• z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    Shortsighted take. The concept of legacy is bullshit. The long term effects you have on the world have more to do with reinforcing or negating societal patterns of behavior. Do you encourage or discourage kindness? Do you encouraged or discourage violence? That’s really all that matters.

    Those who receive kindness, violence, etc. are likely to perpetuate it, but could fight that societal reinforcement and potentially change the course of their lives and the way they influence others around them.

    All the different flavors of culture and traditions are simply wrappers over these patterns and are destined to die or change so dramatically that they would be unrecognizable to the practitioners of said culture from the past.

    Your true legacy, the one that is likely to span many generations, isn’t the traditions or artifices of a culture and people long dead, it is the positive and negative behaviors you reinforced through you demonstrating these behaviors during your life.

    Did you build and help community? Did you uplift and protect the most vulnerable amongst you? Did you work towards a world better for the next generation and not just for your children? Ultimately this is the closest people have to an actual legacy.

    One day you and everyone you ever know will die, and the best you can hope for is that you perpetuated kindness amongst those that will take the mantle of humanity forward.

    Legacy is still bullshit though. The reasons for doing right by another person is the goal, not the way towards the goal.