Likes, friends and followers do not provide us with resonance; they only strengthen the echoes of the self.

To paraphrase Antoine Saint-Exupéry, we may say: rituals are in life what things are in space.

While symbolic perception is intensive, serial perception is extensive. Because of its extensiveness, serial perception is characterized by shallow attention. Intensity is giving way everywhere to extensity. Digital communication is extensive communication; it does not establish relationships, only connections.

The compulsion to reject routines produces more routines.

We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transform being-in-the-world into a being-at-home. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable. They even make it accessible, like a house. They structure time, furnish it. In his novel Citade

Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life. They are forms of closure. Without them, we slip through. Thus, we age without growing old, or we remain infantile consumers who never become adults.

Exalted time [Hoch-Zeit] is also the temporality of schools of higher education [Hoch-Schule]. In ancient Greek, ‘school’ is scholé, that is, leisure. Schools of higher education would thus be schools of higher leisure. Today, they are no longer places of high leisure. They have become places of production, factories of human capital. They pursue p

Rituals are characterized by repetition. Repetition differs from routine in its capacity to create intensity.

God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. The rest enjoyed on the Sabbath consecrates the work of creation. It is not mere idleness. Rather, it is an essential part of creation. In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Rashi thus remarks: ‘After the six days of creation, what was still missing from the universe? Menuchah [inoperativity, rest]. T