The more I think about the continuing unhappiness I see in the pursuit of highest fidelity the more I think this has much to do with the extreme material nature of the hobby.
I like the way you put that. The further question is, why is one oriented around the "material"? (Here’s where a Marxian explanation would veer toward a fundamentally materialistic basis of reality and the lives within it. Some psychologists might chase it back to our fundamental rootedness in the body.)
We can see in @mahgister an approach that is joyful in its adjustments and experiments without being dragged into a materialistic -- consumeristic -- quest. He is very concerned with the materials involved in acoustics, of course, but they are instruments to create events and experiences. (In my humble opinion, even a small adjustment by him in the devices embedded in his embedding would be another lever worth pressing, but he prefers to stick with his $500 system. Whatever.)
Adjusting my system is like whittling. It’s fun to do. It’s part of the hobby. And just as with cooking, I like to rotate changes through for the same reason I like to listen to different music or watch different movies.
In other words, the challenge of upgrade-itis isn’t about material after all; it’s about a dogmatic and myopic idea -- that "perfection" is singular and final. If perfection is about plurality and change, the "disease" of audiophiles goes right away, with the hobby left intact.