willy loman and his vegetable seeds; philanthropists and their 'foundations'; people having kids so that they sort of. live on. - all examples of people trying to leave some tangible evidence as proof of their existence/achievements/kind heart/loadsamoney.

do you worry that after you die, it will be as if you never existed?
do you think think that this is part of the human condition?
or do you think it's just a tendency to regard yourself with far too much self importance?

i can understand people doing this for someone else; eg, arthur fowler died, people missed him, they got him a bench so they could have a place to sit and remember him. but this is like arthur fowler buying his own bench so he'd never be forgotten. and i just don't get it.

Making a conscious effort to leave your mark upon the world is foolish in that your legacy is bound to be forgotten, be it within years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc. Assuming the continuity of life, no person's legacy is guaranteed to survive. I believe that everyone leaves their impression upon the world without intending to do so.

(Slightly shitty) example scenario: A man gives a euro to a homeless woman. That same woman uses the euro to buy bread for her son, saving him from an imminent death. Had the man not given her the euro when he did, the son would have died. The son grows up and discovers a cure for cancer. The man can therefore be considered to have indirectly brought about the cure for cancer.

(Slightly shitty) example scenario 2: Your friend is about to kill herself. She happens to have MSN running. By chance, you are online for a few minutes, and decide to ask her to come over. This has a great impact on your sensitive friend and she decides not to kill herself. She grows up and raises a family. Her daughter discovers an alternate way to end global warming. The earth is saved and it couldn't have been possible without you. Hah.

Thus, it's inevitable not to have an influence on the world, however significant or insignificant your contribution happens to be. Creating one's own legacy for the sole reason of being "remembered" is for the naive. I don't consider leaving something behind a desire that is part of the human condition, but rather an inevitability that is part of life. It is the human condition to make one's own life meaningful for oneself, and a desire to leave something behind evinces depending on the individual.

thats right on...the woman who choose to keep her baby and not kill it (choice if that is the polite term) could have had the next president,doctor,or on the flip..murder,hitler,etc...we never know , but we should live these lives God gave us according to His word,not operas..or our desire to be remembered....time will pass and we'll say louis pasture???who was he? oh ya the guy who found the rabies vac.
we still benifit from his contribution even tho we might not remember where it came from rick

i guess everything we leave behind won't really count for much when the universe is crushed and condensed into a singularity anyway, so people should slow the fuck down and stop harping on the lazy ones who just don't give a fuck about leaving something behind other than a fat bloated corpse.

personally i'd burn all my posessions if i knew i was going to die and kill anyone who was plotting some sort of funeral. GROSS. I bet they'd play Wendy Matthews 'The Day You Went Away' and invite old school friends who hated me and would just be there to laugh at my being dead.

This is pissing me off just thinking about it. FUCK THE HUMAN CONDITION. The only condition humans should be in is the state of EXTINCTION.

fuck genocide makes me hard.

I agree, it seems the legacy is just a consequence of the desire to do something with your life.

However some people are eternal. Look at Cleopatra, she's been dead for over 2000 years and we are still talking about her. And 2000 years into the future Marilyn Monroe is going to be as famous as she while she was alive.

Some people are unerasable, unless the whole world gets destroyed.

Cleopatra and Marilyn will both be forgotten eventually, though.

nope, never. the world as we know it would have to be destroyed for them to be forgotten. But as long as there's the media and education to pass on to the younger generation, there will be Marilyn Monroe movies and history classes and we will know about Alexander The Great, and Churchill and the beatles, etc, I mean those people will never be forgotten.

They will never be forgotten, unless everyone on Earth gets anhihilated.

I like that you mentioned arthur fowler, I will come back and contribute properly in a bit to this thread.

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Now honies play me close like butter played toast

desdemona, your examples weren't shitty, they're what i think a person's legacy amounts to; incorporeal, serendipitous, and not a concious and futile effort to be "remembered forever" by the deceased.

the reason i posted this was that i had a conversation with my mate about tam hunter. you know, the jjb sports entrepreneur? he's building a malawi foundation, becoming the new andy carnegie and all that. and i said "god, he's like willy loman and his allotment but on a bigger scale." my mate said the bit about it being the human condition to want to leave something behind. i disagreed.

ruth, i don't think they're lazy, i just think they're not deluded.

i don't know. the people i've used as examples all have one thing in common - they're all bloody capitalists. perhaps they all thought about how meaningless a life based on money, ikea furniture and broken-down washing machines is and tried to show "it wasn't all for nothing! here's the proof! carrots!" or if you're tam hunter, "african kids can read cos of me!"

thank you, i do think arthur is one man who should never be forgotten.

Never say never! There is no guarantee that the world will last for eternity, and so there is no guarantee that the legacies of these people will last for eternity. They may very well last as long as the existence of the media and education, but like every other renown person, the memory of their existence will eventually fade. Whether it be in 50,000 years or 50,000,000,000 years, the facility of passing down information from one generation to another must end. Whereas, there is no end to eternity.

no because we live in a globalized society and icons like Marilyn Monroe are all over so the whole world would have to be destroyed or everyone would have to die for her to be forgotten and what are the odds of that happening??

Err...very high?

maybe its not who's remembered here "forever" that counts most ,but where will you spend your "forever" after you die......Hebrews .its appointed for man to die once,then judgement.....smoking or non-smoking????
rick

very high?? reah right.

I'm sickened at the thought of who might show up to my funeral, I can only think of about 10 people who I'd really want there. if a bunch of acquaintances turn up i'll be rolling in my fucking grave
there had better be some good music & booze too

It'd be nice if I'm remembered for centuries for something, certainly a damn sight better than living forever or going to some lamehouse afterlife. But I think I can be content. I think if you live your life for what it is, rather than what it should be or could be, you'll be happy, and you'll be missed, and that's all anyone can ask for, really; not to live on indefinitely, but to be secure in the knowledge that you did what you could with the time you had.

Leonardo da Vinci said "a life well used brings contented death"; if someone like him can die unconcerned with his legacy, maybe we should follow his example.

you suck as usual. And it has to do with what a life well used means to people.

My example: A man gives a euro to a homeless woman. That same woman uses the euro to buy bread for her son, saving him from an imminent death. Had the man not given her the euro when he did, the son would have died. The son grows up and discovers a new way to kill people using germs. The man who gave the Euro to the homeless woman is therefore indirectly responsible.



But it's all gravy.

I think there's more to it though. People obviously don't think that's enough, otherwise we'd all be much happier. I think people feel comfort in knowing they left something behind, even if it is just someone who will really really miss them, and it's maybe due to our inability to express how we really feel about each other sometimes that means people don't feel loved, and thus don't feel like they're going to be missed or remember when they're gone.