What makes you think you can’t leave a significant positive legacy?
You can get involved with your neighbors. Invest in your local community. Adopt an orphan or volunteer at a women’s shelter.
There’s a million things you can do to make a significant impact. Every person you invest in is another person who can go and invest in others.
This idea that anything that’s below the national or worldwide level isn’t significant is a cancer on society.
There are people who lived hundreds of years ago who, sure, you’ll probably have never heard of if you don’t live in the same area as me, but who have had huge impact on the community. The same is true for where you live. I promise you.
Bring your eyes down, and look to make your legacy local. I promise you it’s possible. And I promise you that it’s significant.
No. I think too many people obsess about what happens after they’re gone rather than living their life to the fullest. One doesn’t need to make it into history books to leave an impact on the world around them.
The following is a story I was told as a child that I think puts some if this in perspective:
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”
The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”
After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said, “I made a difference for that one.”
No. I’m here while I’m here, and I do my best to help people, when I can and am capable anyways.
There’s no stopping the clock, everyone has their time…
I think part of life is learning that there’s nothing wrong with living a simple/normal life, and that there is a beauty in it too.
ikr being a public figure and leading a high-stress life seems pretty hellish tbh.
“Rage against the dying of the light”…
… can look like being the best person you can be, for your own sense of morality/justice, for whatever you believe in, for whatever you feel is what, and how, a decent person should be.
Even if someone says that altruism is nonsensical or strictly meaningless/impossible, the fact that somebody even aimed toward it is remarkable nonetheless.
I’m gonna do it, I’m bustin’ out the Architect scene:
Neo
walks to the door on his leftchooses to reject the false dichotomy he has been presented.The Architect: Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
Neo: If I were you, I would hope that we don’t meet again.
The Architect: We won’t.
Lol, I’m probably dead in 30 years or less. I’m over half way there because of a major health condition I lost the genetic lottery on. It is what it is. I like to think I’ve raised a child capable of empathy, that’s all I can do.
Nope.
Don’t care about legacy either, just hope the people I care about have happy memories if they think about me until they pass away. No need for my memory to pass on to future generations or anything.
In a couple of generations all memory and signs of your existence will be wiped out anyway. Enjoying what’s in front of you now and doing the good you can for the few people you can affect is easily enough.
You know, I may not make a lot of difference in THE world, but I can make a difference in SOMEONE’S world and that’s how I live my life
Not really. It’s mostly old age I worry about - not dying.
I’m however slightly optimistic that I might be able to reach so called longevity escape velocity during my lifetime due to advances in medical science and life extension therapies.
I agree. Dying is way, way less scary to me than a slow decline with dementia or a long, painful battle with cancer. No issues with death, I just hope it’s quick.
I don’t care about leaving a legacy. I’m here to enjoy myself as much as possible in this very fucked up world.
It’s not that hard to leave a significant positive legacy. It only needs to be person-sized. Did you have one pretty good child? Congratulations, you did it! Did you have, like, three good friends? Give yourself a big ol’ check.
These aren’t easy, but they aren’t in general un-do-able.
Most everyone has an innate urge to live forever somehow. It’s an expression of our fear of death. They make children, or inventions, or buildings, or artworks, or whatever “legacy” they can think will persist after their death.
It’s natural to feel this way. We’re wired for it.
The cruel trick is that nothing lasts forever. We yearn for things we can’t have.
I don’t care. Our civilization will collapse, the earth will become uninhabitable and the universe will die at some point. So whatever we leave behind ultimately doesn’t matter anyway. I try to make life as enjoyable as possible for myself and my GF and try to be a positive influence for my friends, family, colleagues and neighbourhood. When it’s over, it’s over and I’m not going to worry about what I’m leaving behind. I’m an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things and I’m just fine with that.
No kids and no legacy to worry about sounds quite good to me actually.
I’m more upset about everything that’s going to happen in the far future that I won’t get to see
And I’m over here feeling dread on my children’s behalf for the same time period.
I’m kinda sad that I probably* won’t get to see how this story ends. Do we make it as a species? Do we end up in the Star Trek utopia, or do we wipe ourselves out with our own hubris? But I’m not sad of afraid of dying itself. My legacy will be doing right by my kids and hopefully setting them up to live better lives than I did, and I’m OK with that.
*If I do live long enough to see us wipe ourselves out that will be pretty shit, ngl.
Do you feel sad about the fact that you’ll probably die within 100 years (or less)
A quote from Richard Dawkins:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
I love playing lil hypothetical games like that.
There is a hypothetical set of actions that, if I had taken them last year, would have made me a million dollars. So I just lost a million dollars.
If I took the knowledge in a current human biology textbook and rearranged it in just the right way, I’d come up with the secret to immorality. So I have a chance at immortality but will fail at it.
I could go up to any person and, in theory, have just the right conversation with them to get them to do pretty much anything I wanted. But I don’t know that conversation to have. I have lost control of the world, of which I could have been master.
I could go up to any person and, in theory, have just the right conversation with them to get them to do pretty much anything I wanted.
Omg I get triggered by these hypotheticals.
There’s a hypothetical timeline where, say, if a time traveler went back to my childhood, they could brainwash me with the alt-right pipeline.
Like… okay that’s maybe enough hypotheticals… Very uncanny to think about.
You’ve heard of Quantum Immortality… but have you heard of Quantum Silver Tongued Devil?
Quantum Hostage Negotiator?
Quantum Worst Possible Yet Most Persuasive Advice Ever Giver?
I’ve always found this kind of stuff mostly nonsensical.
… what about building a nano (pico? much much smaller?) scale device that takes advantage of the Casimir effect to say, generate … actually random numbers, not pseudo random numbers?
Much more practical.
You don’t have to earn a Nobel Piece prize to leave a significant positive legacy. You can plant a tree, help someone or teach a skill to a kid…
