I was thinking this morning. Why do humans (or many of us, at any rate) tend to make 'accomplishment' or 'experience' lists?
Not like 'to-do' lists, but the kind of self-referential historical lists people make sometimes like 'boys I've kissed' or 'girls I've boned' or 'the best five beers I've ever had', like that.
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Because we're afraid of forgetting.
Because list processing is a very intelligent way to handle data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_programming_language
Of course, lists are most often used to partition a continuous process (in which the continuity is the part that makes it meaningful) into unrelated, and therefore meaningless, chunks ... but chunks that you can have a ... howdyacallit ... bone length contest about, or some such.
cautionary note:
u can't believe everything u write
(this notation may find pertinence only insofar myself be listmaking, (an exercise i'm unsure i've ever essayed),... but i not particularly exceptional, on any level, so it prolly be good utilized in any list making or reviewing process / any where / any time / by any / body)
:)
Hmmmm.....
I think lists allow us to quantify and qualify our thoughts and experiences. They're a way of knowing and making sense, allowing us to compare and contrast our own experiences and possibly put them up against another's.
This makes me wonder, are lists a more recent phenomenon (David Letterman's Top Ten, desert island discs, and Rob from High Fidelity come to mind) or has man (and woman) been making lists since time immemorial?
1. Don't worship any other gods....
Wait, if we know about it, that would make it time memorial...
Maybe we just don't want to forget stuff.
lists ramp up preferred self-image, thus begging suspicion in their creation, excepting individual list-makers of prodigious character.
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This page contains a single entry by Jeremy published on July 30, 2006 2:00 PM.
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