Leaving a Legacy
This is a repost from my weekly meditations on Five Minute Philosophy with some minor edits.
This week, I would like to speak plainly, and quite candidly on a topic near and dear to me. You see, I have problems, many people do, heck, everyone has their own demons they are working through. One thing had always stuck with me. Preserving my legacy.
Regular readers may remember me going through Ernest Becker's “Denial of Death,” in which Becker argues that everyone engages in an “immortality project.” What he means by this is that since we cannot actually be immortal, we regress to an immaterial piece of us from which to preserve into immortality. We want to “leave our mark on the world,” so to speak in an attempt to immortalize ourselves.
You don’t leave marks on the world, you leave impressions on people.
I used to take this as gospel. I used to see it as a requirement to pursue my passions as a means of cementing my legacy. However, what do we mean by “leaving marks on the world?” It seems this isn’t actually possible. Of course, if we take it literally, we can do this by pissing on a tree, leaving marks like dogs. No, what we mean is that we leave impressions on people. You don’t leave marks on the world, you leave impressions on people.
At this point, I think I have done this. I won’t stop, either, but I can say I am happy that I have given people something of value. Sure, I am no Plato or Aquinas or Wittgenstein, but I am giving laughs with memes on my page, deep thoughts, and free and open education to people through Sapio Institute of Philosophy. Heck, outside of philosophy circles, Wittgenstein isn’t even known. I don’t need that, I need to reach as many people as I can, and I know I am doing that.
