Posted by Kendall Raine on December 07, 2000 at 10:27:03:
In Reply to: Re: Get Serious... posted by seahunt on December 02, 2000 at 06:40:50:
I've got a real problem with your perspective, Seahunt. To summarize your post, it's a free country so everyone should have the right to behave foolishly and do stupid things. As a result, why should anyone care what happens to the other guy if he chooses to excercise his freedoms in this regard. First, I agree with you that it's a free country and should remain so. Freedom includes the right to do risky things. Freedom includes the right to do risky things stupidly. Diving is self-regulated and should remain so and I would link arms with you to fight any attempt to change that. You overlook a few issues, however:
1. Maybe this guy didn't know how stupid his methods were. People like Gilliam (I understand this was a Gilliam trip) are so obsessed with their rightousness with respect to deep air and solo diving they overlook the mounting pile of bodies at their feet. Gilliam's own training agency, TDI, has a growing list of training incidents and fatalities which flow from his half-baked methods and pig-ignorant perspective. Personally, I'd hate to see anyone on this board make the same mistakes out of ignorance regardless of whether they have a "right" under the Constitution or the dialectic of history to do so.
2. I've been to several funerals for dead divers-one of whom died despite the efforts of myself and others to save him. The pain for those left behind is impossible to comprehend unless you've been through it. The impact on those involved in the attempted rescue was profound. While I hope you and yours never experience any of that, your cavalier attitude towards the notion is reprehensible.
Saying this guy's death is "small stuff" and not worthy of your concern is disgusting. You can't affect the timing of the next great flu outbreak, but you could, if you bothered, affect how some other diver behaves just by offering constructive advice. Your "broad view" of human morality is just so much quasi-neo-intellectual bullshit. It's an excuse to hold yourself above the reality of the human condition, which starts one person at a time. Your view is the analog of what Stalin said about mass murder.
Let's all hope you never need anyone else's help, buddy. If anyone else on this board dives with you and is reading this, I also hope they realize what kind of person they're relying on.