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(I could've written this in my blog, but I wanted to hear responses to the general question from anyone on the forum.)
One time, when I was 8, I lay awake in bed thinking. I thought about people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington. They were so influential and known. People never forgot about them. That night, I promised myself that I would be somebody. In 100 years, I would still have a powerful legacy. But honestly, we're all nobodies. I am a nobody. When we die, we'll just be obsolete, as if we'd never lived at all. Does anybody remember John Williams Thomas, the blacksmith who lived down on Cherry Street next to the bakery? No, because he was just an ordinary guy. Obviously, I just made him up, but you know what I mean--billions and billions of people since the dawn of man, and almost none of them have meant anything at all. Of course people say, "You are inspiring!" or "You're so creative!" And they mean it, they really do. But it won't matter. In 100 years, we'll l just be more John Williams Thomases. Forgotten, almost fictional. Thrown into eternal oblivion.
Everybody wants to the change the world, but only a small percentage of those actually believe they can, and only a small percentage of those actually will. People can dream all they want of being influential and significant, but at the end of the day, they'll just be the friendly neighbor watering the plants over the white picket fence. They'll just be grilling the hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecues. Just like everyone else.
What makes someone great? Does anything we do matter? And for the love of God, why are we all nobodies?
(I could've written this in my blog, but I wanted to hear responses to the general question from anyone on the forum.)
One time, when I was 8, I lay awake in bed thinking. I thought about people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington. They were so influential and known. People never forgot about them. That night, I promised myself that I would be somebody. In 100 years, I would still have a powerful legacy. But honestly, we're all nobodies. I am a nobody. When we die, we'll just be obsolete, as if we'd never lived at all. Does anybody remember John Williams Thomas, the blacksmith who lived down on Cherry Street next to the bakery? No, because he was just an ordinary guy. Obviously, I just made him up, but you know what I mean--billions and billions of people since the dawn of man, and almost none of them have meant anything at all. Of course people say, "You are inspiring!" or "You're so creative!" And they mean it, they really do. But it won't matter. In 100 years, we'll l just be more John Williams Thomases. Forgotten, almost fictional. Thrown into eternal oblivion.
Everybody wants to the change the world, but only a small percentage of those actually believe they can, and only a small percentage of those actually will. People can dream all they want of being influential and significant, but at the end of the day, they'll just be the friendly neighbor watering the plants over the white picket fence. They'll just be grilling the hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecues. Just like everyone else.
What makes someone great? Does anything we do matter? And for the love of God, why are we all nobodies?
What's wrong with being a no body? The friendly neighbour analogy made me think of Home Improvement and Wilson, that guy was pretty cool, in a world that's got so much in the way of invasion of privacy and authorities like the European Union duke it out with Google about legal rights to be forgotten and have information either eliminated from online or permitted to "decay", its unusual to see someone craving a legacy as opposed to wanting to minimise it.
The question is rather silly to me. It's the same as asking "why are plants green?" We could go on to discuss chlorophyll, wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, the human eye, the human brain...
But it all comes down to one thing...because that's just the way the world works.
Personally, I don't really give a shit about making an impact on the world for when I'm gone. Who cares? I'll be dead anyway. There will be no way for me to enjoy that fame or impact.
What does worry me is nothingness. I do not want to die because I do not want there to be nothing. (Please don't tell me about heaven and hell and whatever.)
(I could've written this in my blog, but I wanted to hear responses to the general question from anyone on the forum.)
One time, when I was 8, I lay awake in bed thinking. I thought about people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington. They were so influential and known. People never forgot about them. That night, I promised myself that I would be somebody. In 100 years, I would still have a powerful legacy. But honestly, we're all nobodies. I am a nobody. When we die, we'll just be obsolete, as if we'd never lived at all. Does anybody remember John Williams Thomas, the blacksmith who lived down on Cherry Street next to the bakery? No, because he was just an ordinary guy. Obviously, I just made him up, but you know what I mean--billions and billions of people since the dawn of man, and almost none of them have meant anything at all. Of course people say, "You are inspiring!" or "You're so creative!" And they mean it, they really do. But it won't matter. In 100 years, we'll l just be more John Williams Thomases. Forgotten, almost fictional. Thrown into eternal oblivion.
