Need lists of thoughtful lists, please...

February 27, 2016 2:20 PM

I'm writing about lists and would like some examples...

I'm doing some writing that started out with the idea of Prussian Virtues, but after thinking and writing a bit it is turning into more of a project about constructing lists that govern conduct and comportment.

Would anyone have any thoughts about specific lists? I already know about Old Testament lists like the Law and Ten Commandments and the New Testament Beatitudes, but want something a little less overtly religious and a little more focused on specific cultures or something that has to do with interacting with one's environment like Tom Sach's Ten Bullets.

I'm not particularly interested in click-bait-y Buzzfeed lists or "Ten ways to have better sex" lists, though. I would like them to be more thoughtfully grounded in philosophy or deep culture than that.

Any direction would be really appreciated!

posted by Tchad to Religion & Philosophy (13 answers total)

I assume you have seen Lists of Note?
posted by history is a weapon at 2:23 PM on February 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Maybe look for FAQs and codes of conduct type things from good online forums? Making some kind of statement about what is and is not okay is pretty standard.
posted by Michele in California at 2:34 PM on February 27, 2016

The book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right might be an interesting tangent for you. The book originated from this 2007 New Yorker article: The Checklist.
posted by kovacs at 2:46 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon of any interest? There are some extracts here.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:50 PM on February 27, 2016

You might be interested in the Triads of Ireland.

Available from the Gutenberg Project here.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:51 PM on February 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Catalogue of Ships from The Iliad? There's also an extended bit in Canto I, VII of Spenser's The Faerie Queene that lists a bunch of trees and their qualities.
posted by Diagonalize at 3:13 PM on February 27, 2016

Ben Franklin's 13 Virtues?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:30 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

A true classic of the genre:

Borges' animals:
those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.
posted by spitbull at 3:43 PM on February 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

The mathematician David Hilbert compiled a list of unsolved problems that had a huge influence on the development of mathematics in the 20th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert

The development of checklists was an important innovation in airline safety.

Don't forget the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:12 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Schindler's.
posted by spitbull at 5:50 PM on February 27, 2016

Buddhism's eight-fold path is essentially a list, and then there are lots of other lists in Buddhism. Hinduism has the yama codes. My favourite is the Sikh religious approach where the equivalent scriptural list is regularly discussed and debated in council and revised - the Sikh Rehat Maryada, very pragmatic.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:53 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Book of Lists, spawned from The People's Almanac.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:20 PM on February 27, 2016

Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists is a whole book of this sort of thing.
posted by gnimmel at 7:55 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]