Susan Sontag on Why Lists Appeal to Us, Plus Her Listed Likes and Dislikes

by Maria Popova - Brain Pickings

How lists confer value and guarantee existence.

“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 on writing, 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:
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