High End Audio-Gaining Higher Ground?

I've worked for fifteen years in a college arts program with bright young people whose lives are devoted to the arts of all kinds and I've met very few who had interest in our audio passion. Jmcgrogan2's response is pretty much spot on in my opinion. Young people's lives are an exercise in constant multi-tasking and the concept of sitting in one spot doing one thing - listening to music - strikes them as very odd. I work at a state university, not an ivy league school. The majority of our arts program students are so swamped in accumulating student debt they can't conceive of the time they'll be able to buy their own home much less afford a good audio system to put in it! I seriously think the rapidly escalating cost of college is going to negatively affect many aspects of our economy as discretionary income shrinks because of ballooning student loan payments. I know far too many people in their thirties with advanced degrees and six figures of student loan debt.

Macrojack, I think you touched on the periphery of a subject that is seldom examined; the difficulty many audiophiles experience being satisfied with living in the present. You make the analogy of seeking ever greater audio realism with a drug users endlessly chasing a better high. There's a great deal of truth in that analogy I think. Both music and drugs can create pleasurable experiences and create a craving for the next endorphin rush.

That situation is just one aspect of a broader problem with the human mind. We humans are constantly comparing our present experience to something in the past we retroactively imagine was better than the present or we are creatively constructing a future that's better than the present. Constantly flickering between an imaginary more perfect past/future and the imperfect present creates the perfect consumer and an endless state of audio nervosa. It remains to be seen if that characteristic of the human mind will be our species most desirable or most harmful trait. Without the ability to imagine a better future, we'd still be shivering in cold caves and living a hunter gatherers lifestyle. If we don't tame our inability to be content with enough, we'll end up destroying the resources that sustain us.