From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Mon Apr 14 2003 - 19:51:47 MDT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Daniel Crocker
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:54 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Scuba (was FITNESS)
>
>
> > (natashavita@earthlink.net <natashavita@earthlink.net>):
> > One of many things I fancy about Greg is his candor. (Psst
> - I'll be
> > checking him out in a few weeks on our scuba diving vacation. :-))
[the whole scuba thing is just an excuse to see Natasha in a skin-tight
black rubber suit ...]
> I'm curious about the attraction of Scuba.
Well, you've pushed one of my buttons. Scuba is a VERY extropian sport:
It's a melding of human and machine for the purpose of experiencing new
things and developing new abilities. If it's not THE most extropian
sport, it's got to be in the top two or three. There's lots to learn in
terms of technique and background information in physics and biology
and, for the gadget-head, there's no end to the cool STUFF you get to
play with.
> If danger is part of the attraction, why not do something
> that gives a more intense sensation of danger with lower
> risk, like skydiving or bungee jumping (my father and I did a
> jump from a railroad bridge over Feather River canyon
> once--that was an experience I am glad to have had but feel
> no compulsion to repeat)?
As you saw from the figures you just posted, basic recreational diving
isn't very dangerous at all. Almost every accident of any kind or
fatality I've ever read or heard about in the realm of recreational
diving has been a result of bone-headed stupidity. (I read technical
reports of dive accidents to keep myself sharp, and there's a definite
evolution-in-action effect in most accidents that happen to open-water
divers in depths above 40 meters.) "Technical diving" -- i.e. diving in
more demanding conditions -- has a higher accident rate because the
margin for error is smaller and the result of mistakes or equipment
failures is more quickly problematic.
At any rate, the "thrill" aspects of diving come and go, but the
satisfaction (for me, at least) is never-ending. Especially the feeling
of weightlessness and flight is, for me, the capture in real life of
experiences we only have in normal life fleetingly in dreams. Now that
I'm a more experienced diver and the basic technique can drop into the
background of my consciousness for many minutes at a time, I often allow
myself to drift into a state of utter serenity that is very hard to
recreate on dry land down here at the bottom of Earth's gravity well.
One very cool thing about scuba is that being good at it requires
careful breath control for fine buoyancy adjustment and, ultimately,
submerged duration. This naturally causes you to become calmer and
calmer as you get better and better. The result of being truly in
control of your breathing as a diver is very much the same as the
breath-control of the accomplished meditator. In fact, on a simple
dive, the challenge is to keep sharp on the technical things when the
lure of weightlessness and flight is there. But then, one can always
"up the ante" with some new technical challenge. In the last couple of
years I've split the price of a god digital video rig and running that
at 120 feet keeps me sharp and focused.
Then -- especially in tropical diving -- there's the incredible new
living world you're exposed to. Seeing a tropical aquarium just doesn't
convey the experience of gliding above a shallow coral reef, or
exploring a deep wall. The density and diversity of life just can't be
comprehended from a flat video screen. Every square inch of a mature,
healthy coral reef is a microcosm of life on the planet, with a depth of
ecology that plays out before your eyes in a way that nothing on land
can equal. Then there's the occasional encounter with a big pelagic or
sea turtle or ray or giant grouper that gives you a sense of the
immensity of some of the life in the ocean. When you surface from a
dive like that, you can't believe the biological poverty we experience
most of the time. You've got to be there and see it to believe how
wonderful this is.
> So why Scuba?
I guess I'd answer -- why not?
Greg Burch
Vice President, Extropy Institute
http://www.greburch.net
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