"Let's think about repetition from another, less offensive angle. Repetition is fundamental not only to machines; it is the fundamental method in both ritual and the arts. Instead of a drive toward death, the compulsion to repeat is an instinct toward art. It shows the soul's pleasure in practice, in polishing, in precision.
"Something in human nature demands performing in exactly the same way again and again, like the rituals that greet the sun or those that put the children to bed with the same story told with the same inflections, night after night. It's practicing your golf swing or the catcher's throw to second base — over and over again. We become artists only when we enjoy the practicing as much as the performing. Until then we are caught by the limelight rather than the art. It's not the opening in the gallery that makes the painter (although it may make his or her career); it's the repetitious actions in the studio. Over and over again, not to get it finally right, not for the sake of perfection, but simply doing it as if for its own sake, freed from having to do it. The work working by itself, mechanically, repetitiously, impersonally.
"Could this idea of disinterested repetitiveness — one of the highest aims of Zen, mystical contemplation and religious practice, as well as the practice of the arts and sports — transfer to administration, sales, production, accounting? We cannot begin to imagine how this transfer might affect these activities until we at least entertain the idea of repetition as the essence of craft. Why not imagine all the repetitive unprofitable actions of sales calls, number crunching and office forms as essential to the craft of business, not as undignified routines but as modes of care for accuracy and as signs of vocation. Then repetition will be conceived not as a compulsion, a slavelike dehumanizing burden, but as the way things become beautiful. Does this help to understand the interlocking connections of the Japanese between their mechanical repetitive style of work, their sense of ritual and beauty and the quality of their product?"