Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Mike Sowden
There is so much here, and the idea of sonder with our ancestors (prehistoric and otherwise) is both beautiful and useful.
One of the first things I thought about as I read this, though, was the subconscious influence of old black-and-white photos (b&w photo = b&w life, right?). Just as people in the past were generally as intelligent as us, their world was also just as colorful. Now I'm wondering what other similar things are distorting my impressions of the past
Jeff! This is such a good thing to bring up, and I absolutely hadn't made that connection in this case (although I previously mentioned something about it here in relation to colourizing Mars photos: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/the-blue-of-distance-hope-and-mars). You're right. And there must be some research that's been done on this? And - I have no idea where it is or what it contains. (Any ideas? Have you seen anything about it yourself?)
Thank you for this new rabbit-hole to throw myself down!
I really wish I had something solid to point you towards, but I was thinking of exactly the kind of early 1900s street movie you linked to in your Mars piece (but also some WWI battlefield shots), and how adding color to old images (moving or still) changes our emotional interpretation of them.
Coincidentally(?), I came across two articles yesterday that might be at least tangentially related (seths.blog/2023/02/fidelity-compression-and-culture and www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web. They both talk about information compression and fidelity (i.e. is the compression lossless or lossy). This quote from Seth Godin in the first one is a good summary of at least some of the ideas: “Lossy compression is forever. Fidelity is a powerful delight. Stories spread and resonate, but by their nature compress the truth of what we just encountered.”
So maybe we’re dealing with lossy compression (and not only of colors) when we think about ancient (and perhaps not-so-ancient) people, and the key to achieving sonder with them might be to improve the fidelity of the stories we tell about them.
Sonder is my new favorite word. Also “mapping the relationships between things” is such a perfect line for what you do here and what curiosity does for us in general. If we can’t see the relationships and connections between things, we’ve lost something for sure. Thanks for a wonderful read (and the shout out!)
I also think "mapping the relationship between things" is what YOU do so well - isn't it? You're so good at taking two things that don't at first glance exactly belong together, and then say "hey, look, this is fun and weird! So I think it's Art!" And creative artists are the guides in this regard, because being that weird and experimental isn't encouraged by, I dunno, 99% of normal life?
About 6 months back I saw a chap with silver hair at the beach. He was painting. Fully, properly painting, with a huge wooden easal he'd set up on a sandy mud flat, in full view of the main road behind it. Facing the sea, he was just painting away happily, looking like the painteriest painter that ever painted. And I bet everyone who passed on the road thought:
(a) "Hah! That's so strange! What a bizarre thing! What a weirdo, LOL..."
(b)"....but also, good for you, mate, isn't it fun to know there are still people like that in the world..."
(c) "...and I wonder what his story is? Can you imagine? Maybe he had a lover who is no longer in the world, and she loved this view too, and he's going to paint her into it at the end [etc etc etc.]..."
(d) "...and...and - damn. You know, I've never had a go at painting. I know my mum loved to do it. Hmm. Hmmmmmm."
In other words: (a) was THIS THING IS TOO WEIRD FOR NORMAL PEOPLE - but by (d) it was HEY MAYBE I COULD HAVE A GO.
How about *that* for one hell of a relationship to create between two seemingly dissimilar things? 😎
Adding a "me too" to sonder -- just lovely. It always struck me odd, when reading about some new archaeological find, that a first explanation of a thing seems to immediately bend to the practical. Why were these pots violet? Well, maybe the violet color absorbs more sunlight, so when storing things outdoors it heats up slightly more than a yellow container...
Or, maybe, it just looked awesome, and violet was someone's favorite color? There's no doubt that many a thing are the way they are because of practical considerations, but I feel like not nearly enough consideration is given to the idea that these were full human beings who were also motivated by subjective passions.
>>"not nearly enough consideration is given to the idea that these were full human beings who were also motivated by subjective passions."
