Legacy
*Blows dust everywhere*
*Gets dust everywhere*
Oh, damn it all to hell.
I’ve done it again, haven't I? I’ve just nearly forgotten all about your lovely, if somewhat grotesquely oblong, faces.
Hmm?
No-no, I suppose I don't mean that. I’m just grumpy with myself as the more civilized versions of us would say. You’re all still so very… bonny.
*Adjusts tie*
*Winks sinisterly*
*Dust-induced cough fit*
Let me explain.
Because you see the truth is, I’ve been caught up in a web. Much like a certain hobbit I’m well aware precisely 100% of you kindred spirits know. Go us.
So a rather viscous web indeed, one meticulously dangled by those establishments dedicated to the rather redundant and quite possibly impossible task of enlightening me and my soul. A web I’m sure many of you have often found yourselves lewdly thrashing about in as well.
I refer of course… to exams.
*Looks to calendar*
*Sharpens sword*
*…“They are here.”*
Much like a fish out of water, I’ve come to see there’s few things for the reasonable among us to do but flail about violently in the library, and cry out in desperation as others look onwards in both distressed concern and overwhelming fear.
…and I may or may not now owe the library a substantial amount in damages.
How was I supposed to know the carpets were flammable, hmm?
You see, it’s all part of a diabolical and unrelenting cycle, much like this whole one-shot at ‘life’ thing I’ve still to really wrap my own mind around.
“You don't understand” they said, “that’s a real bear” they said.
Well, who hasn't stop laughing?
…Probably not Barry the Bear.
Sorry Barry.
Anyway, yes, there was at least some new creative up in the midst of my blog-i-cal absence (is this a word? Am I a genius?)
But did you notice that?
Hmm?
Do you even look at all my hard work anymore?
…
I’ll end you all.
Kidding.
Kidding?
Yes.
Fact is, the worst is past, as exams are over, and the bears are loose. Nothing we can do now.
You may have guessed I was also wildly inappropriately drunk at the local zoo at some point in time.
But! Several maulings later, and here we are at last my friends!
Eeek.
Sorry for that, probably just a byproduct of all the un-dealt with post-exam bitterness. It’ll fade. One way or another, it’ll fade.
*Dances fiendishly*
Anyhoo, on to bigger and better things now I suppose. I want this post today to be about something ‘big’ again, because I quite enjoy thinking like that and from the few I’ve done before, I know you folks do as well. So, to get some overtime for the little people that pull leavers and press buttons in a our brains (I just assume that’s how it really works), I thought we’d begin with this affably intriguing question:
Who will tell our story?
Now I suppose there’s a lot to a question like that. Lots to make our mind-minions sweat over. For me at least, the first thing to come to mind though was this concept of ‘the victors’ we like to talk about. History is written by them apparently. Them, or the squirrels.
Probably the victors though.
Sure our history was written more often by those that won, but since we’re all so devilishly curious, let’s just imagine what happens when we follow that chain all the way until it’s end. When perhaps eventually there is only a single ‘victor’ left. Their probably not really going to be victors in the sense that they’re winning, but they’re still alive anyway. I don't usually consider myself a very morbid person, but try to imagine a not so unimaginable future in which there really aren’t many of us left.
At that point, let’s assume rebuilding or healing is out of the picture (or the squirrels have organized), and we’ve turned instead to legacy. It’s an odd thought, but one that’s been addressed more and more often in some of today’s communities.
What will humanity’s legacy be?
Eventually, one way or another, we’re either going to have one, or the absence of one. I can’t picture any other options, though that doesn't mean they don't exist.
It could just be me, but I don't quite like the idea of just being that ‘spindly species’ from the MilkyWay that couldn't stop fighting long enough to survive more than a few millennia. I, like I imagine many storytellers at heart out there, want the best of us to be remembered, in whatever capacity that may look like.
I’d rather we’d be known for Shakespeare than reality TV.
In 1977 the launch of the Voyager probes ensured for the first time some part of humanity’s story left Earth never to return, as ominous as that sounds. Attached to the side of both spacecraft (probably using our crowning achievement as a species: duct tape) was a golden record, and on that record, one extraterrestrial being could find a few snippets of what we were like. Among 113 others, it included a photograph of people drinking and eating ice-cream, as well as a woman posing in a supermarket with the food we ate, and the planet Jupiter marked with it’s diameter.
In terms of who and what we’ve managed to accomplish, I feel like maybe that’s not the best we can do, but hey at least it’s there, right? And in about 40,000 years Voyager one will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445, thus creating the first human interstellar version of snail-mail. So should we fail to come up with anything better, it’s possible at least all our wild and exciting endeavours from the supermarkets will be remembered.
I mean, Bach is also on there, among some other well deserved acts of humanity, but there’s only so much a 1970’s record can hold. Hardly enough to be our sole legacy I think, unless we really want to be known as that one lanky species that invented disco.
An interesting thing about legacies though is that they are often learning points for those that come later. It’s an admittedly far-stretched romantic idea, but perhaps the final act of humanity, should it ever come to that, is to do something too many of us now love to do.
Offer advice.
We tell whoever finds our remnants that this didn't work because we did this (I’m telling you it’ll be the squirrels though, just watch). Essentially saying: save yourself from making the same mistake.
And in that, isn't there an almost poetic justice? Our final curtain drawn only after trying to offer some final guidance. And in that potential influence, maybe letting us live on in a way?
I’ll give you it’s a rather sci-fi theory, but doesn't it make you feel a little calmer in some sense? I know there’s a hubris in thinking that a species with the capabilities to catch and read our probes would have anything left to learn from the likes of mankind, but who knows? There is unarguably a strange comfort in knowing we won’t necessarily be forgotten forever.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s something out there willing to write down and tell the tales of the beings of Earth.
But who knows? If in ten thousand years we’re still here, perhaps we’ll be that species remembering and sharing the tales of others. I like to think we owe it to anything we find to ensure they’re remembered in some capacity or other. Stories are important.
So! Just a friendly thought to leave you with this week: When it’s all said and done, who will tell our story? Or better yet, who's story will we get to tell?
Stay classy crazies.
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