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

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

contemporary compulsion to produce robs things of their endurance [Haltbarkeit]: it intentionally erodes duration in order to increase production, to force more consumption.

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

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

The mistrust of play intensifies in the age of the Enlightenment. Kant subordinates play to work. His aesthetics, for instance, is characterized by the primacy of work. In the face of beauty, the cognitive faculties, namely imagination and understanding, are in play mode. The subject likes what is beautiful; the beautiful creates a feeling of pleas

Communication without community can be accelerated because it is additive. Rituals, by contrast, are narrative processes that do not allow for acceleration. Symbols stand still. This is not the case with information: information exists by circulating. Stillness only means that communication ceases, stands still. It does not produce anything.

the quick succession of bits of content displayed on a smartphone makes any lingering impossible.

Nowadays one can purchase vegan shoes or clothes; soon there will probably be vegan smartphones too.