You're 100% bang-on-target with this point, Tad - because that is exactly what happened in academic archaeology, where the distanced, statistically-dictated, strivingly objective ideas of the 1960s "processual" methods in archaeology were eaten into by new ideas that treated humans not as statistically predictable drones but as actors with immensely influential individual agency and the potential to affect change in seemingly 'irrational' way - where "humans" also included the archaeologists themselves!
"Post-processual archaeology, however, questioned this stance, and instead emphasized that archaeology was subjective rather than objective, and that what truth could be ascertained from the archaeological record was often relative to the viewpoint of the archaeologist responsible for unearthing and presenting the data. As the archaeologist Matthew Johnson noted, "Postprocessualists suggest that we can never confront theory and data; instead, we see data through a cloud of theory."
I guess I'm a weirdo because I always figured people in the past we're probably way smarter than I am.
After all, they figured out how to start fires, tan skins, ferment wine, navigate by the stars, discover the concept of zero and then eventually all of maths, and on and on, all without the assistance of computers and so forth.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure I entirely grasp all sorts of mathematical concepts that have been explained to me, can barely navigate with a compass, and, well, you get the point.
I spent a year doing archaeology at University and it is indeed a vast and fascinating subject. I remember being knocked flat with astonishment when I turned up to do my first work experience dig in Bagshot Village in Surrey, only to discover myself in some fellows' back garden. I remember feeling very humbled that, right up until that point, my 19 year old self had believed archaeology was only carried out on high profile excavations. I do remember those trowels they had, but a personal triumph was that my mother (a keen gardener,) had the foresight to send me equipped with a kneeler, which to the chagrin of the other more erudite students on the dig, turned out to be quite a useful and enviable bit of kit.
(Points also awarded to the folk who have those strap-on kneepads that make you look like you're wearing space armour.)
Kneeling on stone is absolutely punishing, and it's why so many peoples around the world mastered the art of squatting on their haunches, because knees are just too delicate for that kind of punishment! So: your mother absolutely did you proud there. Experienced gardeners have so much to teach archaeology students...
Amazing write up as always, Mike! I have a book recommendation for you (in all your free time I’m sure). I don’t know if you have read it but Rutger Brennan in his book “Humankind: A Hopeful History” discusses the difference between Neanderthal brains and homo sapiens brains. It looks as if the Neanderthals had larger brains and therefore were likely more intelligent than Homo sapiens. Brennan argues that the reason that Homo Sapiens actually survived past the Neanderthals was due to our ability to imitate others and collaborate. It is a fantastic, uplifting book that discusses much more of the human condition in general and I highly recommend it. Your discussion reminded me of it - not only were past humans likely just as smart as we are, intelligence might not even be our best attribute as humans anyways!
Oh wow! That sounds fabulous - thank you, Lindsey, I'm grabbing a copy of it now. (From the description, I'm kinda wishing I was aware of it before writing this whole newsletter!)
Nice word, sonder, I always do it but never dig deep, it feels it could be overwhelming, all that thinking, and feeling and suffering and joyijng (🤔) from all those people all at once!
Another thought about dumb people in the past. On one side I see this also when I think of the seventies or eighties, how could we be so stupid? But I think it all boils down to how far our discoveries and knowledge got at any point in time. Obvious that my eponymous Leonardo Da Vinci would look like a moron if dropped in our times, but a moron he was not! And the same for any great thinker and normal person at any point in time. They just did not have the language and tools to express their clever mind.
This in turn makes me think, how far ahead could we go with our brains if only we knew the things we didn’t learn or discover yet?? This is another breathtaking thought for me, looking forward to it!!!
Yes, that's an important point! Da Vinci had an incredibly curious and fertile mind - so actually, if he was dropped into our times and was given, I dunno, a year to get caught up with the latest scientific, architectural and social advancements, I reckon he would be cooking up some astonishing things? But it's easy to look back at what he was doing back then, and totally miss how exceptional it was, with the tools at his disposal.
So this kind of modern hindsight, which is so easy to apply without understanding historical context, is really misleading.
