue to post here for my SB family to read. Thank you again!!