Lists, creativity and death
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.
Interesting – I’m in India now and recently heard that in order to live fully, we have to understand death. Don’t quite get Umberto’s obsession about lists… :/