Lifehacker recently highlighted an interview with the renowned author Umberto Eco, who is currently curating an exhibition about the place that lists holds in our culture. In the interview, he notes:
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.”
and later on notes:
“SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can’t be realistically completed?
Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”
Considering I’m currently embarking on a big list of things to do, this article stuck a cord with me. In fact, my friends find it so amusing that I’m constantly recruiting them to complete things on the list that they’ve suggested that I should create a club for people who will help each other to create lists …
Kate Ho 