It's like looking back thirty years and seeing that chocolate bars cost 5p/$0.10 in 1983, and saying out loud "THIS IS COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS, WHY IS EVERYTHING THESE DAYS FIFTEEN TIMES THE PRICE???" 😄
The idea of 'sonder' is perfect, tying in neatly with Buddhist beliefs of compassion and mindfulness which I'm reading about just now.
in addition, being a hist.fict writer and reader compels me to happily believe 100% positively in preceding generations through to the dawn of time. Wouldn't it be the bees' knees to be an archaeologist and find more and more concrete detail about the world's ancestors?
As a relatively new subscriber, I missed 'Kindness' and am off to read it right now.
Thanks, Mike, for another highly communicative newsletter.
Thanks so much, Prue! You're not the first person to point out the parallels between sonder and Buddhist beliefs, so that's definitely something I need to look at. (Always so much more to learn....)
Love this--it's such a pet peeve to me that people assume people from the past were somehow less-than. The whole round world of history could open up to people if they wouldn't insist on such a myopic perspective. Kudos for writing about it, putting that stonehenge song on loop now for the day in my mind (ha!), and citing the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows which is just one of my favorites. Sonder. So perfect.
Thanks, Freya - glad you enjoyed, and sorry for the ear-worm! Ylvis are so annoying in that their songs are completely ludicrous and yet incredibly catchy, meaning you find yourself humming or even singing them when you're stood in a queue and suddenly everyone's looking at you - which is fair enough, because you've been singing:
"Dog goes "woof, Cat goes "meow, Bird goes "tweet", And mouse goes "squeek", Cow goes "moo", Frog goes "croak", And the elephant goes "toot"..." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE)
I mean, this is how people get forcibly taken away. It's not good.
A fun thing about that Fox song: it was meant to be a complete failure. They made it as a joke so they could poke fun at themselves on their Norwegian TV show:
"As comedians, it wouldn't be a good thing if we went to pursue a hit in the States because they could potentially make something that became big, so we thought it would be more fun from a comedian perspective to come home to the talk show and say, 'Listen we had the chance, we could've made it big, but the only idea we got for the song was this old idea about what the fox says so we're sorry. We screwed up.' That was the plan... That would've been funny to say on the talk show." - Bård Ylvisåker
Instead it went on to get 1.1 billion views on YouTube. The lesson is: NOTHING IS TOO WEIRD FOR THIS WORLD.
that statement is probably the truest thing about this world, and you're right, Ylvis totally proves that. Ha! I lived in Norway for two years and loved it and unabashedly love almost all things norwegian, so when Ylvis went viral I was enjoying the hilarious weirdness of those crazy northmen... ;)
I laugh when I think of others pointing back in time at folks and believing that they were somehow capable of less (or are, yes, "dimwits")...when this same line of thought leads to future people pointing to us as dimwits, which is an idea I don't think the proponents are too fond of.
Thanks so much for writing such a lovely piece about this and for using vivid and interesting examples!
Thank you, Victoria! And ha, excellent point - but doesn't it illustrate how pointlessly self-defeating it is, if it helps maintain a cycle of thinking where, by looking down on someone/some group of people, you're also opening yourself up to feeling judged by someone up the chain, whatever that chain is (here, a chain of years)?
Had to read this three times just to absorb all the delightful ideas. I love the way you’re subtly eroding the whole concept of the “march of progress” that consciously or subconsciously underpins so much of the damage dominant cultures have caused in the last several hundred years, or longer. I’ve been reading more on the idea of “civilization” recently, and this belief in certain societies’ or eras’ superiority is clearly a source of tremendous harm. What could change if we collectively upended that belief?
My pleasure! And I think people need to read you to understand some of these ideas, because you write about them so well...
