Legacy (glossary entry)

The legacy of an individual, and by extension of teams/groups, organisations, and entire generations of people, is the contribution they have made to others. This contribution

may be good or bad, glorified or vilified, or both (i.e. be a subject of controversy)

may be manifested in the present conditions and attributes of specific individuals, and therefore subject to disappearing when those individuals change or leave, or

may be part of the culture that is passed on to those who come later, and therefore more enduring than those who received the "legacy" directly.

Sustainable human culture is the most expansive form of legacy, in that it encompasses all of humanity and forms of culture.

Legacy in the sense of perpetuated culture may be taught, or learned, or both; and because it involves the transmission from past to present and from present to future, it is naturally a big part of MCV04 Study and Grow From Your History.

Honoring the Dead

In a memorial ritual, conducted after a person dies, it is common for people to tell each other about things about the passed person. A primary benefit of this is to carry on that person's contribution, and thereby help to sustain their contribution as a legacy. As such, the memorial ritual is part of the process by which communities incorporate the specific and personal contributions of a person into the ensuring culture of that community.

A Misattributed Quote

The following is derived from Hugh Gordon Miller¹ (and incorrectly credited to Abraham Lincoln):

Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.

In place of nation we may generalise to any community, society, etc. of people, and use the word culture to express that which the members of that particular grouping have in common i.e. that which would endure as their collective legacy; and in place of its heroes we should generalise to any admired person(s) regardless of an agreed-upon "hero" label, by substituting the words those it has lost. The original essay asserts that the people who do not so honor their lost members do not deserve to persist, and will not persist, but the frequently quoted alteration shown here removes the "deserve" part and simply states that such a culture will die out. In other words, we have the assertion that memorialising the dead is an essential part of preserving human culture.

Notes

1 : Misattributed "not long endure" quote:

The original quote is from essayist Hugh Gordon Miller, and appears on page 580 (i.e. p. 92 of the 1911 section) in this compilation of annual reports of the New York State Sons of the Revolution:

"[...] the nation which fails to honor its heroes, the memory of its heroes, whether those heroes be living or dead, does not deserve to live, and it will not live, and so it came to pass that in 1909 [...] millions of people [in America] were singing the praises of Abraham Lincoln." - Hugh Gordon Miller, 22^nd February 1911

This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2025 May 06.

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