Why do some think "music" (not gear, trading, etc.) is the ultimate end?


A recent thread spurred a debate about the word "audiophile." Again. It went round and round in the usual ways.

What I don't understand is why so many take for granted that loving music is superior to loving gear. Or that gear is always -- and must be -- a mere *means* to music, which is the (supposedly) true end.

But if you stop and think about it, why do we love music? It gives us enjoyment.
Isn't that why people love gear? The enjoyment?
Or even, to push the question, buying, selling, changing gear? That's for enjoyment, no?

So, it raises the difficult question: Why do some think that "music" as an "enjoyment" is better than "gear" or "shopping, buying, selling, trading"?

Not everyone believes this, but it is the most prevalent assumption in these discussions -- that "love of music" is the end-which-cannot-be-questioned. 

So, while music is the largest end I'm personally striving for, I do realize that it's because it brings me enjoyment. But the other facets of the hobby do, too. And I'm starting to realize that ranking them is an exercise but not a revelation of the "one" way everything should sort out. It's all pretty subjective and surely doesn't seem like a basis on which I could criticize someone else's enjoyment, right? 

What do you think? On what grounds do you see it argued that "music" is a *superior* or *ultimate* end? Whether you agree or not, what reasons do you think support that conclusion?
128x128hilde45
It remind me of my schoolyard teen years, when some objected about listening the words they dont understand or reacted to interest they dont like....My hate of crowd come from these years indeed....

Coming back to the OP matter, gear has no interest to me apart from their contribution to sound quality....
Music is a so deep subject that Stuart Hameroff says with Roger Penrose that the brain is more akin to an orchestra than to a computing device...

I know they are right because in the music the signification and the sound wave body make one complete unity.... This cenesthesy is already the perception of an encompassing reality.... In this sense the music is a multidimensional consciousness potential in the making.... A computation suppose that and his itself only the shadow of a more deep music.....It is not bad poetry when a great mathematician physicist, Michael Berry, call the prime distribution a musical event, not only a mere computational event....

Understanding music is akin to improve our conscious participation in the phenomenas flow in our own body and in the world that are always ONE anyway, and that are made one on another level for the conscious listening experience, and Pirsig outpassing the sterile subject /object customs and barrier is a walk in the right direction indeed....



:)
mahgister -- Love your post.  A true attempt to argue that meaning can indeed exist within a piece of music.
@hilde45-time is money and once clicking I go down a rabbit hole for curiosity. Seems as  if you are encouraging the divergence instead of sticking with your OP,  and mahgister is encouraging you with a back and forth.

My $.02, but note that I am still following....but not reading the complete “esoteric” posts.
@sokoogear Threads lead in many directions. It's like a conversation. Tangents sometimes lead interesting places. When they don't, I stop following or skip over, as is your strategy. To each their own. Peace.