Yes, "progress". I can maybe understand how it's caught on in a general sense (putting aside how it's been weaponised for xenophobic reasons): this human desire we all have for an arc of a story that's really going somewhere, otherwise everything turns into what's been happening in Marvel comics for the last 30 years - a fascinating but chaotic churn of things that don't actually add up to anything except constant changes and resets. We want things to *go* somewhere. And of course they have - they've gone here. Scientific progress, for example, has become an edifice of knowledge that rests on foundations laid down hundreds or thousands of years ago - even if occasionally modern scientists are ripping up a supporting pillar or two, or occasionally renovating a basement...
But - how do you pull that apart from the arrogance and closedmindedness that comes from ideas of superiority?
I think music is somehow a guide to this. Because everyone sort of gets that musical tastes aren't ranked, they're just different. Jazz isn't better than the Blues, and Pop isn't better than Hard Rock or vice versa. That's sort of what everyone knows, deep down - and that difference in taste is sort of accepted? But of course lots of people have enormous fun either good-naturedly arguing over music quality, or bad-naturedly in the form of snobbery. Yet we're halfway there with music - it's acceptable to say "I'm not into jazz" and for that to NOT be a condemnation of jazz. Could we take that kind of thinking, and apply it elsewhere - like, into history?
I feel like it's storytelling, really. We makes sense of things by turning them into stories, because that scenario-predicting survival technique is baked so deeply into us - so we try to do the same with history. Where is history going? What's the arc?
And maybe this is also what makes people start thinking they're at the end of The Story when things seems to be so terrible? "Oh, this story is a tragedy. Got it. That makes cruel sense."
As someone who is REALLY not into jazz and who just attended a Taylor Swift concert and is currently listening to black metal, I endorse this approach to decolonization, for lack of a better word.
I can't stand jazz either! And isn't that great, that we can both express that openly with no fear (okay, very little fear) that someone's going to be offended? Because (almost) everyone will understand what we're *not* saying here...
I did have to tell someone recently that I didn’t like jazz when he suggested a jazz concert for a get-together. I didn’t say, “F— no” except in my head. Have to say it’s a relief that either things have changed or I got old enough to not mind telling people I don’t like jazz! (This person actually did not understand, but he’s a friend of my mom’s and of a class and generation where it’s not okay to not like jazz.)
I’ve never been to anything quite like that Taylor Swift concert. My daughter and I agreed we needed to go into the woods and lie down by a creek for a long time to recover, but it was a lot of fun!
It's so gorgeous. I also love that it's a recent invention, as it sounds like one of those other-language words that you never knew you needed in your life.
Whew! You’ve got my wheels turning this morning, Mike, and I’ll be thinking about (and returning to this post) for several days.
“If we don’t understand a thing, we can conclude we’re missing something. But if we don’t understand someone, we tend to conclude they’re missing something.”
💥
What a statement!
And the word “sonder” is simply wonderful.
(Im also envious that you got to hang out with Brent & Michael in London...)
Brent and Michael were absolutely and completely who they appear to be on their Substack, in all the best ways. :) An excellent time was had by all, especially me, as it was such a pleasure to chat with them. If you ever get the chance to cross paths with them (if you haven't already?), I recommend you take it.
There is so much here, and the idea of sonder with our ancestors (prehistoric and otherwise) is both beautiful and useful.
One of the first things I thought about as I read this, though, was the subconscious influence of old black-and-white photos (b&w photo = b&w life, right?). Just as people in the past were generally as intelligent as us, their world was also just as colorful. Now I'm wondering what other similar things are distorting my impressions of the past
Jeff! This is such a good thing to bring up, and I absolutely hadn't made that connection in this case (although I previously mentioned something about it here in relation to colourizing Mars photos: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/the-blue-of-distance-hope-and-mars). You're right. And there must be some research that's been done on this? And - I have no idea where it is or what it contains. (Any ideas? Have you seen anything about it yourself?)
Thank you for this new rabbit-hole to throw myself down!
I love rabbit-holes...
I really wish I had something solid to point you towards, but I was thinking of exactly the kind of early 1900s street movie you linked to in your Mars piece (but also some WWI battlefield shots), and how adding color to old images (moving or still) changes our emotional interpretation of them.
