The Measured Listener

This is the 15th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. You can read the first part here. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in collaboration with the Los Angeles Review of Books, and supported by the Center for Genetics and Society,the Othering & Belonging Institute, and Berkeley Public Health.

¤

A CENTRAL PREMISE of High Fidelity—Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, which was turned into a film in 2000 and then a Zoë Kravitz–starring TV series in 2020—is that its main character, Rob Fleming, owner of a failing record store, cannot understand himself without first measuring and ranking his experiences. “You are what you like,” as the line goes. For this protagonist, the act of ranking every aspect of his life is both a coping mechanism and a pathology. Rob Fleming can only discuss his feelings and emotions in list form—“they have opinions and I have lists,” he says.

In the last several years, models of...