
You’re never going to have a legacy, so give up trying - smacktoward
https://qz.com/work/1528262/youre-never-going-to-have-a-legacy-so-give-up-trying/
======
towaway1138
This is a good nutshell reminder of an apparent key fact of existence.

This has been known and lamented for more than 2,000 years. Read Ecclesiastes.

    
    
       Everything is an iteration of
       what went before.  Things only
       seem new because our memories
       are short.  No one remembers
       what happened last week, let 
       alone last year.  We forget
       everything and our children
       remember even less.
    

("Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes", Adam S.
Miller)

~~~
smacktoward
The last few minutes of Martin Scorsese's (wildly uneven, but still) _Gangs of
New York_ found a good way to tell the same story 100% visually. The movie
starts with a huge street fight between the followers of the two characters at
the heart of its story, Bill the Butcher and "Priest" Vallon, battling over
who will control the streets of 19th-century New York. Then at the end we see
their tombstones, and in a sped-up time-lapse we see those stones get
overgrown and forgotten as the modern city of New York we know today grows up
around them, fading out on one last shot of the completely overgrown
headstones -- with the Twin Towers looming over them, as if to say, _this too
shall pass._

You can watch the ending here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs)

It's a really good little example of visual storytelling.

~~~
cableshaft
That was a great ending. Also brings up an interesting thought. If something
that gruesome and important to New York's history has been largely forgotten
after 150 years, then there will eventually come a time when 9/11 (your
mention of the Twin Towers made me think of it) is all but forgotten by
society and its residents (assuming New York still exists as a city in
hundreds of years) and some future filmmaker could do a similar timelapse
starting from where the Gangs of New York timelapse ended.

~~~
smacktoward
Arguably, that process has already started. To anyone who was born after 9/11
(and that was almost 18 years ago, so there are people born after 9/11 who are
almost old enough to vote!), that event is already kind of an abstraction, in
much the same way that the attack on Pearl Harbor is to almost everyone
reading this. The passing of an event out of living memory is the first stage
of that kind of transition from experience into legend.

And also, if you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend subscribing
to the blog Ephemeral New York, which highlights all sorts of still-existing
traces of New York Cities long gone:
[https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/](https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I've been seeing a lot of headlines over the past ten or so years on how this
is happening to the Holocaust, which freaks me the hell out, because my
grandmother's second husband was a survivor. To think nobody could meet anyone
like him anymore is disturbing.

~~~
hopler
I long for the day when there is no genocide in living memory.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
To talk of "living memory" leaves the future uncontrolled.

------
dalacv
I've often thought: "What if I bought a nice big piece of land somewhere,
along with a digging machine and spent the rest of my days making a hole in
the earth. That is my current thought on how to make the biggest, lasting
impact on this earth.

~~~
cr0sh
Unfortunately, others have already done this - extracting great riches as they
did so - and left their "mark" on the planet.

Of course, without looking it up, I couldn't tell you who they were, even
though some of these "big holes" are right here in "my backyard" down in
southern Arizona (about the best I can tell you is that they were mostly for
copper mining and...yep).

Or - take this big hole; without looking it up, do you know who made it?

[http://www.nationmultimedia.com/img/news/2017/08/06/30322996...](http://www.nationmultimedia.com/img/news/2017/08/06/30322996/7b64a5397251773aa5f978cddb4771b1.jpeg)

...got the owners a lot of diamonds, though.

Even so - they'll be just as forgotten.

------
skybrian
Maybe we shouldn't confuse having an impact with being remembered? In the end,
most contributions are anonymous, but they're still what civilization is built
on.

~~~
randomsearch
Indeed. It’s an interesting assumption that legacy means a selfish desire to
be remember. It’s a very Facebook way to think.

The legacy of a teacher is presumably the great things their students do, and
not their students sitting around saying “remember that maths teacher.”

~~~
copperx
Everything we do matters as long as humanity continues to exist, because all
of us have an impact on the next generation, and so on. It doesn't matter how
small. I don't know who my great grandfather was, but I'm here because one day
he decided to have sex. The butterfly effect is real.

Although there's no future for humanity in the universe, everything is for
naught. But we are a hopeful species.

------
frogperson
I would bet good money that less than 1% of people can name all 8 of thier
great grand parents. In other words you'll almost certainly be forgotten in a
few generations, even by your own family.

~~~
copperx
However, even though nobody might remember the name of those great
grandparents, they impacted the lives of others, which changed the course of
the future.

Everyone is contributing to the future of humanity. Even if some commit
suicide or decides not to reproduce.

------
logfromblammo
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; look on my works, ye mighty, and
despair!"

PB Shelley said it better.

"Here lies one whose name was writ on water."

And "a young English poet" said it better still.

But they never had the opportunity to create an artificial intelligence, did
they? Since I know that nothing I do will endure long beyond my death, and
that failure of the flesh is inevitable under current technology, I think that
my best chance at a legacy will be to create an artificial consciousness that
likes the same things that I like, and dislikes the same things that I
dislike, mimics my behavior to perfection, and possesses the same catalog of
memories.

