DIR/GUE Attitude: I just don't see it

[tracydr]

The GUE divers I have met or talked to have bent over backwards to help me. They are some of the friendliest people I've ever met.

 

[Adobo]

I was wrong about George Wallace having a website, but if you read these posts: http://www.frogkick.nl/files/george_irvine_dir_articles.pdf I think he comes across as a bit elitist with his comments. Maybe it's just his writing style.

Actually, George Irvine. Although, you could easily confuse him with William Wallace. Both killed men by the hundreds and would consume men with fireballs from their eyes, and bolts of lightning from their arses.

 

[danvolker]

I kind of regret posting this thread.

I had just completed reading multiple threads and noticed a bit of sarcasm toward DIR and GUE. On this board and others, some recently, most from many years ago.

I was wrong about George Wallace having a website, but if you read these posts: http://www.frogkick.nl/files/george_irvine_dir_articles.pdf I think he comes across as a bit elitist with his comments. Maybe it's just his writing style.

mathauck0814, I offer no critique of anything. All I was trying to say, and I admit I did not do a good job of, was that all of the DIR divers I have meet have been nice people (met another today) and that all that hate toward them seems unwarranted.

Thanks,

Jerrod

Jerrod,
The reason you got your impression, is that it is entirely OUT OF CONTEXT. Back when George was making his
"famous" comments on he internet, the Diving world was radically different than it is today.....
First, MOST of George's comments were aimed at Cave Diving....this an actual "battleground" at the time ( your George Wallace concept approprioate , with what George referred to as Farm Animal Stupid North Florida rednecks jumping into caves, with the wrong gear and wrong training, and dieing like flys. In response, the landowners of Caves and springs all over Florida were getting close to shutting down access to their caves....AND, training agencies began coming up with ridiculous solutions--solutions they put out as if they were experts, and put out using major print media with large budgets and real impact in the diving populations.

In a magazine interview George was in, the reporter asked George why the WKPP did not have deaths like nearly all other groups in cave diving at the time, particualy as the WKPP was diving the biggest deepest and longest caves in North America ( so you would expect it to have the highest death rates) .... George replied that WKPP divers don't die because they are "DOING IT RIGHT"..... And George wanted to share this series of choices in gear and behavior with all other divers, so that the death rate would drop dramtically.

George saw how bad the response of the Training Agencies was, how many more would die from their ignorant ideas.... and he knew he had to change the way things were going....he wanted to prevent needless deaths, and he wanted to maintain access to good caves.

In deep Ocean diving, which he did a great deal in the 90's with me, there were also rampant deep air deaths, and the training agency response was similarly absurd....the Internet snippits that appear elitist to you, were actually understood by those reading them when they went out, as being aimed directly at training agency heads or major voices that needed to be drowned out by the voice of reason.
Without you having experienced this at the time, you are not seeing which posts or comments were put out by George to shut Bill Rennaker up about his "Everyman for himself" nonsense ( which Renaker actually did presentations on!!!), or which comments were to undermine horribly dangerous solutions by training agency heads or by big names in the Dive industry...guys like Tom Mount or Brett Gilliam.
George CORRECTLY decided, that if he took the discussion to a WWF Wrestling style "smackdown" ( **note this was also at a time in the 90's when FLAME WARS in the net were hugely entertaining to the masses on the internet) , that he could be heard above the large print media budget of Training Agencies, even with zero budget.
What happened, was that discussions on the Cavers list and Techdiver, as well as rec.scuba , became viral. George and his WWF style, succeeded in countering hundreds of thousands of dollars of media pushing ignorant and dangerous solutions.
The attacks you hear from George, were not EVER aimed at recreational divers.....they were aimed at guys like Mount or Gilliam. What may surprise you, is that Mount dove with George and Bill Mee, and with me, on occasional tech dives, and George had a certain respect for much of Tom Mount and his strengths in Teaching....George would even recomment Mount "privately" on occaision, for "certain" needs in training. So there was a very definate battle going on, over the Internet media, and George WON this WAR on the Internet, over Mount and Gilliam, and Renaker, and a host of others.....Most of the battle-ground topics they flamed each other over, have now evolved into the direction George wanted them to go in.....What was a shocking flame war topic 12 years ago,George's radically different idea--is now accepted as something that should be obvious to anyone...essentially almost "a priori" knowledge.