Coincidentally(?), I came across two articles yesterday that might be at least tangentially related (seths.blog/2023/02/fidelity-compression-and-culture and www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web. They both talk about information compression and fidelity (i.e. is the compression lossless or lossy). This quote from Seth Godin in the first one is a good summary of at least some of the ideas: “Lossy compression is forever. Fidelity is a powerful delight. Stories spread and resonate, but by their nature compress the truth of what we just encountered.”
So maybe we’re dealing with lossy compression (and not only of colors) when we think about ancient (and perhaps not-so-ancient) people, and the key to achieving sonder with them might be to improve the fidelity of the stories we tell about them.
I think "b&w photo = b&w life, right" is so relatable. What a good example of a distortion.
Sonder is my new favorite word. Also “mapping the relationships between things” is such a perfect line for what you do here and what curiosity does for us in general. If we can’t see the relationships and connections between things, we’ve lost something for sure. Thanks for a wonderful read (and the shout out!)
I also think "mapping the relationship between things" is what YOU do so well - isn't it? You're so good at taking two things that don't at first glance exactly belong together, and then say "hey, look, this is fun and weird! So I think it's Art!" And creative artists are the guides in this regard, because being that weird and experimental isn't encouraged by, I dunno, 99% of normal life?
About 6 months back I saw a chap with silver hair at the beach. He was painting. Fully, properly painting, with a huge wooden easal he'd set up on a sandy mud flat, in full view of the main road behind it. Facing the sea, he was just painting away happily, looking like the painteriest painter that ever painted. And I bet everyone who passed on the road thought:
(a) "Hah! That's so strange! What a bizarre thing! What a weirdo, LOL..."
(b)"....but also, good for you, mate, isn't it fun to know there are still people like that in the world..."
(c) "...and I wonder what his story is? Can you imagine? Maybe he had a lover who is no longer in the world, and she loved this view too, and he's going to paint her into it at the end [etc etc etc.]..."
(d) "...and...and - damn. You know, I've never had a go at painting. I know my mum loved to do it. Hmm. Hmmmmmm."
In other words: (a) was THIS THING IS TOO WEIRD FOR NORMAL PEOPLE - but by (d) it was HEY MAYBE I COULD HAVE A GO.
How about *that* for one hell of a relationship to create between two seemingly dissimilar things? 😎
Adding a "me too" to sonder -- just lovely. It always struck me odd, when reading about some new archaeological find, that a first explanation of a thing seems to immediately bend to the practical. Why were these pots violet? Well, maybe the violet color absorbs more sunlight, so when storing things outdoors it heats up slightly more than a yellow container...
Or, maybe, it just looked awesome, and violet was someone's favorite color? There's no doubt that many a thing are the way they are because of practical considerations, but I feel like not nearly enough consideration is given to the idea that these were full human beings who were also motivated by subjective passions.
>>"not nearly enough consideration is given to the idea that these were full human beings who were also motivated by subjective passions."
You're 100% bang-on-target with this point, Tad - because that is exactly what happened in academic archaeology, where the distanced, statistically-dictated, strivingly objective ideas of the 1960s "processual" methods in archaeology were eaten into by new ideas that treated humans not as statistically predictable drones but as actors with immensely influential individual agency and the potential to affect change in seemingly 'irrational' way - where "humans" also included the archaeologists themselves!
"Post-processual archaeology, however, questioned this stance, and instead emphasized that archaeology was subjective rather than objective, and that what truth could be ascertained from the archaeological record was often relative to the viewpoint of the archaeologist responsible for unearthing and presenting the data. As the archaeologist Matthew Johnson noted, "Postprocessualists suggest that we can never confront theory and data; instead, we see data through a cloud of theory."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-processual_archaeology
As you can imagine, this led to a lot of heated arguments at the back of pubs.
(But then, archaeologists will *always* find an excuse to have a heated argument at the back of a pub. This was just a convenient excuse.)
Love that last line here. So true!
