The thing is that if you're not satisfied with what you have, you can't help it.
Bull****. That's like saying people shouldn't exercise, vote, or... well pretty much do anything remotely proactive.
You have to be happy with the art to be able to help it.
No, you have to accept that things are the way they are now and then affect change. You have to embrace an ideal of constant self-improvement and evolution.
You are looking at the situation, shrugging, and muttering, "Eh, good enough."
Well, I guess we want to advance to less reveal and more street preformers.
To be more well known.
If that's the limit of your imagination, then you're not much use.
On a more positive note, what I see is a need to bring the theatricality back into magic. Sam Keen wrote in the 1990's that the current generation of men and women are consumed by post-modernist archetype. The Post-Modernist seeks instant gratification in favor of a purpose and path. They pursue individualism, but is a way that leads to self-destruction and a lack of long-term fulfillment.
In bygone eras, the goal was less to live in a series of moments with no regard for the previous moments or any in the distant future, but to become larger than life by having a clear path. Hell, even Jack Kerouac had more structure to his life than most people today have.
Magic is ostensibly an art of mystery and wonder. It should be larger than life.
My first recommendation for magicians to begin improving is to start reading not only magic performance theory, but also the history of theater as well as books on psychology (and in particular archetypes and the collective unconscious) and the works of Joseph Campbell.