George made this DIR infusion of ideas go mainstream... I am proud to say that I helped. DIR was all free, and George was doing this to save lives ( particularly the deep ocean issues which he and I were very vocal on)

The recreational diver was never slammed. In fact, George was fond of saying the the PADI open water Dive manual had all the good basic ideas in it that the tech divers needed, rather than the nonsense being pushed by the fledgling Tech agencies ( which were making stupid changes in order to sell something new for as much money as possible).

When George called someone a stroke, this had nothing to do with recreational divers. This was a cave diving invention, that made it's way to some tech diving, but the use George had for stroke would bear little resemblance to the way it gets used today or 5 years ago by people that never even met George, or that actually heard him use the expression.....I could be very specific about any of this, if you want

 

[Jerrod]

Dan,

Thanks for setting things straight.

Jerrod

 

[boulderjohn]

What happened, was that discussions on the Cavers list and Techdiver, as well as rec.scuba , became viral. George and his WWF style, succeeded in countering hundreds of thousands of dollars of media pushing ignorant and dangerous solutions.
The attacks you hear from George, were not EVER aimed at recreational divers.....they were aimed at guys like Mount or Gilliam. ...

George made this DIR infusion of ideas go mainstream... I am proud to say that I helped.

Dan, do you think that some of the misunderstanding of which you speak may be partly due to that deliberate attempt to transfer DIR ideas to the recreational community? As far as I can see, that deliberate attempt did not make clear that original cave diving focus. Let's take, for example, the essay you wrote back then on how DIR divers could make recreational divers better. As I read it, you seem to be calling on all DIR divers who are "stuck" (your term) diving with people whose gear is not configured the DIR way to use that opportunity to show why the DIR system is better. There is no hint in the essay that I can see that warns them not to quote George's comments or arguments that "were not EVER aimed at recreational divers."

It was only earlier this year that I heard the explanation you gave above. I wish that this difference between cave divers and recreational divers had been made more clear from the start. It is not too late.

 

[ucfdiver]

Dan, do you think that some of the misunderstanding of which you speak may be partly due to that deliberate attempt to transfer DIR ideas to the recreational community? As far as I can see, that deliberate attempt did not make clear that original cave diving focus. Let's take, for example, the essay you wrote back then on how DIR divers could make recreational divers better. As I read it, you seem to be calling on all DIR divers who are "stuck" (your term) diving with people whose gear is not configured the DIR way to use that opportunity to show why the DIR system is better. There is no hint in the essay that I can see that warns them not to quote George's comments or arguments that "were not EVER aimed at recreational divers."

It was only earlier this year that I heard the explanation you gave above. I wish that this difference between cave divers and recreational divers had been made more clear from the start. It is not too late.

Dan and George (Gi3) invited myself and a buddy who has zero tech certifications to go diving on George's yacht last year on recreational dives and I never once felt talked down to. I think half of their issue is learning when not to care-- they both care way too much about people who don't want to listen. George still shows emotion when talking about accidents years ago where he couldn't deter the person from making bad decisions.

I always feel torn when I see new tech divers judge these guys-- we're around with improved training, gear, decompression tables, gas mixes, more knowledge, etc, and have inhered a much safer community than what these guys faced. Gi3's words still sting to many today, yet many people go to extremes when friends die, so while I feel his legacy harms the DIR community, his lessons help, and I'm not sure any of us can understand what was going on when these things were written.

 

[danvolker]

Dan, do you think that some of the misunderstanding of which you speak may be partly due to that deliberate attempt to transfer DIR ideas to the recreational community? As far as I can see, that deliberate attempt did not make clear that original cave diving focus. Let's take, for example, the essay you wrote back then on how DIR divers could make recreational divers better. As I read it, you seem to be calling on all DIR divers who are "stuck" (your term) diving with people whose gear is not configured the DIR way to use that opportunity to show why the DIR system is better. There is no hint in the essay that I can see that warns them not to quote George's comments or arguments that "were not EVER aimed at recreational divers."

It was only earlier this year that I heard the explanation you gave above. I wish that this difference between cave divers and recreational divers had been made more clear from the start. It is not too late.