I guess I'm a weirdo because I always figured people in the past we're probably way smarter than I am.
After all, they figured out how to start fires, tan skins, ferment wine, navigate by the stars, discover the concept of zero and then eventually all of maths, and on and on, all without the assistance of computers and so forth.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure I entirely grasp all sorts of mathematical concepts that have been explained to me, can barely navigate with a compass, and, well, you get the point.
Also: Sonder. What a wonderful concept!
I spent a year doing archaeology at University and it is indeed a vast and fascinating subject. I remember being knocked flat with astonishment when I turned up to do my first work experience dig in Bagshot Village in Surrey, only to discover myself in some fellows' back garden. I remember feeling very humbled that, right up until that point, my 19 year old self had believed archaeology was only carried out on high profile excavations. I do remember those trowels they had, but a personal triumph was that my mother (a keen gardener,) had the foresight to send me equipped with a kneeler, which to the chagrin of the other more erudite students on the dig, turned out to be quite a useful and enviable bit of kit.
Anyone who suggests a kneeler as an essential piece of archaeological equipment IS A PERSON TO BE TRUSTED WITH YOUR LIFE.
When I was working up in Quoygrew in Orkney (https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/archived-projects/quoygrew-and-viking-age-transitions-project) I was stupid enough to kneel on stone flagstones for a few days, while I was working on a Norse farmstead drain, and I spent the rest of the week hobbling around like an old man, learning the hard way what knee bursitis is (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/knee-bursitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20355501).
(Points also awarded to the folk who have those strap-on kneepads that make you look like you're wearing space armour.)
Kneeling on stone is absolutely punishing, and it's why so many peoples around the world mastered the art of squatting on their haunches, because knees are just too delicate for that kind of punishment! So: your mother absolutely did you proud there. Experienced gardeners have so much to teach archaeology students...
Amazing write up as always, Mike! I have a book recommendation for you (in all your free time I’m sure). I don’t know if you have read it but Rutger Brennan in his book “Humankind: A Hopeful History” discusses the difference between Neanderthal brains and homo sapiens brains. It looks as if the Neanderthals had larger brains and therefore were likely more intelligent than Homo sapiens. Brennan argues that the reason that Homo Sapiens actually survived past the Neanderthals was due to our ability to imitate others and collaborate. It is a fantastic, uplifting book that discusses much more of the human condition in general and I highly recommend it. Your discussion reminded me of it - not only were past humans likely just as smart as we are, intelligence might not even be our best attribute as humans anyways!
Oh wow! That sounds fabulous - thank you, Lindsey, I'm grabbing a copy of it now. (From the description, I'm kinda wishing I was aware of it before writing this whole newsletter!)
Nice word, sonder, I always do it but never dig deep, it feels it could be overwhelming, all that thinking, and feeling and suffering and joyijng (🤔) from all those people all at once!
Another thought about dumb people in the past. On one side I see this also when I think of the seventies or eighties, how could we be so stupid? But I think it all boils down to how far our discoveries and knowledge got at any point in time. Obvious that my eponymous Leonardo Da Vinci would look like a moron if dropped in our times, but a moron he was not! And the same for any great thinker and normal person at any point in time. They just did not have the language and tools to express their clever mind.
This in turn makes me think, how far ahead could we go with our brains if only we knew the things we didn’t learn or discover yet?? This is another breathtaking thought for me, looking forward to it!!!
Yes, that's an important point! Da Vinci had an incredibly curious and fertile mind - so actually, if he was dropped into our times and was given, I dunno, a year to get caught up with the latest scientific, architectural and social advancements, I reckon he would be cooking up some astonishing things? But it's easy to look back at what he was doing back then, and totally miss how exceptional it was, with the tools at his disposal.
So this kind of modern hindsight, which is so easy to apply without understanding historical context, is really misleading.
