Son et Image Montreal 2014: Naim disappears up it's own a@*%!

[Mescalito]

Fox , once again you are arguing against its implementation and I would not disagree with you .

However ,no matter were you start there is no better idea of governance than government for all of the people by all of the people . Dictatorships , monarchy's even electoral lottery just don't cut it .

Also -

110K Naim amplifier - enjoyed by one selfish bastard with more money than sense .

mri scanner - saves several lifes daily .

Playing devil's advocate here, but says who? The majority?

Chris

 

[Daniel Quinn]

Playing devil's advocate here, but says who? The majority?

Chris

History says so and stability be the test .

 

[Fox]

Its a shame you are not reading carefully what I am writing, maybe its not explaining it but I've passed this by ms fox who said it was fine, perhaps its a social anthropology thing, perhaps you are incapable of engaging. Anyway, not a prob, it's been good for me to think these things through, so thanks.

 

[Joe Hutch]

History says so and stability be the test .

I'm not sure history is a reliable guide here; we've only had universal suffrage in the UK for 90 or so years, and democracies elsewhere in Europe didn't fare too well in the face of aggression from Fascist and Communist dictators.

 

[Daniel Quinn]

Its a shame you are not reading carefully what I am writing, maybe its not explaining it but I've passed this by ms fox who said it was fine, perhaps its a social anthropology thing, perhaps you are incapable of engaging. Anyway, not a prob, it's been good for me to think these things through, so thanks.

that will be the case

 

[adamdea]

You are right. I have simply explained the mechanism of why people cannot think of better, corporatism is the marriage of democracy and money, so what is better is down to what your values are and what you want to give up or accept to live another way. These are difficult things to state empirically they will be better because, to use the viral analogy, I would then fall into the trap of becoming a lone antibody to a bigger organism predisposed to limit anyone who would question the validity of prevalent dominator cultures, become visible and thus a point of attack where the champions of the prevailing system will do their utmost to discredit or stifle discourse. I can see it happening already and it's how systems such as money and democracy educates humans as to believe in the system and protect it at all costs.

You have a brain, and you can think it through: look at how other societies have been constructed outside of our western ideologue: bear in mind that capitalism and democracy are not the only way to define, say money or self governance, money is not a function of capitalism, consensus governance is not a function of democracy.

What alternatives are workable? I was thinking to myself I what would I give up, could I give up technology and medicine and so on and some I would some I would not, so the important thing is to be very clear what you mean by democracy and capitalism and especially "workable" after all, all I have had back from you is the request to do your thinking for you... That's not going to answer the question for you because the answer is super-positional: My idea of workable is mot yours, so I can answer what would work for me but that implies and assumes what works for me works for all, and implies my wishes are to be a dominator culture, and it's my feeling that this does not ever work. Unless you are an ant or hive being.

You know how to do critical thinking, yeah? It's being systematically removed from school an university curricula because it challenges the prevailing ideologies, whatever it is. and that is considered Not A Good Thing.

I think it's unlikely that anyone will sincerely wish to have an alternative system unless they sincerely want something different from the values of liberal democracy. I don't mean being Tony Benn rather than Keith Joseph, I mean something lying far outside that range of values. I reckon that one is somewhere within that system of values if one generally "gets" the arc of mainstream cinema and literature. Not that one likes it but can basically understand it and empathise up to a point- see who is the main character, understand what would broadly be regarded as a happy ending.

Paradigm shifts are in their nature unpredictable and rare. It is therefore unsurprising that we don't see one coming.

It is highly significant that there is no alternative system which appears to have any real resonance with most people in the west. It is highly amusing to have a conversation with sincere fundamentalist greens for example, because they know that a profound change to our consumption of natural resources would require a totally different world view, and a totally different world (not least medieval levels of human population).

The failure to see a viable alternative is not just an inability to think critically; in fact imagining that it's a simple as thinking out of the box, is itself a product of a superficial and naive approach. I'm not sure what may cause us to have such a different set of values that democracy and capitalism (with some degree of constitutional and regulatory tweaking) will no longer seem attractive as means of delivering them, but I don't see a sudden shift unless there is some sort of cataclysm.

On that basis it seems reasonable to say that none of the alternatives appears to be attractive in any way.

 

[whatsnext]

It is quite clear. They are going after the hard-spending (and if they are HiFi incompetent and don't really care how it actually sounds, no problem) status-seekers. Naim-for-Bentley, etc. The days of the Salisbury cottage industry are long gone, its just business and going for the big spenders. Like people who HAVE to have a Leica because it is a prestige name. Naim today is a "luxury brand" like Gucci or Chuch's shoes.
Also, it might have been the Canadian distributor's idea to organise the presentation that way. I too would have walked away.

+1

Looking at a Bentley dealers stock and what was available from the factory, lo and behold, Naim CD system for your Continental. So forget your nostalgic view of that company - they want serious cash for not so serious goods.

I found their sound disturbing 25 years ago in a demo then. Avoided.

 

[S-Man]

The opening post thinks nothing of the sort and actually had little intention of entering the room with or without a ticket. But thanks for explainig my actions to me.

You could have done the opposite... ask for a ticket for a later dem, then keep the ticket and don't go to the dem. That way you get to be a superior VIP, in that you're too important to go to the event where all the standard VIPs are.