I'm Taking the DIR Plunge

[TheRedHead]

And we were encouraged to ask questions, and to question what we were being taught. There was no dogma and no indoctrination. It was very clear that the system was being laid out for us to take or leave.

He does have a point about technical training though, and I'm not specifically referring to GUE since I haven't taken a class. When the end result is a card that allows you go exceed recreational diving, the stakes are higher and there is a certain amount of indoctrination. You are told if you do this or don't do that, you can easily die.

 

[JimC]

What?

- Attempt to control your social environment, time and sources of social support by implication of rule #1. Most GUE people don't turn to people outside the group for help or big dives. This can be said for many diving organizations.

- Prohibit disconfirming information. Non-DIR topics are explicitly disallowed in DIR forums/groups. When someone posts in the DIR forum, you are to give the DIR answer and only the DIR answer. When you dare to post a non-DIR answer it is often discredited simply by it not being DIR. If you venture onto a DIR board non-DIR answers are ether an explicit TOS violation or you get a public lynching

- Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience. This is in fact, one of the primary goals of DIR-F. Ei: untrain your bad habits. Many people walk out of DIR-F and take a HUGE step backward in the kind of diving they have been doing. Some leave diving for ever. One of my class mates on my DIR-F almost stopped diving.

- Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment. Training by humiliation seems to be a common theme in the GUE training I have witnessed or been part of. One of my dive buddies remembers going into the water at Peacock while a GUE debrief was going on. When he was done his dive (40 minutes later) the instructor was still pointing fingers and asking if the cave was still sore.

Anyway.. I'm done with this one. Do what you want to do. DIR-F will make most people a better diver.

 

[JeffG]

- Attempt to control your social environment, time and sources of social support by implication of rule #1. Most GUE people don't turn to people outside the group for help or big dives. This can be said for many diving organizations.

- Prohibit disconfirming information. Non-DIR topics are explicitly disallowed in DIR forums/groups. When someone posts in the DIR forum, you are to give the DIR answer and only the DIR answer. When you dare to post a non-DIR answer it is often discredited simply by it not being DIR. If you venture onto a DIR board non-DIR answers are ether an explicit TOS violation or you get a public lynching

- Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience. This is in fact, one of the primary goals of DIR-F. Ei: untrain your bad habits. Many people walk out of DIR-F and take a HUGE step backward in the kind of diving they have been doing. Some leave diving for ever. One of my class mates on my DIR-F almost stopped diving.

- Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment. Training by humiliation seems to be a common theme in the GUE training I have witnessed or been part of. One of my dive buddies remembers going into the water at Peacock while a GUE debrief was going on. When he was done his dive (40 minutes later) the instructor was still pointing fingers and asking if the cave was still sore.

Anyway.. I'm done with this one. Do what you want to do. DIR-F will make most people a better diver.

You're going to die.

 

[JeffG]

- Prohibit disconfirming information. Non-DIR topics are explicitly disallowed in DIR forums/groups. When someone posts in the DIR forum, you are to give the DIR answer and only the DIR answer. When you dare to post a non-DIR answer it is often discredited simply by it not being DIR. If you venture onto a DIR board non-DIR answers are ether an explicit TOS violation or you get a public lynching

or if you have a sense of humour...you get banned.

Many people walk out of DIR-F and take a HUGE step backward in the kind of diving they have been doing. Some leave diving for ever. One of my class mates on my DIR-F almost stopped diving.

Yep...seen it happen myself.

Anyway.. I'm done with this one. Do what you want to do. DIR-F will make most people a better diver.

You are so going to die. and burn in hell too (forever wearing X-shorts will be your punishment)

 

[JimC]

DIR Sidemount has been discussed several times that I've read about. You don't have to be in any "inner circle". I'm sure not.

I mean, other than the rant the GI3 made that every sidemounter on the planet laughs at.

He (or she) who recovers the body, keeps the gear. That's the only insurance I'm interested in! So ummm, when are you solo diving again? And where...

... exactly.

 

[TheRedHead]

(forever wearing X-shorts will be your punishment)

I can't bring myself to wear mine in public.

 

[lamont]

- Attempt to control your social environment, time and sources of social support by implication of rule #1. Most GUE people don't turn to people outside the group for help or big dives. This can be said for many diving organizations.

Rule #1 originally was about watching out for cave divers with little experience who have large egos and suicidal approaches to wanting to break cave diving records (stroke == ego stroking).

As far as recreational diving goes, I've dove with plenty of divers that have never seen a GUE course who were perfectly fine.

As far as more aggressive tech diving goes, everyone gets discriminating in who they dive with on those dives which goes well beyond just certification agencies and narrows the group down to consistent buddies.

- Prohibit disconfirming information. Non-DIR topics are explicitly disallowed in DIR forums/groups. When someone posts in the DIR forum, you are to give the DIR answer and only the DIR answer. When you dare to post a non-DIR answer it is often discredited simply by it not being DIR. If you venture onto a DIR board non-DIR answers are ether an explicit TOS violation or you get a public lynching

That's to prevent flamewars.

The GUE mafia have not shown up on my doorstep and threatened to break my kneecaps if I don't stop reading rebreatherworld.com

- Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience. This is in fact, one of the primary goals of DIR-F. Ei: untrain your bad habits. Many people walk out of DIR-F and take a HUGE step backward in the kind of diving they have been doing. Some leave diving for ever. One of my class mates on my DIR-F almost stopped diving.

Didn't happen in my class. We all became much better divers.

- Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment. Training by humiliation seems to be a common theme in the GUE training I have witnessed or been part of. One of my dive buddies remembers going into the water at Peacock while a GUE debrief was going on. When he was done his dive (40 minutes later) the instructor was still pointing fingers and asking if the cave was still sore.

GUEs training mechanism is primarily to take a team of divers and exploit weaknesses in the team to cause the divers to generate clusters. Demonstrating a skill and then having students replicate the skill and focusing on positive ego-reinforcing training only goes so far. At some point you need to figure out what the "breaking strength" of the divers are and then give the divers the tools to become better. Once the divers can hang together as a team, and have reactions to emergencies and awareness that allows them to avoid worse situations, then there is little for the instructor to exploit and the classes are not even remotely humiliating.

And all of the GUE instructors that I've had exposure to were extremely measured in their criticism and didn't humiliate the students.

 

[TSandM]

Man, the two GUE instructors I've had contact do nothing REMOTELY like humiliating students.

There was plenty of ammunition for humiliating people in my Fundies class, and I provided a good part of it. Steve was beautifully dispassionate and measured in his feedback -- I knew what I did wrong, and so did he. He was clear, but really quite kind. He then knocked himself out to make himself available to dive with me and his other students, to help us improve.

I think as you go further UP the training scale, you may get a little more pointed criticism, but you've pretty much signed up for it at that point, and I don't think GUE is any different from anybody else in that regard. In my surgical residency, if you screwed up, you heard about it, usually embellished with expletives reflecting on your ancestry and personal habits. High stakes create different training atmospheres.

 

[lamont]

Actually, in my fundies class the instructor just showed us what to look for, and by the second day's video review we were pretty much doing entirely our own critique. Once you get comfortable using the video camera as a learning tool pretty much what is on the video review is what it is, and its up to the diver on the screen as to if they interpret it as being humilitating or not. I don't think anyone in our group did...

 

[PerroneFord]

... its up to the diver on the screen as to if they interpret it as being humilitating or not.

The bigger the ego, the more the humilation. It's a simple equation.