It's like looking back thirty years and seeing that chocolate bars cost 5p/$0.10 in 1983, and saying out loud "THIS IS COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS, WHY IS EVERYTHING THESE DAYS FIFTEEN TIMES THE PRICE???" 😄
One more thing -- are you sure you want to mention hanging out with these Brent and Michael fellows. I hear they are pretty shady... LOL
Oh, they're absolute ROGUES.
But the world would be boring without the odd rogue here and there.
I am willing to bet that this was an incredibly fun day for all involved!
😂
NEVER work on the ground without a kneeler. Your knees will thank you.
What a stellar article!
The idea of 'sonder' is perfect, tying in neatly with Buddhist beliefs of compassion and mindfulness which I'm reading about just now.
in addition, being a hist.fict writer and reader compels me to happily believe 100% positively in preceding generations through to the dawn of time. Wouldn't it be the bees' knees to be an archaeologist and find more and more concrete detail about the world's ancestors?
As a relatively new subscriber, I missed 'Kindness' and am off to read it right now.
Thanks, Mike, for another highly communicative newsletter.
Thanks so much, Prue! You're not the first person to point out the parallels between sonder and Buddhist beliefs, so that's definitely something I need to look at. (Always so much more to learn....)
Love this--it's such a pet peeve to me that people assume people from the past were somehow less-than. The whole round world of history could open up to people if they wouldn't insist on such a myopic perspective. Kudos for writing about it, putting that stonehenge song on loop now for the day in my mind (ha!), and citing the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows which is just one of my favorites. Sonder. So perfect.
Thanks, Freya - glad you enjoyed, and sorry for the ear-worm! Ylvis are so annoying in that their songs are completely ludicrous and yet incredibly catchy, meaning you find yourself humming or even singing them when you're stood in a queue and suddenly everyone's looking at you - which is fair enough, because you've been singing:
"Dog goes "woof, Cat goes "meow, Bird goes "tweet", And mouse goes "squeek", Cow goes "moo", Frog goes "croak", And the elephant goes "toot"..." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE)
I mean, this is how people get forcibly taken away. It's not good.
A fun thing about that Fox song: it was meant to be a complete failure. They made it as a joke so they could poke fun at themselves on their Norwegian TV show:
"As comedians, it wouldn't be a good thing if we went to pursue a hit in the States because they could potentially make something that became big, so we thought it would be more fun from a comedian perspective to come home to the talk show and say, 'Listen we had the chance, we could've made it big, but the only idea we got for the song was this old idea about what the fox says so we're sorry. We screwed up.' That was the plan... That would've been funny to say on the talk show." - Bård Ylvisåker
Instead it went on to get 1.1 billion views on YouTube. The lesson is: NOTHING IS TOO WEIRD FOR THIS WORLD.
that statement is probably the truest thing about this world, and you're right, Ylvis totally proves that. Ha! I lived in Norway for two years and loved it and unabashedly love almost all things norwegian, so when Ylvis went viral I was enjoying the hilarious weirdness of those crazy northmen... ;)
I laugh when I think of others pointing back in time at folks and believing that they were somehow capable of less (or are, yes, "dimwits")...when this same line of thought leads to future people pointing to us as dimwits, which is an idea I don't think the proponents are too fond of.
Thanks so much for writing such a lovely piece about this and for using vivid and interesting examples!
Thank you, Victoria! And ha, excellent point - but doesn't it illustrate how pointlessly self-defeating it is, if it helps maintain a cycle of thinking where, by looking down on someone/some group of people, you're also opening yourself up to feeling judged by someone up the chain, whatever that chain is (here, a chain of years)?
But then, we'd never have been gifted with this classic sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDIHrX-Jp2E - so it's not all bad...
Had to read this three times just to absorb all the delightful ideas. I love the way you’re subtly eroding the whole concept of the “march of progress” that consciously or subconsciously underpins so much of the damage dominant cultures have caused in the last several hundred years, or longer. I’ve been reading more on the idea of “civilization” recently, and this belief in certain societies’ or eras’ superiority is clearly a source of tremendous harm. What could change if we collectively upended that belief?
