As a writer:
Would you rather live out the rest of your life in total obscurity, poverty, and despair, only to have the significance of your work discovered posthumously, thus rendering your relative immortality and importance in literature?
OR
Would you rather live out the rest of your life with international fame and fortune and no worries, but have your writing crumble to complete irrelevance after your death?
Why?
This discussion currently has 2 responses.
March 3, 2010
I can’t say that it black and white for me. As a non-theist, I actually find it even more difficult of a decision than if I were going to be playing volleyball with some god up in the clouds. There is no afterlife. Which means when I am dead and gone, I am dead and gone. You know, forever. Everything I have accomplished, all of my knowledge, everything I stand for, everything I want to pass on like my sickeningly liberal worldview and cynical outlook on life will be gone “like tears in the rain” (nerdy Blade Runner reference), unless I am able to leave some sort of impression on the world. Otherwise, when my friends and brothers and potential children and grandchildren all die, everything that I was and thought will be gone for eternity. Or, like Chaucer and Dante, people could be reading my shit in college lit classes 700 years in the future. Yes, I just compared myself to Chaucer and Dante.
If leaving a lasting legacy on the world is of no importance to you, of course the second option is the way to go. Slap a tuxedo on me and call me fucking Jay Gatsby. Trust me, I’m a selfish fortune and glory seeking son of a bitch, but I guess the question here can really be translated “would you rather party like a rock star while alive or leave a personal stamp on the world after death?” Granted, glory won’t do me any good when I enter the vast plane of nothingness…
I hate to get all self-righteous (no, nevermind don’t let me kid you, I love my smug self-righteousness) – but don’t get me wrong here. I still don’t have an answer to this question myself.
March 4, 2010
honestly… fame and fortune while i was alive. we are only here for a short period, we might as well make the best of it. the fact that i might become famous post-death does me no good. i might as well get the fame and fortune and with the fortune i could take care of my children and my children’s children and maybe continue my legacy in another way such as charity.
now, if there IS an afterlife where we can look back on the world, maybe i would choose number one, because it would be satisfying to see the appreciated. but if i’m dead and buried in the ground, i’ll see nothing.
selfish? maybe.