by 
“The list is the origin of culture,” Umberto Eco famously proclaimed. Whether or not he was right about origin, the list is very much a currency of culture, today’s favorite attention-exploitation device in an information economy of countless listicles and innumerable numerical headlines. But what is it, exactly, that makes lists appeal to us so? The recently released volume of Susan Sontag’s diaries, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 (public library), was among the best psychology and philosophy books of 2012 and has already given us Sontag’s wisdom onwriting, boredom, censorship, and aphorisms, her radical vision for remixing education, and her illustrated insights on love and art. In a characteristically self-reflexive entry from August 9, 1967, 34-year-old Sontag considers the allure of lists: I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my
interest, or mypotential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province. [From Brain Pickings: Susan Sontag on why lists appeal to us , plus her listed likes and dislikes | Brain Pickings.]
