But dear Mrtennis, criticizing the behavior of others is exactly what you do here - quite apart from repeating your mantra and in giving (perhaps) unwanted advice - with your remarks regarding Chashmal's way of approaching our common theme.
Forgive me, but somehow I feel that there is a built in reflex in you, that whenever you meet anything which might smack of "passion" you wish to squash the argument in pointing to "rationality" and "to each his own". You have a point of course, but personally I find it a bit boring. In fact, would we all follow your message, neither you or I would have board to post on:
Audiogon is about business of course, but it is kept alive by conflicting value judgements and by passion, apart from our commonly shared curiosity how others do it and how they think about what they are doing. I don't want to be unjust, but somehow I feel, you are trying to mellow down our happy jousting and exchanging of ideas, views and idiosyncracies with a dose of puritanism, which tries to drive the fun out of it all. Quite apart from that, pray tell, how I should I deepen my "enjoyment of music" WITHOUT any regard of what others are doing in my field. In fact, I need the comments and criticism of others in order to grow and learn. I do agree with you, that criticizing the behavior of others may in our field often be a questionable approach, but on the other hand, I do need to to know what others think of what I'm doing and why, I do need to be criticized to avoid the danger of complacency, which is the death of creativity. So we have a dilemma here I feel, and to my mind it is not as clear and as simple as you seem to make out.
Please don't get me wrong. I have great respect for most of your posts, which I read always with interest. It is just what I call your "mantra", which irks me, because I feel, though your point there is basically right of course, it causes a wrong at the same time in trying to stifle arguments and chains of thoughts, which through their dialectics and dynamism could lead to new knowledge. (Just look at the history of the Sciences to understand my point)
Cheers and happy listening from one exlover of the stacked Quads to the other...
Detlof
