Leaving a legacy, financial and otherwise

Memes were a thing in biology before they became a thing online.

I had a work project that sent me down some rabbit holes, and one involved a wealth manager who recommends overpriced insurance products to fund trusts. This person suggests that prospective customers imagine how grateful a future great-grandchild will be for the money. And that got me thinking about legacies in general.

We are all the product of generations of ancestors, many of whom survived hardships that are unthinkable to the average 21^st century North American. Many of us don’t have to go back too many generations to find ancestors who survived famine, genocide, or enslavement.

I’m reading Somerset Maughn’s book Of Human Bondage, and the main character is affected by a club foot. This is a common birth defect, but you might not know it because it’s now easy to treat, so you rarely see it now unless you know a baby undergoing treatment. It would no longer define a literary character. Even modern life is sometimes very hard, but we have antibiotics, robot vacuum cleaners, and phones that summon machines that take us anywhere we want to go.

I know who my great-grandparents were. They were Roman Catholics born in the north of Ireland, the north of England, and Pennsylvania. I imagine that they would be proud of the success of their great-grandchildren: authors, business owners, military officers, teachers, and parents of excellent human beings. They are people who contribute to their families and communities. But I also imagine that my great-grandparents would be dismayed that many of these great-grandchildren do not go to church, and that one who does (me) joined up with the Episcopalians: the U.S. branch of the Church of England.

From the standpoint of biology, my great-grandparents succeeded because their genes continue into future generations. From a more philosophical standpoint, they succeeded because they survived. All of us are here because our ancestors survived the traumas and difficulty of their worlds in order to reproduce and raise a new generation. We also have different ideas and cultural norms handed down from them, the original sense of memes.

I’m also not sure that worrying about the wealth of future generations is sound. Every day, gossip sites tell us how miserable the British Royal Family is despite having great wealth, fancy titles, and supreme social status. At least a few of them might have been better off if they had to deal with good old middle class striving. Looking at you, Prince Andrew!

Who knows if I will have great-grandchildren and if so, what kind of world they will face. Right now, people across the globe are dealing with famine, genocide, and enslavement while we are trying to figure out what to have for supper and what to wear to work tomorrow. I want to think that the world will be better in the future, that people will continue learning from their mistakes and try to make things better for those who come after them, but I know that’s naive.

The new year is just over a week old, and I’ve already had a few surprises. Man plans and God laughs, right? And if we can’t even control what happens tomorrow, why do we think we can control what future generations think of us?

What do you think? What would your great-grandparents think about you?