We really can only do much impact to our immediate area, most significant legacy positive legacy building is creating and propagating movements. If you want to feel like you’re making positive change then do things that help the people around you, the smallest things like shifting to local mom and pop shopping vs big retail for a couple purchases can help keep money local and supports them raising their families there in your town. Same as just picking up litter you might see as you walk through a park, you never know who’s watching and who it might influence to do the same or to stop littering over time. Not everything has to be macro but all the small decisions do add up to a pretty large change around you that will be noticed.
My kids are my legacy. Whether that’s positive or negative is up to them at this point.
Regardless of that, I used to be terrified of dying. When I was younger because I hadn’t experienced or accomplished anything. Heck, George Lucas planned nine Star Wars film’s and I couldn’t die before I’d seen them all! (In retrospect, maybe that wasn’t as important as it seemed at the time.) Getting older it was because my family wasn’t ready.
Now I’m in my fifties and my body is already falling apart. My dad and father in law are in better physical shape than me due to back and joint issues. My kids are pretty close to self-sustaining — as much as they’ll ever be.
I’m as immortal as someone without big ambitions can be. I’ll never have a statue or exhibit in a museum or book written about me, but I’d be pretty happy with a park bench in a scenic spot. I don’t want to be buried, but it would be nice to have that as a place anyone who cares to could go and remember me — not some gaudy marble surrounded by death.
What more could I want other than people who love me and remember me for a time? And between now and the end, I’ve got things to keep me busy. Computer games and learning woodworking. Travel. Continuing to grow as a person. I’m not done living by any means, but I’m okay with dying. I imagine it’ll suck at the time, but all things end. Even the universe.
No , the heat death of the universe will sort it all out in time. Doesnt mean i dont want things to improve during my time here for us and future generations.
I think my kid’s going to have a robot servant and go to a different planet. I’m well jealous.
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…
Yep. Im also terrified of actually dying. I want to die in my sleep so I dont see it coming, but I dont want to miss the experience of death because everyone gets it and you can only really do it once so it really is once in a lifetime experience. Except I wont have any life to remember the experience so it doesnt matter. And since it doesnt matter why do I want it. But what if it hurts?
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.
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.
With AI devouring human creativity and the world going to absolute shit…
It can’t happen soon enough.
People have being saying stuff like this for hundreds of years. We’re still in a massive state of transition following the creation of the internet and every culture in the world just crashing into each other online.
There’s so many ways the world is a better place than it used to be. My kid watches a TV show about a little girl who has two Dads, a few decades ago that would’ve been basically illegal. Everyone’s way more understanding of mental health issues rather than just telling people to “man up”. There’s other things but I can’t be bothered making a wall of text.
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
I may have, at one point. Then I realized that the only reason anyone leaves a ‘positive legacy’ is because they actively sought to paint themselves that way. In other words, they managed to trick you and everyone else into thinking that it was their singular will that manifested all of this positivity.
Positive legacies are not the product of any one person, they are a collective effort, and the collective shares both the credit and the spoils.
You have to keep in mind, what is a positive legacy? Is it simply being remembered? No, because I’ve surely planted many trees (I drop seeds where I go) — will anyone remember the man who dropped the seeds?
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
— God, Futurama
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.
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.
Depends on your definition of “significant positive legacy”.
If you’re drawn to the fame and notoriety of public figures as a template for this legacy, then I’d say these types of people already put their lives out in public for you to follow as a template. You will likely be seen as a narcissist in some circles.
On the other hand, many games and thinkers instill the rationale that you are the sum of your choices. Your karma - or action logic perhaps - will ripple around you with consequences - intended or not. These choices raise a new legacy of being an example.
A lot of people want to just live their lives in their own peace, make a living, do what they can to support their people. Such folks receive no fame, and no notoriety. They do everything necessary. There’s no thanks expected. But they make human life worth it. I’d rather be a part of this example.
Together
Everyone
Accomplishes
MoreIn many ways, we all entered the same game with the same example of team. We all wake up, work, transit. Everything has to come together in order for us to get back home safely. It has inherent value, and is a “legacy”. What I think of as “legacy” is also your heritage and your birthright. You inherited someone’s legacy to be possible and to be here.
There are forces that threaten this example. People who want to do violence to it, destroy it, pillage it, profit from it, you have to choose to protect it. They don’t want you to see your own worth. They don’t want you to see the value in others. They want you to stay small, and deny your heritage. How you protect this example, and the vulnerable, is up to you.
EDIT: I’m just using the terms you and they in a generic sense. I don’t literally mean you to single any specific person out. Similarly, I’m not literally talking about “they” like some kind of secret cabal reference. They is an ever changing reference to any kind of opposing force - be it person or system or effect.
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.”
