How could High End audio be improved?

Nicely put, Asa! In a similar vein, proponents of "good sound at home" (i.e. musical beauty) USED to be opinion leaders in their social group; now they (we) are geeks.

There is another consideration:
Activity & interactive "leisure" keeps our minds away from ourselves, it keeps us busy and away from being introspective. This hobby asks us to lie back and receive, and maybe come closer to our inner selves. We're not taught to do that nowadays, as Asa notes.

But unless this hobby enlists the proverbial 15yr old, its future is very uncertain (as Judith & others have noted).

Thank you cdc.

Yes, gregm, good point. "Leisure" activity is not just looking at the body (I'm sitting still), or, that I'm not engaged what is defined in society as leisure (what I'm doing when I'm not at a job, leisure defined by what it is not), but addresses the orientation of the mind.

We use the word "leisure" as a point of departure because most people understand it, generally, to mean a space where the mind CAN be more receptive. But you're right, many people are so attached to the objectifying activity of their minds that even in "leisure" time - off work - that orientation towwrds the world continues and the activities adopted remain reflective of that attachment.

We are addicts of the thinking mind that seeks to objectify everything it sees: science reducing the mind into a thing; the reduction of animal minds into product-things; the seeing of the other person as a thing to be manipulated towards further acceptance by the others (society).

This is a cycling that leaves progressively less space for silence. The tension exists between those minds who move towards receptivity to "what is" and those minds who deny the possibility of this movement and cling to their ideology of materialism (read: only matter and the manipulation off matter exists to determine truth).

The tension is increasing and we see it in society in general and reflected in its microcosms, like the hiend, and particularly in its microcosms that address "art" as they are marginalized and its participants ask themselves, what can we do about it?

What is paradoxical is that, because the hiend also deals with technology, and because those that are technolog-ic in orientation are predominantly materialist, the hiend has a significant population of people who are allied to objectification and are advocates of its ideology, and yet, at the same time, are engaged in an art that shows them the partiality of that attachment; they are attached to the thinking mind, yet when they are listening to music they are letting go of that thinking mind, and yet later, when they talk about it to others, revert back to the ideology of materialism.

Interesting...

Yes Asa, interesting, which to my mind just goes to show, that many people basically are not what they truly and honestly think what they are, though they will fight their conception of self tooth and nail. This is true not only of the materialistically inclined lot, but of course of their antepodes as well. As good old Carl Gustav said, there just ain't no truth, which cannot be turned upside down and stood in its head. Nice, no? 6chak would probaly like that, where is he anyway?? Cheers,

Here (hear), I'll call him.

6ch, 6ch (possibly someone might dare think, six channel audio), come home, come home, time for supper!

Sorry, 6chhc6, just couldn't help myself... :0)

Hi detlof, hope you are well...yes, their direct opposites too. Some people adopt a variance ideology and incorporate that into the idea of themselves. They then take that new idea of themself and turn and fight the minds that they just came from, and in so doing, assure that have never left! This can happen with any idea: materialist, so-called liberal, conservative, environemntal-based, etc.

In such people, you see the same orientation as the materialist: they use that idea to then use against the other to stay where they are. For example, they adopt the idea of vegetarianism (I am one, BTW) and this idea becomes them, their ego structure, as opposed to an action that arises from what they are. These people become missionaries, seeking to use their "good" ideas to quell another. It remains a predatory action of the thinking mind, not an empathic symptom of being.

In the hiend, we see this in a romantic idealist fashion, where people say that they have experienced music deeply as a means of excluding the other, in this case excluding people who like "accurate" sound. They do this by equating their alleged attainment with some sort of spiritual attainment. This is where you see someone claiming to be a shaman of triodes, or invoke Zen language. The reactionary, fundamentalist taint remains.

It is this exclusionary orientation of both minds - the making of the other mind into the other thing - from either group that, underneath, makes them the same. They are each using ideas of themselves to stay where they are and control the other through thinking.

The "tooth and nail" comes not from engaging them on the idea, its content, but from engaging them on an idea of themselves, a self that does not want to change, that thinks if it stays where it is and follows the rules provided by others then it will be safe. It is fear of change. This produces the recoil that we see many times to an idea here, because it is not the content argued with, but the felt pressure of potential change.

Yes, all truth can be turned on its head, at least all truth obtained by thinking; all thinking directed at the infinite grasps merely tangents of finiteness. It is always an approximation; some thinking points away because it wants to stay where it is and deny what it might become, other thinking points to that potentiality in all that only the individual can choose for himself.

But then, you know this.

Cheers across the ocean.

Oh yea, on mechanics. You know what "mechanic" really gets people going, really makes them want to join the hiend?

Hearing people like twl talk about turntables, or detlof about his stacked Quads.

Its us.

Just keep talking to people with passion - the passion translated from your deep listening experience. Not a missionary grabbing by the shoulders, just tell them and they will come.

Its a matter of...

faith