Great thread! I think the wording of the original question was skewed towards Why is Audio Not a Status Symbol, but the header poses a different question - Why Don't More People Love Audio?
The questions are bound to have quite different answers. With regard to the first question, if speaking of status symbols -- it seems we are --, then I think we're moving in the territory of conspicuous consumption. IF audio (gear) is not a status symbol, then so because it can't be driven around the block like flashy wheels, draped on the back of your chair like bespoke threads - neither worn on your wrist like a well-built watch nor on your arm like a comely, well-built or flashy wench. Conspicuity (sp?) is in large part about ostentation. Os-tendere means literally to hold out, to show. What's at home cannot be seen, is insufficiently conspicuous for the status-seeking. For those mainly out and about, audio is an unattractive venue, too homely. For those whose social lives are more centered on the at-home, audio is fair game for more vicarious display. I do contend that audio IS a status symbol, just -- for a variety of reasons -- not so obviously so like other things.
(Coiner of "conspicuous consumption": Thorstein Veblen, http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/veblen/
see esp. The Theory of the Leisure Class - with milk and cookies some late eve makes for a nice audiogoner nightcap)
With regard to the second question, while I agree with many posting that not everyone loves audio, I have yet to meet anyone who would contend that Nietzsche in opining a life without music is not a life at all, got it completely wrong. Most everyone appreciates music to some degree. He just may not have a well-developed ear or musical taste.
I think the second question is not about why people don't love audio, but concerns rather why people don't have musical taste. To explain this odd phenomena, I would agree with many of the posts - well, it's a sign of the times, it's a Zeitgeist thing, no time, etc. Veblen: No leisure class. (It seems the views of old money -- the old leisure class -- and new money are converging: money is something that should be studied and seriously pursued, like a career or genuine work. It's no longer something whose main purpose is to allow one to spend life pursuing useless things -- philology, oenology, musicology or other diversions -- that have no bottom line.)
IMO the phenomenon is related to the phenomenon why most do not have a good eye for art, that is, have an underdeveloped appreciation for the visual. I don't think they are to blame anymore than anyone is to be held responsible for not being of astonishing pulchritude. As we know, the all-important key to physical beauty is to select your parents wisely. To a significant, but by no means equal, extent, the same goes for the aural and visual. Lack of EARLY exposure and at least some early training of ear and eye do leave their mark. We know for example that tabus and tastebuds are programmed early -- very early -- in life. In a similar vein, it is unlikely that anyone who has never been taken, dragged?, to exhibitions, concerts and so on early on, without similar experiential access, will butterfly to become artist or musician. Unlikely, not impossible. This is why I admire the likes of Lngbruno and others who provide their friends and cohorts with audiophilic and other forms of leisurely acculturation. Belated it may be, but music is, thankfully, unlike our proportions, less a matter of nature than of nurture.