Everybody wants to the change the world, but only a small percentage of those actually believe they can, and only a small percentage of those actually will. People can dream all they want of being influential and significant, but at the end of the day, they'll just be the friendly neighbor watering the plants over the white picket fence. They'll just be grilling the hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecues. Just like everyone else.
What makes someone great? Does anything we do matter? And for the love of God, why are we all nobodies?
The important thing is not to change the world but to enjoy the world.
If our psyche was formed by authoritarian child rearing, we have a built in antagonistic relation with authority and so we are compelled to change it.
But if our psyche was formed by the helping form of child rearing, our psyche is free to grow and develop, we are free to enjoy the world.
One purpose of psychotherapy is to help us move from being a victim of authoritarian child rearing to come into our inheritance of helping child rearing.
The authoritarian child is the controlling adult; while the helped child is the empathic and creative adult.
(I could've written this in my blog, but I wanted to hear responses to the general question from anyone on the forum.)
One time, when I was 8, I lay awake in bed thinking. I thought about people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington. They were so influential and known. People never forgot about them. That night, I promised myself that I would be somebody. In 100 years, I would still have a powerful legacy. But honestly, we're all nobodies. I am a nobody. When we die, we'll just be obsolete, as if we'd never lived at all. Does anybody remember John Williams Thomas, the blacksmith who lived down on Cherry Street next to the bakery? No, because he was just an ordinary guy. Obviously, I just made him up, but you know what I mean--billions and billions of people since the dawn of man, and almost none of them have meant anything at all. Of course people say, "You are inspiring!" or "You're so creative!" And they mean it, they really do. But it won't matter. In 100 years, we'll l just be more John Williams Thomases. Forgotten, almost fictional. Thrown into eternal oblivion.
Everybody wants to the change the world, but only a small percentage of those actually believe they can, and only a small percentage of those actually will. People can dream all they want of being influential and significant, but at the end of the day, they'll just be the friendly neighbor watering the plants over the white picket fence. They'll just be grilling the hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecues. Just like everyone else.
What makes someone great? Does anything we do matter? And for the love of God, why are we all nobodies?
How do you know that the neighbor who grills hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecue is nobody? Nobody to you but he may be the entire world to others that you know nothing about. Not everyone has to leave a mark on the world and be remembered like the first president of the US to live a fulfilled life.
If you make an impact on the people around you, if you are the very best you can be to those people, then you're not nobody. You often hear of this when there is a tragedy. That the person(s) who died was exactly the person who was making the biggest difference, they were changing their world and their loss took a great person and left a huge void in the world. But you had no idea because they were just another nobody to you.
I am not sure where this thread will go or whatever, but I do not believe that I am nothing. To me, I am the world. This is not to say that I have done something super influential, such as make the continent of Africa a powerful continent or whatever. But what I do with my time on Earth means a lot, to me. I don't care if I am remembered 50 years from now. I don't really care what it means to everyone else, for the most part. I mean, I don't want to cause harm to others ...but I might end up doing so inadvertently.
...If I am remembered, I could be remembered for something horrible. I could be remembered for making racist policies that prevent people from living happy lives.
I think that you have control of what your life will mean, but really only for yourself. People will just say what they will say about you and remember you however they end up remembering you. I guess you can control that to some degree. Even then, though, people will have their own perceptions about what you did with your time on Earth.
*sigh*
I guess I can sort of relate because when I was younger I wanted to be an artist. But, I even then, I don't think I cared about actually being famous/well-known.
...I think I am having a hard time processing the OP. I don't want to end up saying "NO EVERYONE IS IMPORTANT" when you're trying to get at something else...
(I could've written this in my blog, but I wanted to hear responses to the general question from anyone on the forum.)
