Excerpt from a Der Spiegel interview with the writer Umberto Eco:
The Packing List by Adolf Konrad, 1963
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.
…At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could name. But, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures. A very clear image of the universe existed in the Middle Ages, and there were lists. A new worldview based on astronomy predominated in the Renaissance and the Baroque era. And there were lists. And the list is certainly prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic.
…We like lists because we don’t want to die.
Of course the most obvious confirmation of this claim is the bucket list. If the internet was a teenager then its teenage angst-driven obsession would surely be for the list: top 10 lists, to do lists, best of lists, you can even find lists of list (and if you look hard enough lists of lists of lists). I guess I can’t really take issue. A good list is like a good story. And I suspect the list has been around as long as its abbreviated counterpart. Since we’re thinking about the nature of lists it seems appropriate to walk through the key stages of listmaking as outlined by a BBC article discussing famous listmakers:
First there is the gentle thrill of anticipation as I contemplate the pristine paper in front of me. I may not yet have a subject for my list, but just the thought of one gives me a sense of purpose.
Second there is the light-headed buzz that gradually develops into bliss, euphoria and an all-consuming calm.
Third comes the extraordinary sense of satisfaction from having created a rigid timetable of impossible tasks that has taken a disproportionate amount of time and thought
Is list obsession a Western phenomenon?
The psychologist interviewed in the article suggests that the phenomenon of list obsession might be a product of the West, which is less pronounced in the East. Noticing that the majority of the listmakers hail from the West, he observes that the European pre-occupation with detail is not shared by people in Asia.
The Chinese try to understand the whole and how the parts serve the purpose of the whole project. Once they have that concept, then they look at each part in turn. Europeans immediately break everything down and stack up lists.
Then they try to resolve each one separately in an ideal way and hope that they all fit together in the future. It’s really not as useful.
In his 2003 book Geography of Thought the University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett explores the idea that the differences in language of the East and West contribute to dramatic differences in ways of thinking. According to psychological experiments, East Asian individuals tend to focus on the “holistic;” they are drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field, relying far less on categories or on formal logic. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. The idea remains controversial yet worth consideration. East Meets West, an infographic series from Yang Liu (born in China but living in Germany since age 14) elegantly illustrates these differences.
(Size of Individual's Ego) East Meets West infographic by Yang Liu via Brain Pickings
(Lifestyle: Independent vs Dependent) by Yang Liu via Brain Pickings
As much as I enjoy making lists as a means to overcome drowning in infinity, I am also weary that the constant breaking down into parts can degrade the perception of the whole, just as the analysis of a piece of music or art in general may dilute the beauty of the artwork. In the fascinating book The Master and his Emissary Iain McGilchrist speculates that this trend in the West may be underpinned by the relative dominance of the left hemisphere which he describes as a ”narrow, decontextualised and theoretically based model of the world which is self consistent and is therefore quite powerful.” I won’t pursue this tangent in detail, but if you’re interested, check out this short talk summarizing the main ideas in the book.
For more on lists, Lists of Note is a blog devoted in its entirety to notable lists in history. Some highlights include Mark Twain’s  list on etiquette in determining order of rescue from a burning building, Jack Kerouac’s list  of 30 writing “essentials,” and a list from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter about things to worry about, not to worry about, and simply to think about. Also, over at the NPR Blog Krulwich Wonders, Robert Krulwich takes on history as a list with his signature curiosity-fueled style on full display.
