# The legacy we try to build Near the end of our [life cycles](maturity.md), we'll attempt [meaning](meaning.md) and [purpose](purpose.md) that can transcend [death](hardship-death.md). Given that death itself is utterly sudden, [unpredictable](imagination.md), and permanent, this is never easy. We typically want to [create](creations.md) something that transcends our existence. In a sense, it's an attempt to "live longer" by [being important](meaning.md) beyond when our body ceases to function. Generally, the signal for this is when our bodies and minds start to fade. Once we notice our [power](power.md) has diminished, we start reassessing the kinds of decisions we had made. APPLICATION: If people lived only a few short decades longer (e.g., to age 150), they'd accomplish about 10 times the [results](results.md). If there's any truth to [ancient religious texts](religion.md) implying that people lived hundreds of years, they'd have needed dramatically less time to accomplish *anything*. The irony of this delayed attention is that we usually tend to think about making a difference only *after* we've become severely [set in our ways](habits.md) and our peak [competence](purpose.md) has passed. APPLICATION: By the time most people start looking to creating [meaning](meaning.md) beyond themselves, they've become a [caricature or parody](humor.md) of what they once were. This generally yields *awful* [results](results.md) as they try to lead groups toward something beyond self-interest. APPLICATION: People who are particularly obsessed with [death](hardship-death.md) or [the afterlife](religion.md) can create [meaningful](meaning.md) [results](results.md) earlier (around age 30) rather than later (around age 45). This extra length of time developing [habits](habits.md) can create a *profound* difference in their social impact, but [results](results.md) aren't guaranteed. Generally, people never successfully preserve their bodies because of several reasons: 1. The [technology](technology.md) to do it isn't effective at making a body last indefinitely. 2. We've never been able to successfully put a [soul](humanity.md) back *into* a body, even if that person died a few minutes ago. 3. Most people who can afford to preserve their bodies with the latest technology will also have [subordinates](groups-large.md) who may not want that person to come back. APPLICATION: Living for the far future is a waste of effort. We can't prolong our life beyond managing our [health](body-4_health.md) and [stress](mind-feelings-happiness-stress.md), and making anything of value that we can't enjoy in this life is a waste of time. No matter [what happens after we die](religion.md), we're the greatest consumers of our self-made [works](creations.md). In civilized societies with lots of [technology](technology.md), there will be enough [medical technology](body-4_health.md) that people will live longer. This will mean most people will be "old" most of their life (i.e., middle-aged can go from 25 to 40), and [youth](maturity.md) will be comparatively scarce and fleeting. Unless we make an intentional purpose to release control of what we have to others, our weakened or [obsolete](trends.md) skills will guarantee we'll sabotage most of the potential we could have given to those who will succeed us. Without [religion](religion.md), we can only find [meaning](meaning.md) in this life, before we've died, and there's very little benefit to advancing the [body of knowledge](understanding.md) of any domain, [building a new technology](technology.md) or [creating anything new](creations.md) if we're even remotely thinking about life beyond this one. APPLICATION: The primary reason that innovation in [scientific](science.md) and [engineering](engineering.md) domains are dominated by atheists is because they have nothing else beyond this life to live for. ## Post-mortem Things often *do* live beyond ourselves, but not in the way we think they do. Our legacy won't travel into the future with the pure [essence](humanity.md) we may [expect](imagination.md): - We will [influence](influence.md) people, especially [younger](maturity.md) people, in ways that they'll find more [purpose](purpose.md) and [build](creations.md) bigger things. This is *their* [creation](creations.md) that was [influenced](influence.md) by ours, not ours alone. - Even if we could publicly encode *every* bit of information for others' benefit, time will distort and destroy the [truth](reality.md) that happened. Books get burned, websites go down, archives decompose, and it will all eventually become a cryptic dead [language](language.md) if it doesn't disappear. - With many [creations](creations.md), even with relatively reliable transcription and translation, the [stories](stories.md) carry progressively less weight for future generations as they lose the context of the [fashionable](trends.md) [beliefs](understanding-certainty.md) of our present times. Eventually, they become a source of [parody](humor.md) and [hubris](morality.md) by a society that doesn't know the creation's original context. - Preserving a [family name](people-family.md) or [group](groups-small.md) is also futile. The descendants of the vision will make their own [decisions](people-decisions.md), and it's only a matter of time before one of them makes habitually dumb decisions. Our guidance can only carry them a few generations until they destroy what we built. This happens even faster if they inherit the [power](power.md) we've built without the skills it took to *[build](success-1_why.md)* that power. - Spreading [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) ends when our presence ends. While people know the names of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, nobody respects their former power anymore except small groups of historians. ## Forgotten Most of what we do will be forgotten almost immediately after our funeral. APPLICATION: It's difficult to deal with the death of someone younger than us, especially [our children](people-family.md), because it's the termination of all the potential life that may have built something greater than we ourselves could have attained. Only the top 5% of our [creations](creations.md) will outlast us enough to start a [social trend](trends.md), and we have very little control over *which* creations get there or how far they go. APPLICATION: You don't know how much influence you'll have after you die. As I write this, I may only influence a few hundred people with it and pass on as a decent-enough person, or historians will consider me one of the "Great Writers of the 21st Century" in 200 years. It doesn't technically [matter](meaning.md) either way for my day-to-day life, though, and I guarantee the future possible readers will misunderstand what I'm writing. No matter what we pursue, we will eventually be *completely* forgotten. Either our posthumous [influence](influence.md) will dilute through blending into everyone else's, or we'll be lost to time through [history's endless revisions](stories-storytellers.md). The only hope someone has is to advance a mythological set of [symbols](symbols.md) to assist a future group in discovering [meaning](meaning.md) through [interpreting](image.md) what they've found. APPLICATION: The only way to reliably maintain a legacy that lasts for more than a few hundred years is to instill simple [habits](habits.md) that create [meaning](meaning.md) through framing an [identity](identity.md) associated with a [family](people-family.md). [Human nature](humanity.md) also magnifies any naturally occurring effects of things lost to time. - Young people tend to believe old people don't know what they're talking about, so they disregard their elders' admonitions until they [learn](education.md) the hard way. - By that time, *they're* the old people, and the new young people think they don't know what they're talking about. - This means that not much *ever* changes, even across thousands of years with wildly different [cultures](people-culture.md) and [technologies](technology.md). Even if we could theoretically add something [meaningful](meaning.md) to the universe, it would need an observer. If humanity doesn't die from the sun failing, it'll be the collapse of all the stars or the heat death of the universe. No matter what, if you go far enough, the death of all things, including the shadow of it, still waits for us. ## Worthwhile We *can* find [purposes](purpose.md) that sit [beyond this life](religion.md) to bring into this one, but that's [a different discussion](jesus-gospel.md) heavily steeped in [religious bias](religion.md). Otherwise, without any true [certainty](understanding-certainty.md) about the domain following this life, our best [decision](people-decisions.md) is to [live for the present](mind-feelings-happiness-stress.md) and the [near future](imagination.md) to the degree it affects the present.