One time, when I was 8, I lay awake in bed thinking. I thought about people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington. They were so influential and known. People never forgot about them. That night, I promised myself that I would be somebody. In 100 years, I would still have a powerful legacy. But honestly, we're all nobodies. I am a nobody. When we die, we'll just be obsolete, as if we'd never lived at all. Does anybody remember John Williams Thomas, the blacksmith who lived down on Cherry Street next to the bakery? No, because he was just an ordinary guy. Obviously, I just made him up, but you know what I mean--billions and billions of people since the dawn of man, and almost none of them have meant anything at all. Of course people say, "You are inspiring!" or "You're so creative!" And they mean it, they really do. But it won't matter. In 100 years, we'll l just be more John Williams Thomases. Forgotten, almost fictional. Thrown into eternal oblivion.
Everybody wants to the change the world, but only a small percentage of those actually believe they can, and only a small percentage of those actually will. People can dream all they want of being influential and significant, but at the end of the day, they'll just be the friendly neighbor watering the plants over the white picket fence. They'll just be grilling the hot dogs at the awkward cul-de-sac barbecues. Just like everyone else.
What makes someone great? Does anything we do matter? And for the love of God, why are we all nobodies?
It's the idea that history has been influenced by people who were exceptional. The implication of that theory is that human history has no developmental trajectory, but is instead subject to the random breeding of hopeful monsters, or beings who are genetically capable of significantly more than the standard at the time. Secretariat is one of the most cited examples of this:
I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. . . That was...just beauty, you know? He started in last place, which he tended to do. I was covering the second-place horse, which wound up being Sham. It looked like Sham's race going into the last turn, I think. The thing you have to understand is that Sham was fast, a beautiful horse. He would have had the Triple Crown in another year. And it just didn't seem like there could be anything faster than that. Everybody was watching him. It was over, more or less. And all of a sudden there was this, like, just a disruption in the corner of your eye, in your peripheral vision. And then before you could make out what it was, here Secretariat came. And then Secretariat had passed him. No one had ever seen anything run like that – a lot of the old guys said the same thing. It was like he was some other animal out there
It's been a long-lasting theory despite the fact that it was dismantled almost immediately on its publication. It assumes that humanity doesn't progress itself, but is instead progressed on the backs of Great Men that essentially exist in genetic and social vacuums. We know that this isn't true. Without the works of prior individuals and the social conditions for the Great Men to accomplish what we know them for, they wouldn't be anything but a footnote. Napoleon's personality didn't aim his army's guns.
For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. achieved something very great. But he adapted his theory from Gandhi (a British-educated lawyer), who adapted his theory from Thoreau and Hinduism. There are two facts that disprove the Great Man theory in this example. First, neither of them accomplished what they did without a foundation established by others before them. Second, they didn't achieve it alone. If they hadn't had thousands of people standing behind them, they would have been jokes. It isn't the people we remember who got them to that place, but the people who supported them. The First Follower is more important than the leader because they're the individual who defines a leader's legitimacy. Without that first person pledging loyalty, the leader is just a man with an idea and an abnormal behavior pattern.
One of the things people forget about Secretariat is that he lost his first race, coming in 4th. His jockey didn't appreciate his ability to explode. He didn't appreciate the room he needed from other horses and let himself get trapped in the pack. Secretariat had the wrong jockey, and lost brutally because of it. If you don't have the right people behind you, not even a hopeful monster can realize its potential.
So back to your question.
Will your name be remembered? Very likely not.
Will you change the world? Absolutely.
Why? Because everything you do matters. And if you think that's any less true in today's digital age, you coudln't be more wrong.
Everything you do is a statistic that impacts a decision. Every website you visit (like this one), every TV show you tune into, every item you buy, every vote you cast is data. It impacts how much an advertiser is willing to advertise on your channel, show, or website. Every vote -- even for a losing candidate -- changes the way the parties view your state and area. Every item you buy is run through dozens of algorithms to ascertain the effectiveness of business models, advertisement schemes, product placement in the stores...
