Screaming at a Wall

The other day I had an long, interesting, and a lovely phone call with a person for whom I have a great deal of respect (and for whom you probably do, too). They wanted to chat about what they framed as the "volume" of my message and brought up a great many really good points about the way that I vent over the internet about every damn bee which accidentally flies into my bonnet.

The conversation was wide ranging, but perhaps the key point they were trying to make is the old axiom: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I don't know why you'd want flies to begin with... ... perhaps I should just lay off the insect analogies.

I am nihilistic misanthrope. That comes across loudly when I complain about every damn thing under the sun; but the fact is, despite not being comfortable around people, I do hope for the best for everyone around me. Even those I dislike, it is my enduring hope that they find happiness and comfort and whatever it is they want in the world (just... over there... away from me).

At one point in the conversation they asked whether I had some sort of personal problem with this or that person. There is actually only a single human being I personally know in this world who I truly hate, who I truly see no redeeming qualities to whatsoever (if you're reading this... I guarantee it isn't you). So, "No," I answered honestly, I don't really have personal problems with anyone.

What I have are, mostly, safety concerns. About bloody everything. About some things/techniques/people/groups more than others. These are the things which I longwindedly try to communicate my thoughts on with varying effectiveness.

Before my first rebreather instructor accepted me as a student he sat me down and very soberly told me, "If you are going to do this, you need to recognize that you are going to have friends die. That you might watch friends die. That YOU may die. You need to be comfortable with that."

He was right. About the first two, so far. And not only as pertains to rebreathers.

I am still not comfortable with it, though. At least, I don't accept that it has to be an inevitability. Any time we go underwater we are playing the odds. The question is how resolutely do we tip the odds in our favor?

What I see so often, what I rail about so loudly, is that there are agencies/people/groups/styles/philosophies/etc which are awfully cavalier. We have all seen them. Instructors saying, "We're not supposed to do this, but you'll be ok," or mentors allowing divers not quite up to their own level join them on dives for which they aren't really prepared.

If you see something, say something, right?

Weeeeeelllllllll.......

Diving is funny, isn't it. It's a whole bunch of alpha personalities which have paradoxically fragile egos. What's more, it's a very small world of a luxury pastime operating on a razor-thin margin where business relationships and friendships are a very tightly drawn Venn diagram. Sometimes saying something can cause a rift in the friendship which will fuck with the business. It can be dangerous.

That doesn't really apply to me, though. I'm not going to claim "I'm better than that" or some other such hogwash. It's just that I am not really "in the industry" the way a manufacturer or an agency or a full-time instructor is. I don't have clients or business partners I might offend and am not constrained in the same ways.

So when I see something, I DO say something. Often these diatribes are triggered by conversations I've had with people (case in point, this very diatribe by a phone call the other day). What it comes down to is that I can talk, feel like my point of view may be a positive contribution, and therefore share it.

Sometimes loudly.

I grant that I can be acerbic; perhaps inappropriately so at times. That, I probably should watch. I am really not out to hurt anyone's feelings or tear anyone down. Mostly I'm surprised anyone takes a single thing I say seriously at all. I'm not going to claim I'm not charmed, but I am surprised.

The caustic side comes from the Bill Hicks/George Carlin school of Socratic education: "If they're not going to listen... throw the intellectual equivalent of a rabid monkey with a knives duct-taped to all four paws at them and then just watch the fun."

I know it isn't nice... but it can be funny. And just as educational if people are willing to listen. And if you are just throwing rabid monkeys just for the sake of throwing rabid monkeys, perhaps you should be thinking more carefully about your own motivations?

Just dive safe, goddamn it. Inspire others to do the same. If you are going to be a mentor, know what the hell you're talking about first. If you are going to be a spokesperson, have some consensus behind you.

Listen to the community around you... if they're all saying one thing and you insist on another, yeah, maybe you're being a trailblazer... but you have to grant that just maybe you're being a stubborn prick.

Me? I know I'm a stubborn prick. And I'll keep ranting, if for no other reason, because it's cathartic and it gives me something to do on the subway. And I promise, it is coming from a good place.