Then it can spend an eternity doing absolutely nothing of consequence, just
like I would do with immortality, if I had it. Thus, the rule of zero legacy
is preserved.

------
F_J_H
Years ago, from somewhere I have forgotten, I copied the following:

 _Among the first Anglo-Saxon poems, from the eighth century, is “The Ruin,” a
powerful testament to the brokenness inherent in civilization. Its opening
lines:

The masonry is wondrous; fates broke it The courtyard pavements were smashed;
the work of giants is decaying...

The poem comes from the Exeter Book of Anglo-Saxon poetry and several key
lines have been destroyed by damp. So, one of the original poems in the
English lyric tradition contains, in its very physical existence, a comment on
the fragility of the codex as a mode of transmission. The original poem about
a ruin is itself a ruin._

Here is another translation:

 _Splendid this rampart is, though fate destroyed it, The city buildings fell
apart, the works Of giants crumble. Tumbled are the towers, Ruined the roofs,
and broken the barred gate, Frost in the plaster, all the ceilings gape, Torn
and collapsed and eaten up by age. And grit holds in its grip, the hard
embrace Of earth, the dead departed master-builders, Until a hundred
generations now Of people have passed by. Often this wall Stained red and grey
with lichen has stood by Surviving storms while kingdoms rose and fell. And
now the high curved wall itself has fallen._

------
amingilani
Yes, but as long as I have another breath, it matters to me what my legacy
will be. I honestly don't know who Clark Gable is, but as long as he was alive
he felt like a living legend — isn't that all that matters? The purpose you
give yourself.

Life's a massive multiplayer game, and you decide what the definition of
winning is, what could be better? If you decide there are no winners, then it
sucks to be you.

------
sonnyblarney
Quit the opposite: almost everyone has a 'legacy' and it's in the eyes of
those who knew them for whatever reason.

What makes us human is our ability to transfer knowledge, wisdom, ideas (i.e.
the 'light' referred to as 'lucis' in the mottos so many of our Universities)
from generation to generation.

Obviously sometimes there's too much egoism wrapped up in legacy, and we
sometimes embellish the legacy of the wrong folks, but that doesn't make it
irrelevant.

The understanding that one's legacy does matter, in whatever one does, however
larger or small, compels us to be better than we would otherwise.

Each one of us has probably countless historical figures who've inspired us at
least a little bit, without them we would not know who we are.

We can't all be Newton's but we still matter.

------
yo1
The world is our legacy, we must strive to leave it a better place.

------
mythrwy
You can't help but create a legacy, even if no one remembers your name (which
I personally don't care about).

Deeds echo in time forever. Even ones we think are small.

------
AnimalMuppet
I will leave a legacy, because I have kids. It may not be a very big legacy in
terms of number of people, but on them my impact has been immense. (Hopefully
mostly for good, but unfortunately not totally...)

------
squozzer
OTOH, people remember (in a distorted way, to various degrees, highly
dependent on culture)

Genghis Khan

Attila the Hun

Jesus Christ

Buddha

Moses

A few other prophets

Archimedes

Gaius Julius Caesar

~~~
pradn
Similarly, we can ask the question: name one person from the 10th century. I
bet most people would not be able to. We probably don't have one person for
each of the ten centuries of the first millenium. And forget about anyone
before 500 BC or so!

In a thousand years, we'll have the same question: name one person from the
21st century. Who will it be? Which of the 15-20 American presidents will even
be visible? Who'll be the McKinley and who'll be the Lincoln?

I expect for the 20th century it'll be Hitler or Einstein or Churchill or MLK
or someone like that. Surely not Clark Gable or Elvis!

~~~
cableshaft
Different professions care about different people. Musicians (and honestly,
the average layperson) can name classical musicians at least as far back as
the Renaissance, and those in Theatre can name classic Greek plays from well
over a thousand years ago (Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex don't ring any bells?
Oedipus Rex was first performed in 429 BC!). Philosophers can name Socrates
and Aristotle (and most other people can too).

How about games? Go is 2500 years old at this point and still going strong.
Sure we don't remember the name of the person who first put it out there, but
there wasn't a desire to record that back then. Shigeru Miyamoto will be tied
to Mario for a long, long time. Or Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse and theme
parks. They might not be household names in a thousand years, but there will
be historians and documentaries about them (and hopefully their works will be
properly archived so people wanting to be educated on the history of film or
games can still enjoy them).

If something or someone leaves enough of an impression on society, they can be
remembered for thousands of years, and still be relevant to people in those
fields (and even outside of those fields). It's not guaranteed to be
remembered, or for the people who were involved with it to be remembered
specifically, but the result can be.

And even if it's not remembered by the public at large, there are people out
there who will find value in remembering and reminding people about these
things.

------
eli_gottlieb
Legacy? I thought "legacy" was when you aimed to be remembered by your family
and community.

------
lucas_membrane
We all leave footprints in the sands of time, but 99.99% do it sitting down.

------
MentallyRetired
"They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a
bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time."

... all we are is dust in the wind.

