Oh? You have classified all those who are not "Doing It Right" as "Doing It Wrong." (Your own post) That's pretty arrogant! You can't escape the "arrogance" problem
inherent in the term. Any time anyone chooses a way and says it's "the Right way" rather than "one of the best" or "one of the ways that works" they are automatically excluding all other ways from "Right." And they are wrong to do so, with one exception, but *that* is a religious discussion. Even a claim of "Doing It Best" is less arrogant than "DIR."
So, as I said, good riddance to the term. Regardless of the benefits of the methods its practitioners have contributed to the diving community, the moniker itself has been divisive, stuck up, and yes, arrogant. It (the term itself, not the "holistic method") has done nothing but foment bad feelings, insults and childish finger-pointing by its novitiates and its detractors.
Still, if it goes away completely, I'll miss the rolling eyes and chatter my yellow tow-strap harness creates among freshly minted fundies grads
Rick
Rick,
You have hit on one of the biggest reasons WHY a WIKI article that is accurate on DIR is needed.
I use DIR today to refer to a team based style of diving, where the divers are geared up in an optimal fashion for low drag, for potential to share gas, and for exploration level diving ( definition would need to be much longer, but is tangental to this response)...the point is, it is not me saying Billy Bob is doing it wrong, it is me using a descriptor that is widely understood to represent a very specific way of diving.....and this is about how you are supposed to dive, it is not about all the ways you are not supposed to dive ( of which there are many).
With a historical context, the term DIR makes sense--and can not really be undrestood without this. Your reaction seems to indicate you are not aware of the reason George called this DIR, where the term was being applied, and why there was some need for it....The fact that it caught on and grew, indicates that many people felt the ideas of DIR were so compelling, that they needed to cross over from cave diving.
It was North Florida Cave diving, in the 80's and 90's that created a horrible caricature that ultimately gave legs to the DIR movement.
This was a time and area where training agencies and long time divers alike, used almost any gear an individual wanted to use, had a very diverse number of incompatible ideas for solving underwater cave problems with multiple divers involved, and there were countless examples of foolish practices being taught. Deaths in the North Florida Caves were becoming so widespread, that many property owners were strongly considering making the caves on their land NO TRESSPASSING and OFF LIMITS to diving. George was frequently in a position to attempt to explain to a landowner, or to a government agency, why his dive club/team, the WKPP, would not have frequent deaths like so many of the other clubs and organizations in Florida were having. Why did they keep having deaths? Because they were doing Cave Diving the Wrong Way....WKPP mandates only the RIGHT way of doing things....and he would go on for an hour on each of the practices that are mandated to team members, and why. On questioning, he would explain how other teams would use behaviors very different from WKPP, and how these behaviors could be shown to be extremely incorrect if you want a high liklihood of survival and success for your dives. Doing it Right was coined as a good collective description, of how not to die in a Florida Cave.
Since George was also a deep ocean diver, he came back to South Florida after a year of diving with Parker Turner of the WKPP, and had skills far beyond any of us that he had been diving with prior to his first year with the WKPP. When we saw what he could do on spearfishing dives into wrecks 280 feet down, things we could barely imagine doing, each of us wanted to know how he was doing these things....and he began showing us. Over the following years, the WKPP style of diving began spreading well into South Florida Deep Ocean diving, but these were not WKPP divers.....they were using a style of diving and diving solutions used by the WKPP, and this would soon be called DIR. Once the name was coined, for describing the way we dive, how we proactively problem solve, etc., everyone doing this began calling themself a DIR diver, as it was the most rapid and effective manner of explaining what was a radical new approach to doing challenging dives.
As George Irvine, Jarrod Jablonski, Robert Carmichael, Bill Mee and I all believed much of DIR could make many recreational divers much safer in recreational dives, and able to enjoy greater recreational level adventures, they tasked me with promoting the DIR ideas on rec.scuba , which was sort of the scubaboard.com of the 90's.
Rick, these were the real issues....the name calling, the WWF Wrestling stuff, this was just George getting the message out over a media, using the only transmission style that could overcome large traditional media budgets of real agencies that were selling bad ideas which could kill people ( like it was just fine for an instructor to teach a tech diver to do a 280 foot dive in 50 degree water, with a 7 mil wet suit, and 4 heavy steel tanks, with a tightly wrapped bungie wing....). This was a media technique, to get people passing around a discussion, and getting them involved.
The actual DIR itself, was very separate.... In fact, when I brought guys like MHK ( a previously huge nemesis of DIR, or self appointed huge Stroke) from Ca to Fl with an invitation to dive with George, Bill and I, and to see DIR first hand, George was soft spoken, he answered in huge detail, carefully, and then demonstrated issue after issue. Mike Kane was so blown away by the demonstration and true reasonings, that overnight he went from the bigest detractor on rec.scuba to DIR, to one of our biggest proponents.....
......................The true message of DIR was absolutely NOT negative to others..the true message was only about finding the optimal ways....And that DIR Divers are divers that have been on a path to find the most optimal way to dive.
