And here's my problem. I don't believe in the best. There is no apex that cannot be surpassed.
Yes, I am aware of this. My problem is that you phrase it in such a manner that people can use to justify complacency.
Again, this is where I am forced to disagree. My philosophy is one of perpetual self-improvement. There is never any reason to stop and rest.
But self improving to what? How do you define what real improvement is? What are you improving too? Perpetual improvement isn't a goal in itself, it's a means of traveling, but where's the destination?
Your thoughts on postmodernism in magic are good ones. The problem is, postmodernist thinking and experience by its very definition defies and for want of more poetic language picks apart the modernist grand narratives that were in vogue in modernist times. The concept of what is good, what is bad, what is improvement, were encapsulated by grand narratives themselves. They had a connetation innate to the word, which thanks largely to post modernist thinking has been shown to either be simulacral, or simply so dispatched into areas of gray as to be meaningless in their own right. Thus what is improvement? What is a good performance? Is the magic we now believe to be magic a high level simulacra? Is it the constant attempt to emmulate the simulacra poised by the channeling of magic through the hyper real (media, TV, film) in real world situations that which is causing the problem.
It's hard to be a character now. Even in DB's TV specials, which frankly exposed a generation of magicians to magic, or David Copperfields work, your seeing a simulacra of magic. A copy with no original. DB's levitation on his TV specials is a great example of this. He took a simple levetation effect, and then chopped it together such that it became impossible and then it was broadcast via the media of television. It became a copy of something that had never taken place, and became such a breathtaking effect that it utterly obscured the means of putting together a real performance.
With that in mind, where does magic have the power? Can it truly alter the times we live in? What is improvement? Better performance? Better presance? Better handling? Better ideology in the magic you perform? In a world where grand narratives have no place, or if they have one, they are oft destroyed before they can begin, where does one head?
Would it not be better to be of the times than against them and aknowledge that the future of magic, or where the art will advance to will be decided by factors outside the magic community?
Pretention in the magic community is huge too. People look at people like CA, or DB and read their biographies and believe that's how they genuinely think, which it may be, but more likely it enhances their hyper real persona to which others try and emulate in the stark desert of the real and are found feeling unsatisfied and ultimately unfulfilled.
Perhaps realization of that fact is a way of advancing magic and understanding that to walk in the realms of the hyper real with nothing but a deck of cards and no access to previous and historic grand narratives (A belief in true magic being one of them that has been picked to shreds by PM thinking) is truly a challenge. That the only way to truly advance the art, any art is to become real once again. To reach individual people through powerful performance, but that can only be done by aknowledging that in the battle to reach people, you are up against a force that is ridiculously powerful in its abilities to shape people's perceptions of what things are.
The sad consequence of the hyper real on our culture is that people believe that what is possible is defined by media telling them what is possible. We're up against saturday night TV, action films and camera magic. How do we keep pace with that?