Just because nobody will remember your name doesn't mean you don't matter. Everything you do is intentional, and that intention impacts your environment. Impacting your environment is the definition of change. You might not be the one who everyone will point to as a Great Man in history, but you can sure as hell make or break any Great Men currently living by refusing to go along with them or supporting them.
But it's all up to chance anyways. Gandhi didn't set out to be remembered. Neither did Einstein, or MLK. They're remembered because we've decided they're important. And every year we find someone else in history we decide is important. Moby Dick was a book we called a classic years after the fact. It was rediscovered and considered a landmark beyond its time. Politicians suffer the same fate. Nobody cares about them twenty years later. Reagan is a fading exception. But LBJ? FDR? They were the Obamas of their time. Now they're just history lessons.
In that way, I don't worry about how people will remember me. I worry about leaving behind something that will be a mark that I was here. You know who else was a John Williams Thomas? My great, great grandfather. He was a blacksmith. In our field at this very moment is a water trough he made. It's too heavy to move without the tractor, and if we moved away from the farm we'd have to leave it behind because it's so big and so heavy. It's pure cast iron.
Focus on living for now and leaving something behind that you're proud of. You have control of that. How people see you? Whether people know your name? Those are fleeting.
I personally dont subscribe to the great man theory of history anyway, yes, there are individuals who are adept at piloting the surf of fortune pretty well but they are only ever going to be like anyone else in the current and wont be dictating it or determining it.
History if it has any algorithmic order which is revealing itself, and I think it highly unlikely to be the case, is not determined by great men and their beliefs or peoples memory of them but other things like the means of production, the mode of production, the mode of living and class struggles. They are all the unacknowledged authors of historical metanarrative, those things are the playwrite and so called great men are only ever going to be the bit part actors on the stage which is set for them.
What if you are nobody? I mean what's the big deal? Why should you be somebody different than others?!
Since I know my time is limited in this world, I would stop making too much drama about everything, I would stop making others' people's life miserable over what I think to be my own good, I would not become all overwhelmed because of mean things people do to me, I would stop questioning whether I fit to society standards of beauty or not, I would forgive, I would help, I would smile and laugh from all my heart, I would enjoy some adventures and I would not expect too much of this world because why would I be so lucky over all these miserable people who have too many serious issues worse than my issues?
Since your time is limited, live for your self, try to fit in your standards, try not to pass any negative energy around you, at lest if you go some day you would leave a positive energy and good things for other people, you don't necessarily be known, but you'd find an inner peace in this short life ..
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell puts forth that many "important" types are just lucky, being born when and where they were. All those Silicon Valley billionaires have similar backgrounds. The partners at top NYC law firms have similar backgrounds.
In another book I read that researchers proved that those huge Wall Street bonuses have little relationship to performance and more to luck and so the entire system is not only flawed but encourages risky behavior that hurts the companies. But they still take home huge bonus checks and do things to screw up the market in search of short term gains.
I believe some people can and do make a huge impact, but that doesn't always make them better than others.
For us, we need to find a way to be the best person we can be. There are often things we are very capable of doing, but is it the best for us individually? I struggle with this currently myself, trying to decide do I try to make the hugest impact on the world (with great personal cost) or do I just make the biggest impact on a smaller scale? Or do I say "Screw that" and just do what makes me the most money or the happiest? Tough decisions that I struggle with today, but that we all need to decide......
This is the first I've heard we all mean nothing. I guess I think being present and tangible in the here and now does mean something, and the fact that after I'm dead it may be as if I never existed is kind of irrelevant. I'm here NOW.
Personally, I don't really give a shit about making an impact on the world for when I'm gone. Who cares? I'll be dead anyway. There will be no way for me to enjoy that fame or impact.
What does worry me is nothingness. I do not want to die because I do not want there to be nothing. (Please don't tell me about heaven and hell and whatever.)
I guess I think being present and tangible in the here and now does mean something, and the fact that after I'm dead it may be as if I never existed is kind of irrelevant. I'm here NOW. 
