I’ve recently meditated on people wanting to leave a legacy behind when they pass on. Questions that come to my mind include:
- Is it prideful to leave a legacy that you would not even be aware of when you die? Does a legacy only serve the purpose to carry on the name of the person that started it?
- Why leave a legacy in the first place?
- Will a legacy survive time?
Here’s what I think, and I’ll start with the last question first.
Will a Legacy Survive Time?
The greater the disparity of time, the greater the loss of the legacy.
What was accepted and important to society a thousand years ago, is either not fully acceptable or relevant today. It can become a gawking attraction to modern minds and even more modern minds in times to come.
Will our legacies then be a historical, or even worse, a carnival attraction to people living 200 years from now?
Society, and and other factors of the time determine what we consider a good or bad legacy. I would argue that very few legacies can be classified as a purely good or evil. Good examples of this include Nazi occupied Europe, lead by Adolf Hitler and the mass genocide of the Jewish people. Compare that with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius that still in present time teaches a person how to live a wholesome and virtuous life. These examples emphasise the extremes of what a legacy is capable of, but I’d say that most legacies lie on a spectrum in between these extremes.
Does that mean, if a legacy is not intended for the public to read about as in Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, it will be considered a good-natured legacy?
I don’t think that alone attributes to his teachings being wholesome, but it definitely detracts pride from the unintended legacy.
One ancient Roman emperor’s legacy survived while the majority of what Rome’s elite stood for are today embedded in small mixtures of our current civilisation. Rome in all its glory has fallen, but a virtuous mans thoughts lives on.
If a legacy is to survive time, which ingredients are required for it to sustain itself?
I personally am unsure about this, that’s why I am questioning it. Does it require to be connected to a virtue, or is its foundation cemented in abstract time and place of “being at the right time and place”? Does it require believing in an unseen force or element to take root?
A legacy requires more than one person to believe in it to carry it forth and pass it on to the next generation for it to survive, that is a certainty. What comes along then to bury it? Technology, human advancement, the necessity to carry a more burdensome torch?
A Legacy of Pride
Pertaining to legacies in general, my thoughts turn toward philanthropic projects. Many of these carry the name of the person that set an example of the goal of that project.
Would a person whose name bears the philanthropic goal then deliberately choose to be remembered for their sacrifices and honoured for it posthumously?
I considers human beings incomplete, and lacking maturity. No one escapes that. We can only try our best to be good. This inherently allows the seed of pride to keep on tacking along in each generation, up to a point where the person who left a legacy with pure intentions, gets shifted and idolised in a new light to the ideals of the generations carrying it forth, skewing the original intent of the legacy bearer.
Why Leave a Legacy in the First Place?
A legacy based on an idealised goal is in my opinion not very effective, since we are living in a time where world beliefs and our opinions are constantly evolving with the latest news and proclamations of those who have the power to influence millions.
Even a single social media platform can cause millions of people to break the rhythm of the world and legacies with a focused mindset to spread disinformation. Ideals and propaganda are now mixed together like a bitter beverage and offered freely to be consumed by anyone that gives a thought to it.
Has it then become an arrhythmic dissonance to leave a legacy that will only compete with the hundreds of thousands of other legacies we are bombarded with every single day on the internet?
People are desperate enough to colour their online presence everywhere, like graffiti, eventually overlapping other people’s paints, creating a distortion of what reality is to us. To suss out the truth from a tumultuous and mess of a web is also not possible, and we will sooner burn out, than reaching our intended goal.
A Legacy, is a legacy, is a legacy.
In the end, I think that a legacy can serve a purpose, like a currency, it is capable of being used for both good and evil intentions. The most effective legacy is the one that is not promoted, or forced, but accepted by the few that resonate with it. It does not have to become a deity or a corporate brand. It is not permanent, and it is not meant to last forever. If it does, it can get skewed, and project to and influence people in an undesirable way.
A legacy is a natural unobscured, unfiltered, free-flowing growth in a community that act in semi-synchronicity and without barriers.
Your Thoughts?
What do you think? Is it still worthwhile to leave a legacy, and what legacy would you leave behind and why?
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