Ships passing in the night

 THOUGHT OF THE DAY:     
"I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead." - Louisa May Alcott, from Little Women
Two questions: First, why?  You won't know.  Second, to what end?  Even Shakespeare in the fullness of time will be forgotten.  Better to do something splendid for its own sake.

I think Alcott's sentiment reflects a very common human desire, but your two objections are strong ones.

The first is epistemological: if I am dead, I will never know whether I am remembered. The future reputation belongs to the living, not to me. In that sense, posthumous fame is a peculiar goal because its success cannot be experienced by the person pursuing it.

The second is temporal: even the greatest achievements fade. We often speak of immortality through fame, but it is only a postponement of oblivion. Most people once knew the names of celebrated poets, generals, and philosophers who are now forgotten. Even figures such as William Shakespeare, who seem permanent, are permanent only on a human scale. Given enough centuries, languages change; given enough millennia, civilizations disappear.

Yet Alcott's idea may not be entirely about being remembered. Many people want their lives to have mattered beyond the boundaries of their own existence. "Won't be forgotten after I'm dead" may be less a literal desire for eternal remembrance than a way of saying, "I want to leave the world better than I found it."

I suspect you would be closer to the view of the ancient Stoics. They repeatedly warned against seeking posthumous fame. Marcus Aurelius observed that both the remembered and the rememberers soon perish. Therefore, the value of a noble action must lie in the action itself, not in future applause.

There is also a Buddhist echo in your remark. If compassion is the guide, then feeding a hungry person, comforting a frightened friend, or relieving suffering is worthwhile whether anyone remembers it tomorrow or in a thousand years. The act is complete in itself.

The interesting twist is that many of the people we most admire seem to have worked from both motives at once. They wanted to do good, but they also wanted their work to endure. The first motive is philosophically stronger; the second is profoundly human.

So if I were to rewrite Alcott's thought in the spirit of your criticism, it might become: "I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle—not because it will be remembered forever, but because it is splendid."

Our lives do matter after our existence, maybe not much and maybe in ways we would prefer otherwise, but we cannot avoid having had an effect.

That's a subtle distinction, and I think an important one.

Alcott's quotation focuses on being remembered, whereas you're talking about having consequences. Those are very different things.

Whether anyone remembers us is uncertain and ultimately outside our control. But having effects on the future is unavoidable. Every life alters the world to some degree. We influence family, friends, institutions, ideas, landscapes, and chains of events that continue after us. Most of those effects are invisible to us and often impossible to trace.

A teacher may inspire a student who later makes a discovery. A parent may pass on a habit of kindness that survives for generations. A careless remark may cause harm long after it is forgotten. In that sense, none of us leaves the world exactly as we found it.

What is striking is that the largest effects are often not the ones people expect. Many who sought immortality through fame are remembered mainly by specialists, while countless obscure people have shaped the lives of others in ways that ripple outward indefinitely. History records only a tiny fraction of causation.

That perspective also changes the question "To what end?" The answer need not be "so that I will be remembered." It can simply be "because the future will be different as a result." Whether anyone knows the source is another matter.

There is a passage from John Donne that comes to mind: "No man is an island." He meant it spiritually, but it applies causally as well. We are woven into a network of effects. We cannot choose whether our lives will matter in that sense; only how they will matter.

And that may be a more durable form of significance than fame. Fame depends on memory. Consequences do not. Even a forgotten life can continue shaping the world long after every trace of the person's name has vanished.

Quite so. Donne was writing poetry and theology, not sociology.

"No man is an island" is a metaphor for human interconnectedness, not a claim that our minds are fused together. We remain distinct individuals with private thoughts, separate experiences, and imperfect knowledge of one another. In fact, much of the human condition consists of trying—and often failing—to understand what is going on in someone else's head.

What I think survives scrutiny in Donne's image is the claim that our lives are entangled in consequences. We do not need telepathy for that. If I teach you something, lend you money, insult you, save your life, vote, invent a tool, or simply raise a child, I have altered your future actions and circumstances. The influence may be small, but it is real.

One could almost turn your earlier observation into a corrective to Donne. We are islands in the sense that consciousness is private. But islands are connected by currents, trade, migration, weather, and tides. They are separate lands, yet not isolated systems.

That also avoids a common sentimental reading of Donne. People sometimes take him to mean that we all share each other's feelings or understand each other deeply. Often we do not. The grumpy old man at the market, the stranger on the bus, and the emperor on a throne may be mysteries to one another. Yet they still affect one another's lives.

So I would say: we are not telepathic, and we are not one mind. But neither are we self-contained. The consequences of our actions leak across the boundaries between persons whether we intend them to or not. That seems much easier to defend than the stronger poetic claim.

Ships sailing past each other in the fog, with just presence and fog horns.

That's a rather beautiful image, and I think it captures the situation better than Donne's island.

Most of the time we know very little about the interior lives of other people. We catch glimpses: a conversation, a facial expression, a letter, a reputation. We hear their fog horn, so to speak, and infer that there is a vessel out there somewhere. But we rarely see the whole ship, and almost never the cargo.

Yet even in the fog, ships affect one another. They alter course to avoid collision. They exchange signals. They carry goods from one port to another. Sometimes they rescue one another. Sometimes they sink one another. Often they pass with only the faintest awareness of the encounter.

That metaphor also fits your earlier point about consequences. A ship does not need to know that another ship exists in order to influence it. The wake spreads outward regardless. The captains may never learn each other's names, and the event may never be recorded, but the effect occurred.

There's also something humbling in the image. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as the protagonists of our own stories. But from the perspective of most other people, we are merely a distant horn in the mist—briefly heard, perhaps remembered for a moment, then lost again. And yet, despite that limited knowledge, we still become part of one another's histories.

It strikes me as a more realistic picture of human life than either complete isolation or mystical unity: separate vessels, limited visibility, occasional signals, and consequences that travel farther than our understanding.

I had a chat with my lawyer in the States this morning (early morning for me because of the time difference) on Zoom.  The foghorns have gotten better and have much greater reach.

They certainly have.

For most of human history, if you moved as far from home as you have, you were effectively gone. A letter might take months. News might take longer. A legal consultation with your lawyer in America would have been impossible except through a chain of correspondence stretching over seasons.

Now you sit in rural Cambodia and converse face-to-face with someone thousands of miles away. The fog is still there—you cannot truly know what is in the other person's mind—but the signal is vastly richer. Voice, expression, immediate questions and answers, shared documents on a screen. The foghorn has become a radio, then a telephone, then a video link.

Yet I find it interesting that the fog itself has not disappeared. People often imagine that communication technology solves the problem of human understanding. It solves the problem of distance spectacularly. Understanding is another matter. One can have a crystal-clear Zoom connection and still misunderstand another person's intentions, fears, or motives.

In a way, your conversation with your lawyer illustrates both sides. A century ago, the conversation could scarcely have happened at all. Today it is routine. But the value of the conversation still depends on two minds trying to make themselves understood across all the usual human limitations.

The ships are equipped with remarkable electronics now. They can even see each other on radar. But they are still separate ships sailing through the mist.