post the hundred-nineteenth, 2013

another article i was reading today pointed to this interview with umberto eco. i recommend it highly. he has several fine points to make, about lists and what it means to be human.

"Culture isn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes."

"The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list."

"we like lists because we don't want to die."

mr eco says that the list is the origin of culture, but i think he means something like a harbinger, as opposed to something like an engine. at the dawn of culture, you'll see lists. on the first day, on the second day, et cetera. x begat y begat z and so on. we make lists of things we want to remember, our history, where we came from -- we list our past. we make lists of things we want to do, to get, to be -- we list our future. we are defined by lists.

mr eco says this stems from our innate desire to make infinity comprehensible, to impose order on the universe. that makes sense both for lists and for early culture -- i mean, early in a developing culture, making sense of things and imposing order would both be paramount, and both are reasons to make lists.

he's talking about histories, collections, dictionaries, encyclopaedias -- big, important, shared lists -- but he also recognizes the cultural significance of "the shopping list, the will, the menu". he says, "the list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it."

we are surrounded by lists and potential lists. everything is or can be quantified. schedules are lists of tasks and dates. receipts are lists of things purchased. a skin care regimen, a recipe for pimento cheese, a marathon training plan, a class syllabus -- all lists. we have lists that we call lists (contact lists, grocery lists, birthday lists), and we have other words for list (ballot, menu, agenda, outline). there are lists in our heads and lists on paper, cultural and small group and personal lists.

i like lists.

i frequently select articles with "list" in the title because the implication is the information will be chunked and organized. articles, by their nature, are information delivery vehicles, and i don't have a desire to read the fluff to find the meat. just break out the damn meat into a list. sure, leave the fluff. whatever. i am not going to read it anyway.

on the other hand, lists in stories bug the hell out of me. it's like, what are you playing at, author? the opposite of the article, where list is king, the story is meant to be fluff, and the list is a lame attempt to fill up pages. lists in storytelling are lazy.

when mr eco says we like lists "because we don't want to die", he's describing the endlessness of lists. there are endless opportunities to list endless items on endless lists, and the infinity of it is comforting in it's death-defiance. even paintings are pieces of lists, he says. "A person contemplating a painting feels a need to open the frame and see what things look like to the left and to the right of the painting. This sort of painting is truly like a list, a cutout of infinity."

"a cutout of infinity"...

in my pocket is a scrap of paper and on that paper there is writing and that writing reads: eggs, milk, bread. same as a lightening bug in a jar patterns a star from the wide swath of stars in the universe, this humble grocery list in my pocket is "a cutout of infinity".