Nietzsche and Runaway Audio Consumption

@snilf @snilf  Good point about aphoristic works, and I took a risk, but I thought the quotation made enough internal sense for it to be related without trying to "size up" Nietzsche, which many know is either impossible or a lifelong occupation.

I happen to be reading Nietzsche because I occasionally teach him. I'm a philosophy professor.

Regarding you comment about the "corruption" of the real passion that happens sometimes, all I can do is echo Steve Guttenberg's explanation that sometimes the audiophile is really interested in sound itself -- not as a vehicle to music but for its own textures. That seems fine to me, too. The only problem with loving sound is when it somehow *substitutes* for music. That doesn't mean that music is better than sound, only that I was diverted from my purpose, on that occasion.

@mahgister @mahgister 
"There is no corruption of music by love of sound... There is an unending unsatisfaction by ignorance of the way to embed optimally a system in his mechanichal, electrical and acoustical dimensions...Then the upgrading deceptive road is chosen…"

I think this happens a lot. I did listen to a system yesterday that had the room right and the gear very very right — GR Research Super 7's with incredible mono block tube amplifiers. It was sublime.

Regarding Benjamin, I agree completely, especially your point that "the aim of reproduced music is NOT, as it might seem, to re-create an impossible lost original performance, but rather, to provide an authentic experience of its own, an experience of a new kind of artwork"

A good article on this general question is here: 

[Listening to Music: Performances and Recordings Author(s): Theodore Gracyk Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Spring, 1997, Vol. 55, No. 2, Perspectives on the Arts and Technology (Spring, 1997), pp. 139-150]

 @mglik   Nietzsche is anything but a nihilist. He questions the kind of life lived by people who automatically accept and then enact values that are imposed from others because that effectively prevents one from being, themselves, a creator of value.  The ideal of the ubermensch is a goal -- a way of life in which one seeks to create rather than merely obey. Create what? What they will.

@sns @sns The Pirsig reference struck me. Nice. I can imagine building audio systems as either spiritual work or delusion — but not either, necessarily. It depends on whether one has mastered oneself and know one's own purposes, which is the issue that initially lead me to the Nietzsche quote in the OP.

@tunefuldude @tunefuldude — 

"this idea of how our spirit is tied in w/ our individual level of fulfillment as we pursue this hobby of ours, is how well content we are, at peace you might say, with whatever equipment we currently posses, or use to enjoy it."

 -- exactly! As for whether you're an "intellectual" or not, well, in America that word is mostly used as a pejorative. So I won't say I thought your observation was very intellectual -- I'd opt for "insightful" and "illuminating," instead! 

Good to know others with spirit and questioning of spirit still exist!

Seems to me information, data taking the place of spirit in decline of civilization. Its rather confusing, on one hand, information, data elevated to level of belief, on other, diminished  such that cults of personality arise.

Those with spirit are always mindful of the entirety of universe, and how relatively insignificant they are. And yet, be significant in the sense one can feel united with all the spirited that ever existed upon the earth.

Me thinks the increasing divisions we observe today are in direct inverse to the loss of spirit in the masses.

@sns Fair points. Regarding data, increasing amounts of it are being used to subtly guide our spirits in profitable directions, all the while maintaining the illusions we are in full control. We don't get to keep those profits of course; we generate them for others.

The sad thing is, it's all a choice, and a conscious one at that. The spirit that could lead one to a better place has been intentionally disregarded for the data, however false, so as to take it's place and give meaningless, unrequited solace so one can do the unthinkable.

The more one does such things, the more it solidifies the actions and hardens the resolve to do more damage to those that prefer to function as a community, as it was always intended, for it is in community, that spirit, when practiced, is strengthened.

Unfortunately, the resultant, forced community of the false data driven can have the same sense and strength of community through rote practice but lacks the natural conviction and ease of living that resultantly benefits the spirit guided community.

It's probably why they're so angry all the time. They've created a world that isn't fulfilling which requires them to attack others instead of looking within.

All the best,
Nonoise

I will add to this discussion about Nietzsche that his master Schopenhauer had deep view about music revealing the "noumenal" or the "thing in itself", passing over or under or through the mere "representation" and linking the "will" in man to the universal cosmic will as ONE... Then music express the esthethical and the ethical dimension as 2 aspects of the same coin so to speak... This is the reason why music was so important phenomenon for S. and N. inherited this passion for music experience as a cosmic experience from S. himself...

S. was an admirer of the Spinozist Goethe, who is the recognized or unrecognized center of all the german philosophy even more than Kant himself...... And for Goethe colors express the same esthetical and ethical dimensions 2 aspect of the same "coin" and experience...In the same fashion the morphology of an animal is a book to be read in his environment whose chapters contains all the physiology of the animal and of the world itself.... For this read the monumental 1300 pages book of Wolfgang Schad

http://www.adonispress.org/threefoldness.php

Now physical Acoustic and psycho-acoustic , the science but also the lived experience of acoustic, express for me, like music an esthetical and a ethical lesson to the acoustician and to ourself : the location of our body in the world or in a room make us able with our attention to explore CONSCIOUSLY a perspectival meaningful world lived internally and externally as ONE WORLD...

More than that the perception of sound is the DIRECT perception, through the wave-image, of the INSIDE of a resonating object and an immediate perception of his density, of his topology, and of his intrinsic qualities located in a particular vibrational state in a pareticular environment...( this is the reason why the "timbre" experience for example cannot be reduced to his spectrum) .Intuition is then a compensated PERCEPTION here as real as for the senses...

For example the location of cavities , their number, the size of their aperture, the materials which compose them, be it dry wood or wet wood or diverse metals, be it a ripe fruit or not if we tap it to verify, etc, are revealed by tapping or putting the object in a resonant state... A cavern or a flute, not only fruits or rock are perceived directly for their qualities this way by prehistoric man or by blind man in their environment...Or by conscious listening experiment nowadays...

If you can read this article The Body-Image Theory of Sound: An Ecological Approach to Speech and Music by Akpan J. Essien is very instructive....So much i boight his doctorate thesis in a book...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327268_The_Body-Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music