Routine

"Routine can demean, but it can also protect; routine can decompose labor, but it can also compose a life." 

(Richard Sennet, The Corrosion of Character, pp 50, 82. . qtd. in Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity, 2000)

It's the quote of the day, nay the year. How can it be more precise than this line to describe the paradoxical human existence which embraces and rejects repetition all the time? Or maybe we just most  of the time fool ourself confusing repetition with continuation?

I have not done enough reading of sociology and have never been a big fan of the discipline. But I have to say that both Sennet and Bauman, two sociologists based in UK, are quite remarkable scholars and have a lot to offer to folks who study cities and urbanism. Hopefully there will be a chance for me to design a syllabus to engage their work someday.