~Old Posts~ Memories

How would you like to be remembered when you’re gone? 

Yeah, O.K., now once you’re done spitting tea/coffee/food over your monitor in a fit of existential panic can you get around to the question at hand. 

How would you like to be remembered when you’re gone?

If you’re made to think about that question I can guarantee you ego will kick in, at least in most people, and come up with lovely flowery, if a little generic, phrases to describe you. He was a good soul. She always worked hard. The life and soul of the party. So friendly. So helpful. Always there when needed. 

I ask this question because only a couple of months ago, I nearly facilitated my own shuffling off this mortal coil. Realistically I had taken enough Co-Codamol tablets to take down a bull-elephant; and it was only in a vomit-laden fit that I told my mother, who was around at the time, that she had best call an ambulance. That’s not paraphrasing. She said “What’s brought that on?” as I was being sick and I said, cold as I could “You’d best call an ambulance.” At no point did the thought enter my head how I would be remembered after I was dead. 

And, if you drop ego. If you knock that little part of yourself that wants to be important to the side for a moment and just focus for a minute on objective, cold truth. Most of the descriptions will be so generic they could apply to anybody. Our loved ones will still hold memories but, when asked about you they will churn out the same tired, sagging, worn-out phrases that have probably been used for centuries and then…

…Well after your immediate friends and family are gone no one will remember you much at all. Indeed, you won’t be judged for any reasons of family and friend bias, or wanting to be not speak ill of the dead. You will only be judged for your documented actions. People will only remember you from any words that you put down on record, for your job history that they can dig up, from the birth and marriage records they can put together, from any action of note that makes it into any kind of recorded history. 

And, indeed, in time these records will be lost. Generations will pass. More data will trickle and flow into a vast ocean of words and numbers floating around with no form or function. No rhyme or reason. Every now and then the wind might rustle against a flowing ribbon of audio cassette at the crest of a wave of this data and the wind will whisper “Oh shit…I didn’t mean to delete that. How do I get it back?” But there’ll never be an answer. There will be very few men, women, boys, girls or other non-specific genders so as to be all-inclusive, who shall be remembered beyond a generation or two of their passing. Places in history will be reserved solely for men of stature in society and, unfortunately in this society those men are often exceptionally wealthy, and usually morally bankrupt. They will buy the bronze statues and commemorative plaques of the future just as they buy the present. And that’s a shame. Because there are often more nuggets of wisdom in the speech of an insignificant man or woman than there are pre-scripted nuggets of bullshit coming out of the mouths of these individuals. Because a poor man’s life of struggle is a more interesting life than a rich man’s having it easy. 

Take this for example. Field Marshall Douglas Haig - Also known as “The Butcher of the Somme”. A man behind many failed British World War I strategies. A man who never went ‘Over the top’ with any of the men he commanded. Douglas Haig, a man who if there is ANY justice of the supernatural, if there is a God and a means of punishment after death is burning in unholy hell right now. Douglas Haig has a statue, a prominent statue, in Whitehall in London. Nearly 1 million estimated casualties of British, or British Colony troops, most have unmarked graves, and are remembered only by their names in records; or by the odd cenotaph commending them on their bravery. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori; if I may, with much sarcasm, steal a line from a poet more deserving of this space than I; Wilfred Owen.  
The bastards who started the war. A war that killed approximately 15 million individuals; and wounded approximately 20 million. Most of them probably have prominent statues. Or fantastic documented records of their lives and various pursuits for which they are applauded. 15 million. 15 million forgotten souls and we remember the individuals who would never even consider putting their neck on the line if there were scores of poorer men happy to do it for them. 

 They called that “The War to End All Wars.” And yet give it twenty years and we’d do it all over again. Only this time, the number of deaths was quadrupled; making the number of forgotten even larger in proportion to the number of remembered. 
People worship Churchill. Claim he was one of the greatest Britons who ever lived. I never saw Churchill with a rifle in his hand on the battlefield. All he did was talk. That’s not great, that’s punditry. He’s remembered, millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions (yeah, that’s what 60 millions looks like. I’d break them up into individual 1s, one for every life, but I’d be at it for hours!) OF MEN AND WOMEN. All of whom had lives, all of whom had families, all of whom had stories and many of whom had words more inspirational, more profound and more worthy of historical documentation than ‘Sir’ Winston fucking Churchill DEAD AND FORGOTTEN. 

 So, I’ll ask again. How would you like to be remembered when you’re gone?

If you’re answer is not “I won’t be.” You’re either deluded or a member of the global elite who ruin this planet in the name of their own interests.  

Don’t get me wrong. I am a depressing person but I’m not trying to get you down here. What I’m trying to do is…I don’t know…Give you a leg up to realising the insignificance of you. Not in a bad way, but in a way that makes you realise that every life is as insignificant as the next and, actually, all we have. All we have is this. This right now. This moment. This is it. This is all we’ve got. And do we really want to spend it fussing and fighting over every penny? Do we really want to exist in servitude to an economic system that sees us, as living human individuals with the greatest powers of cosmic creation within us, as nothing but money yet to be made. The things we consider dear. Possessions and wealth and money and fame and fortune. These are all false. These are not reality. These are ideas. They were not dished out by the cosmos like the tiny particles in your body and the body of your dog or cat or even the stoic defiance of a rock. These are ideas. People have killed and died for these ideas. People struggle over these ideas on a daily basis. But they’re just ideas. You are so insignificant that this moment is the most significant thing to you right now and I don’t think you want to spend the most significant moments of your life (WHICH IS ALL OF THEM!) washing dishes, or brewing coffees in some soulless coffeehouse chains, or stuck gazing at computer screens in an office all day, or on the tills hearing that endless “boop, boop, boop” as you scan barcodes. Those are moments you’re never getting back. Gone. Erased. Forgotten already, except by you in moments of mental torture. Don’t let this system steal another one of your precious moments. You’re a human being, you are, for all current knowledge dictates, the creature on this planet with the most powerful brain and yet you’re forced to repetitive, remedial tasks to get what? Money? As I’ve said. Money is just an idea. You’re working your fingers to the bone for an idea. You’re a human being, you have ideas all the time. Is money that special an idea that it justifies working your whole life for?

Hey, I just had an idea. Fuck money. Let’s just use the resources we currently have, and the knowledge we currently have to make this world as perfect and ideal place for everybody. 
Where does money come into it? 
It doesn’t. 
Why?
Because someday I will die. Someday you will die. Someday we all will die. Someday the species may die and with it the idea of money. And if you could look down with hindsight on that poor, sorry, wiped out species. What would you rather think? 

“Yeah, sure, they’re all dead now. But God damn they made a lotta money!”
or
“Rest in peace brothers and sisters. You used what you had and did the best you could to make everybody happy.”

It’s easy when you think about it.