There was a post by someone a while back, or perhaps I read it in the archives during a search, about two types of personalities...a "satisfier" and a "maximizer". The satisfier will buy something of good quality and be happy with it while a maximizer will buy something, perceive flaws(real or imagined), and continue the search for something ever better. Since the search never ends, the maximizer is never happy...rather a sad way to spend(literally) a life when you think about it, but to each his/her own.
If you want to get into the zen aspect of things, or at least the buddhist approach of south asia and/or tibet, then you'll find that "desire" is the root of all evil & unhappiness. If you can eliminate desire, or keep it in it's place (a desire in itself...hence the difference between "try" and "do"), then one can be a much happier person. Seeing the audio equipment game for what it is (substitute cars, golf clubs, boats, motorcycles, or any other material-mania for "audio equipment") helps....it's just a churn of consumerism fueled by "desire"(real, imagined, or imposed)...primarily someone else's desire to own your next dollar(actually your labor)...and most dollars after that. Whatever the item being pushed might actually be is just details. If you think of a bunch of enron-type fatcats sitting around a board room table dreaming up ways of flooding the market with some gizmo and then building a plan to build an "aura"(real or most often imagined) around the product to fuel desire...such that, in the end, they make your money, their money, then it tends to toss a little water of the desire end of things. Images of continually shearing a herd of sheep (your the sheep) also helps. Anytime someone takes a 5 dollar piece of wire, puts some lipstick on it, and marks the price up 7000%...that's shearing sheep...bbbaaah.. aaahhh, but that's just me... :-) ..sorry, I'm off on a bit of a tangent here, it's early & the coffee is kicking in...everyone's mileage varies.
No disrespect intended to the producers pouring their hearts & souls into designing & building equipment. My hat is off to them as they do some fine work & they should be paid for it.
:-))
If you want to get into the zen aspect of things, or at least the buddhist approach of south asia and/or tibet, then you'll find that "desire" is the root of all evil & unhappiness. If you can eliminate desire, or keep it in it's place (a desire in itself...hence the difference between "try" and "do"), then one can be a much happier person. Seeing the audio equipment game for what it is (substitute cars, golf clubs, boats, motorcycles, or any other material-mania for "audio equipment") helps....it's just a churn of consumerism fueled by "desire"(real, imagined, or imposed)...primarily someone else's desire to own your next dollar(actually your labor)...and most dollars after that. Whatever the item being pushed might actually be is just details. If you think of a bunch of enron-type fatcats sitting around a board room table dreaming up ways of flooding the market with some gizmo and then building a plan to build an "aura"(real or most often imagined) around the product to fuel desire...such that, in the end, they make your money, their money, then it tends to toss a little water of the desire end of things. Images of continually shearing a herd of sheep (your the sheep) also helps. Anytime someone takes a 5 dollar piece of wire, puts some lipstick on it, and marks the price up 7000%...that's shearing sheep...bbbaaah.. aaahhh, but that's just me... :-) ..sorry, I'm off on a bit of a tangent here, it's early & the coffee is kicking in...everyone's mileage varies.
No disrespect intended to the producers pouring their hearts & souls into designing & building equipment. My hat is off to them as they do some fine work & they should be paid for it.
:-))