Thanks for the shout-out!
My pleasure! And I think people need to read you to understand some of these ideas, because you write about them so well...
Yes, "progress". I can maybe understand how it's caught on in a general sense (putting aside how it's been weaponised for xenophobic reasons): this human desire we all have for an arc of a story that's really going somewhere, otherwise everything turns into what's been happening in Marvel comics for the last 30 years - a fascinating but chaotic churn of things that don't actually add up to anything except constant changes and resets. We want things to *go* somewhere. And of course they have - they've gone here. Scientific progress, for example, has become an edifice of knowledge that rests on foundations laid down hundreds or thousands of years ago - even if occasionally modern scientists are ripping up a supporting pillar or two, or occasionally renovating a basement...
But - how do you pull that apart from the arrogance and closedmindedness that comes from ideas of superiority?
I think music is somehow a guide to this. Because everyone sort of gets that musical tastes aren't ranked, they're just different. Jazz isn't better than the Blues, and Pop isn't better than Hard Rock or vice versa. That's sort of what everyone knows, deep down - and that difference in taste is sort of accepted? But of course lots of people have enormous fun either good-naturedly arguing over music quality, or bad-naturedly in the form of snobbery. Yet we're halfway there with music - it's acceptable to say "I'm not into jazz" and for that to NOT be a condemnation of jazz. Could we take that kind of thinking, and apply it elsewhere - like, into history?
Also: “We want things to *go* somewhere” is so much insight in just a few syllables! There’s a lot there that I’m going to be thinking about.
I feel like it's storytelling, really. We makes sense of things by turning them into stories, because that scenario-predicting survival technique is baked so deeply into us - so we try to do the same with history. Where is history going? What's the arc?
And maybe this is also what makes people start thinking they're at the end of The Story when things seems to be so terrible? "Oh, this story is a tragedy. Got it. That makes cruel sense."
And that explanation makes sense! Only, not the cruel kind.
As someone who is REALLY not into jazz and who just attended a Taylor Swift concert and is currently listening to black metal, I endorse this approach to decolonization, for lack of a better word.
I can't stand jazz either! And isn't that great, that we can both express that openly with no fear (okay, very little fear) that someone's going to be offended? Because (almost) everyone will understand what we're *not* saying here...
Taylor Swift FTW.
I did have to tell someone recently that I didn’t like jazz when he suggested a jazz concert for a get-together. I didn’t say, “F— no” except in my head. Have to say it’s a relief that either things have changed or I got old enough to not mind telling people I don’t like jazz! (This person actually did not understand, but he’s a friend of my mom’s and of a class and generation where it’s not okay to not like jazz.)
I’ve never been to anything quite like that Taylor Swift concert. My daughter and I agreed we needed to go into the woods and lie down by a creek for a long time to recover, but it was a lot of fun!
Thank you for this word, sonder. What a rich, humbling, useful concept it illuminates!
It's so gorgeous. I also love that it's a recent invention, as it sounds like one of those other-language words that you never knew you needed in your life.
(Regarding that point - this is a glorious Twitter thread, spotted via my friends Audrey & Dan: https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/1630580710208688129)
What a fantastic thread! Thank you.
Whew! You’ve got my wheels turning this morning, Mike, and I’ll be thinking about (and returning to this post) for several days.
“If we don’t understand a thing, we can conclude we’re missing something. But if we don’t understand someone, we tend to conclude they’re missing something.”
💥
What a statement!
And the word “sonder” is simply wonderful.
(Im also envious that you got to hang out with Brent & Michael in London...)
Thanks so much, Holly!
Brent and Michael were absolutely and completely who they appear to be on their Substack, in all the best ways. :) An excellent time was had by all, especially me, as it was such a pleasure to chat with them. If you ever get the chance to cross paths with them (if you haven't already?), I recommend you take it.
Very well done! Thanks!
Thank you, Karl! A pleasure.
Gorgeous read. Thank you!
Thanks for reading it, Kim!