I'll hope that it occasionally inspires people think critically about things; and I'll hope it doesn't really hurt anyone.

Deadpool

I love being an educator and acting as a mentor. 

There were so very many things I wanted to know when I was getting started, that I wanted to try and do, but had only limited guidance available.  Just as often as not, even worse, I was given bad, incomplete, or totally wrong information which took time to research and correct.

So I enjoy making myself available as a source for those now coming up.  Even on those frequent occasions that I don't have the information myself I can point people in the right direction.

This is one of the many things I truly love about my job and feel is the mandate for any instructor: to find and use every opportunity to send better, safer divers out into the wild.

I'm aware that my online persona (possibly my real-life persona, too) is generally that of a curmudgeonly, know-it-all misanthrope... but it comes from a good place.

The old axiom is that with 10,000 hours of engagement comes expertise.  (This theory has since been disproven, which explains why there are so many crap instructors out there.)  I bring this up because I have been a full-time dive professional and dive safety geek for 8 years now.  8*52*40 = 16,640.  Whether that makes me an expert or simply a blowhard who is unemployable at real work is a conundrum I'll have to struggle with in my dotage.  But while I may not be an expert... I'm pretty well-equipped in a conversation on our sport.

I walk away from a great many of these conversations shaking my head and wondering why people won't listen and benefit the experience and mistakes others have and have made.  Why they'd prefer to make the same -- sometimes dangerous -- mistakes themselves.  Why they think they're so bloody clever when people who legitimately are experts are telling them they are doing something silly.

Perhaps it is the personal illusion of expertise that is the dark side of the exhilaration to be a mentor?  Vanity and ego.  The reason it is so frustrating when you try to help someone and your suggestions are dismissed as ignorant or swatted away like gadflies.

Or perhaps the frustration comes from the fact that among the legitimate experts there are actual deadpools.

There are unofficial lists of people who have been approached, often by several experts, offering mentorship or advice who are generally agreed to be on a fast track to a watery death.  It isn't gossip... it is commiseration.

We do talk about you.  It is not flattering.  You have reputations and nicknames.  But even if we don't like you, we do worry about you and don't want to see you hurt or hurt someone else.

Why the hell don't you listen?

Secondary Victims

Over the last few days I have had the same conversation with four different divers and instructors I respect enormously. Several of them about the same couple of divers.

There are a couple of divers out there that are going to die diving. Possibly soon. And they don't know it yet.

They certainly don't behave like they care. They seem to refuse to take the advise of their betters or agree to the long, slow process of mentorship. All they seem to think is, "I am preternaturally good at this and, besides, I'm only putting myself at any risk." They are 100% wrong.

As "technical" diving has become more mainstream over the last decade people have grown hell-bent for leather to reach the very top of the game. They see the empty spools, the gorgeous pictures, or the piles of brass that the rockstar divers bring back and they figure, "If I push really hard I can be doing that in a year or two!"

But they can't.

They selectively ignore that the rockstars have been slowly becoming who they are and what they're capable of for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. They don't think of the countless called dives or minor incidents or long-forgotten learning moments that these people have built their careers upon. They don't romanticize the hours of planning dives and bailout and emergency plans. They don't think of the support required. They just figure, "What's the worst that can happen? I die doing what I love?"

No. The worst that can happen is that you hurt or kill someone else because of your own bullshit ego trip.

When you die underwater you leave buddies who question, "What more could I have done?" You have rescue or recovery teams who have to go get you and carry around the memory of the dead look in your eyes as they find you floating there in their heads forever. Every instructor you've ever worked with (at least those worth a shit) will spend YEARS questioning every moment they worked with you and whether it was their fault for having certified you at all.

You have their families who certainly never signed on for this who suddenly have to become an emotional support network for those who were anywhere near your accident in any capacity. Strangers; people who you may never meet. People who now lose sleep worrying about their own loved ones.

Because you can't accept that you're not as good as you think you are. Because you decided to jump from the very peak of Dunning-Kruger mountain.

Slow down. Don't create secondary victims. You selfish dingbats.

Maybe one day you'll get to where you want to be. Maybe. But it should take longer than you think it should.