John, you are right....as I see this now, where we are today, I can see how the tone of that article I wrote would NOT be received well by some.....At the time of the writing, I was reeling from several body recoveries of tech divers that had been taught wrong, and George, Bill and I were on a kind of a "crusade" to prevent more body recoveries.....Also...around 1998 or so many tech agencies had sprung up, and were pushing recreational divers into thinking about going into tech....Michael Menduno and Aquacorp obviously helped this agenda for mgf's and training agencies--not that he himself did wrong...but tech and bad tech was now being put out to the recreational masses..... "We" felt that the recreational diving community deserved to hear some safe ideas from DIR, to have for balance with new ideas like colored regs for different gasses( pretty dumb when colors change at depth)....and a host of other bad ideas. I have sometimes tended to get carried away when I feel strongly about something, maybe some of you guys have noticed that

 

[boulderjohn]

John, you are right....as I see this now, where we are today, I can see how the tone of that article I wrote would NOT be received well by some.....At the time of the writing, I was reeling from several body recoveries of tech divers that had been taught wrong, and George, Bill and I were on a kind of a "crusade" to prevent more body recoveries.....Also...around 1998 or so many tech agencies had sprung up, and were pushing recreational divers into thinking about going into tech....Michael Menduno and Aquacorp obviously helped this agenda for mgf's and training agencies--not that he himself did wrong...but tech and bad tech was now being put out to the recreational masses..... "We" felt that the recreational diving community deserved to hear some safe ideas from DIR, to have for balance with new ideas like colored regs for different gasses( pretty dumb when colors change at depth)....and a host of other bad ideas. I have sometimes tended to get carried away when I feel strongly about something, maybe some of you guys have noticed that

Dan, please understand that what I am saying is with full sympathy toward your situation.

If I had written that article and felt that a misunderstanding of its intent had led to some bad decisions by those who misread its intentions, I would be going into a full scale attempt to rectify that problem. I would write a very clear follow up and make sure it got prominent play. I would do my best to make sure the people who are keeping it alive (I linked it to an active web site) got a full explanation of why they either need to drop it or include that clarification. You explanation here (and earlier this year) makes perfect sense to me, but I believe that early disciples may have misapplied the directive, and although the problem has decreased markedly in recent years, the fact that some web sites still promote the idea in its original form is indicative that there is still an issue.

I saw it last week with my own eyes. I was with technical divers in Cozumel, and this very topic was quite prominently discussed. It is not a dead issue, and it is not too late to do something about it.

 

[danvolker]

Dan, please understand that what I am saying is with full sympathy toward your situation.

If I had written that article and felt that a misunderstanding of its intent had led to some bad decisions by those who misread its intentions, I would be going into a full scale attempt to rectify that problem. I would write a very clear follow up and make sure it got prominent play. I would do my best to make sure the people who are keeping it alive (I linked it to an active web site) got a full explanation of why they either need to drop it or include that clarification. You explanation here (and earlier this year) makes perfect sense to me, but I believe that early disciples may have misapplied the directive, and although the problem has decreased markedly in recent years, the fact that some web sites still promote the idea in its original form is indicative that there is still an issue.

I saw it last week with my own eyes. I was with technical divers in Cozumel, and this very topic was quite prominently discussed. It is not a dead issue, and it is not too late to do something about it.

Good points....Looks like I may have a new project

 

[Pullmyfinger]

Dan, please understand that what I am saying is with full sympathy toward your situation.

If I had written that article and felt that a misunderstanding of its intent had led to some bad decisions by those who misread its intentions, I would be going into a full scale attempt to rectify that problem. I would write a very clear follow up and make sure it got prominent play. I would do my best to make sure the people who are keeping it alive (I linked it to an active web site) got a full explanation of why they either need to drop it or include that clarification. You explanation here (and earlier this year) makes perfect sense to me, but I believe that early disciples may have misapplied the directive, and although the problem has decreased markedly in recent years, the fact that some web sites still promote the idea in its original form is indicative that there is still an issue.

I saw it last week with my own eyes. I was with technical divers in Cozumel, and this very topic was quite prominently discussed. It is not a dead issue, and it is not too late to do something about it.

Just curious John,

What exactly was being discussed? The internet posts from years ago? Or something else?
What needs to be done about what exactly?

Thank you,
Mitch