the only science-backed weekly newsletter dedicated to developing your human intelligence in the age of AI.
Issue 42: On Why We Binge TV and Feel Less Lonely Reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels
Per request, we're devoting each of the next few newsletters to one of your primal powers, instead of touching on all four.
This week's power is Emotion.
Curious which area of human intelligence might help you the most? Take the diagnostic.
Emotion
I finally understand why we binge-watch TV.
It's because certain works of art ease our loneliness.
The formula comes from opera.
You don't have to be an expert to know that opera is dramatic. But if you wonder why opera lovers are so invested, here's the reason:
Opera agitates your mind via a specific emotional bait and switch.
The music pulls you in with the promise of a full-bodied orchestra surging in harmony. It then jars you with cacophony and discord.
On repeat.
A hint of harmony, then cacophony. A hint of harmony, then discord.
The longer the music forces your brain to wait for the sustained harmony it expects, the more you crave it. It's why opera-lovers hang on to every note.
That craving is their dopamine talking.
That same dopamine response bonds you to characters in your favorite modern “operas.”
The tv characters who can't seem to catch a break or are always walking a high-wire.
Maybe Walter White or Meredith Gray trigger your dopamine; maybe you felt compelled to stick with Don Draper through it all.
Dopamine hijacks your sense of self preservation; convincing you that clicking nextepisode is a better idea than going to bed.
Sharing in their turmoil makes your brain feel like it has a friend to care for, even as you sacrifice sleep to do so.
Ferrante deploys the same move found in operatic music and binge-worthy tv.
She settles her reader briefly into one emotion — the harmony, so to speak— then quickly disrupts it with another.
Continually.
The sensation is extra intense in My Brilliant Friend, bristling with the immediacy of childhood.
“Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now. The street is this, the doorway is this…This is the day, this is the night.”— Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend.
Elena and Lila are little girls whenthe series begins, navigating their way through a neighborhood that looms large with violence and mystery.
Whenever little Elena feels she has a handle on their world, Lila disrupts it.
When Elena gets caught up envisioning a violent ogre, Lila, normally aloof, takes her hand, stoppering Elena's imagination; when Elena feels safe enough to share her only doll, Lila shoves it down a sewer grate.
A hint of stability, suddenly interrupted, repeatedly, creates the rollercoaster effect that tethers you to Elena.
A resolution is coming, you think. You just have to keep going.
So you get better at identifying what you feel and why.
So we have a reference library of literary works to help you alleviate hard feelings when they hit and to flourish by building up stores of positive emotions.
You can learn more about the narrative technique that makes you feel as though you've made a friend in chapter 25 of Wonderworks.
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