Location: Home Counties
Posts: 157
I'm Joe.
Last edited by Bigman80; 15-02-2019 at 10:13.
Location: London/Durham
Posts: 7,003
I'm Lawrence.
Well said Tom I was just reading this thread thinking how am I going to give my opinion without offending anyone but you have done it for me so thanks for that. I feel like the forum has changed in the last year or so and whereas previously I enjoyed reading all the content I now feel the use of hyperbole in some threads has put me off reading some of it. I was speaking to another forum member the other day who agreed with me, actually I think he said it first.
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Last edited by Bigman80; 15-02-2019 at 10:11.
Location: Home Counties
Posts: 157
I'm Joe.
Location: Seaford UK
Posts: 1,861
I'm Dennis.
This subject is close to my heart and has been so for many years, and it applies much more generally to life than Hi-Fi.
Gradually over my lifetime, as an honest person, I have increasingly realised that not only are a great number of people dishonest, but that they are so instinctually because that behaviour has become embedded in their personalities as a result of the 'profits' they have made in life.
I base my own morality of four principles which have become a deeply embedded obsession with me; honesty, sincerity, integrity and authenticity. If people comply with these they have to be good people; these restrict behaviour from being immoral.
But we are in a predatory society, in which for example, on R4 a few days ago, a professor described capitalism now as 'surveillance capitalism'. Apparently some TVs have cameras on them allowing your own personal life to be under surveillance, and there is no doubt that we are the most surveilled country in the world.
But it is the deliberate usage of this data which is of concern rather more than perhaps wrong advice or recommendation given with good intent.
I have had to study much psychology in order to try to understand how and why people have multiple accounts of reality, and causally many have low integration personalities, often deceiving themselves, and doing so out of their own awareness. They partition their minds, and 'edit' their own accounts of the past and in particular their own behaviour, this to allow themselves to obtain false self esteem using fantasy.
In the case of product selling it is worth looking at the work of Freud's cousin Edward Bernhays, who developed the discipline of Public Relations. He decided to get people to consume on the basis or created 'wants', rather than instinctual needs, this in order to promote capitalism. One result was the consumption by large numbers of people of cigarettes, this killing thousands of women because it became an icon of liberation for them. He would no doubt be held to account today.
Our subjective reactions to sound quality are very much individual, and are brain based, this making absolute evaluation rather problematic, and we surely must try to be a rigorous as possible and avoid influence from factors other than the sound itself.
I do not really have a good grasp of the concept of 'shilling', and had thought it to be using associates to falsly bid for an item in order, through competition to raise the selling price, but I now see that it is also having a loyalty to a product and promoting it whilst appearing to be neutral.
I see honesty as a casualty in our modern society, and evidence abounds to support this view, but genuine enthusiasm can be a result of an infatuation, which may be resulting from genuine passion, or delusion
Last edited by Pharos; 15-02-2019 at 10:09.
Last edited by Bigman80; 15-02-2019 at 10:11.