In Defense of Elitism
It appears to be politically correct to condemn elitism, and to denigrate those who pursue a more well-honed proficiency, a more well-developed capability, or a more well-thought-out set of procedures as elitists.
In many endeavors, sports, medicine, and manufacturing to note three examples at random, improvement or higher achievement has occurred over time because leaders in these fields were discontented with the status quo. These leaders believed that better results were possible, and examined their environments to determine how to most logically achieve them. Through time and effort they often achieved significantly more than many of their contemporaries.
Their contemporaries, noting the resulting superior achievements or advantages, were often quick to adopt or emulate whatever developments they identified as being the cause of this demonstrated superiority.
(This is not always a constructive process how many high school athletes do you suppose currently take performance enhancing drugs or hormones because they have noted the superior performance of professional athletes who do so?)
Still, it remains true that in many areas advancing the field or the evolutionary adoption of practices that improve performance occurs because leaders seek to optimize their capabilities in their respective fields.
In short, improvements occur over time because of elites.
This certainly does not mean that elites have license to be unpleasant. But it suggests that prudent contemporaries would do well to not disregard the message because they dislike or disapprove of the messenger.
DIR practices have, in this field, demonstrated superiority during operations in a wide range of extremely dangerous tasks notably the WKPP explorations as demonstrated by criteria such as ratios of total number of hours underwater (at depths in excess of 200) to fatalities suffered for all participants. While developed in and for overhead environments, elements of the paradigm may be applied more broadly to other diving.
One of the cornerstones of that paradigm is that whenever ones dive buddy may play a pivotal role in determining whether one lives or dies in the wake of an unforeseen problem, select that dive buddy only after careful deliberation. A casual consent to dive with an unskilled, untrained, or unaware buddy in an unforgiving environment may prove fatal.
So Rule #1 is know what constitutes a safe dive buddy, and dont dive with unsafe divers.
That may be an elitist attitude. But adopting such an attitude will enhance the performance of your dive team, if each member of your team has actively pursued self-improvement and optimal performance. Moreover, in the gravest extreme, it will provide the best chance of the entire teams survivability. Improvement occurs over time because of elitism.
There is never a justification for deliberate rudeness. Superiority laden with condescension appeals to no one. But dont be so quick to condemn elitist behavior. Condemn rudeness as you will, but dont ignore the message. Think of the dive fatalities that have been reported on this board alone over the past six months. A more broadly considered analysis of elitist thinking might keep more divers alive longer.
FWIW. YMMV.
