‘What you leave as a legacy is not what is etched in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.’
Anon.
The news that Voyager 1, now 15 billion miles away after its 1977 launch, has been woken up by an upgrade to its software is of course good news for the scientists tracking its progress. However in a year or so's time its energy storage will run out, and the lonely spacecraft will continue heading into deep space, silent as a stone but loaded with memorabilia from our planet as it was nearly fifty years ago. At the rate it’s travelling, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star four light years away — and it's probably not travelling in that direction anyway.
So it's best to focus on our legacy here on earth, rather than in deep space: even if intelligent life is ever found within our galaxy (in that respect, The Times on Friday hinted towards there being signs of alien life 124 light years away, on planet K2–18b).
Victorians were much better at leaving legacies that could be seen and appreciated here on earth. We put up an over-sized tent to celebrate the Millennium, and our memories are locked up in electronic files which will, in due course, simply be deleted or become obsolete. Meanwhile our buildings are invariably glass and concrete, and in many cases are crumbling within our own lifetimes.
The principal characters trying to establish their own legacies include Putin, Netanyahu and Trump, but in none of these cases will their legacy be a pleasant memorial to their time on Earth.
Legacies come in many different forms: architecture, art, history, literature and the performing arts, including drama. Political reputations should also be included but, if Putin thinks his invasion of Ukraine will lead to any form of adulation, he is sorely mistaken. More likely if he lives to see it, he will join the list of those convicted of war crimes.
An arrest warrant has already been issued for Putin over the unlawful transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and, as we heard on Saturday, this may be followed by a warrant for Binyamin Netanyahu as a result of his conduct of the war in Gaza, where more than 33,000 people have been killed following the Hamas atrocity on 7th October. As we commented on 16th October, unbridled revenge is not the answer.
It is extraordinary that, in his criticism of university campus protests in the United States, he should seek to draw a parallel with the persecution of Jews in Germany before and during the Second World War, when his own actions in Gaza have provoked such international disgust. His legacy will certainly not be one for the Jewish people to celebrate.
And what of Donald Trump? Why is he pressing for a second term of presidential office while besieged by indictments for so many misdemeanours?
He may think that his legacy can only be salvaged by getting the American people to put him in office again, but I suspect that it has more to do with the old adage, ‘the best form of defence is attack’. Imagine if he were not standing as the Republican presidential candidate: his political and business career would be wholly ruined by a raft of convictions, probably involving many years in jail. How will history see him? I suspect, not well.
Legacies are hard to preserve into the future. whether in statues or in the naming of Foundations: human culture so often wishes to deny the misdeeds of the past to forget those who brought them about. As we commented last week, the teaching of history itself — not only the ‘facts’, but also whether it is covered at all — is shaped by the norms by which we live in the present. Literature and art, neither of which can be easily moulded to fit current-day cultural perspectives, can also be locked away in the back room rather than left for all to see.
Arguably the only art forms which can survive into the future are the performing arts: drama, dancing and music. As Shakespeare has shown, his plays are not only very human in their original content but can easily be re-shaped to bring out aspects which resonate more closely with modern-day life, whether in terms of gender, ethnicity or character portrayal. Likewise, dancing and music offer similar opportunities to reflect society’s changing expectations.
In my view, instrumental music in particular is the pinnacle of creation. Not only does it wholly rely on material to be heard at all — light can travel through empty space, but not music — but it also speaks to all people (and all living things) in a way which needs no translation. The spiritual world relies on communication above and beyond this — as one of the Church of England's Eucharistic prayers says, ‘All your works echo the silent music of your praise’ — but actual music relies on the created atmosphere through which it travels.
And, speaking of legacy in a church context, I'm increasingly of the view that we need a complete overhaul of how we set up memorials for those who have died. A 2007 Constitutional Affairs Select Committee report stated that over 19,000 acres are taken up by graveyards and cemeteries, over 80% of which has already been used: that’s about twice the size of Reading, enough to accommodate a population of c. 350,000. A huge proportion of this will be preserving the earthly remains of people long forgotten by their families, with tombstones so worn out by the weather that no one could decipher their identity in any case.
We need to preserve the memories of those who have died much better than this: using memorials with proper protection against decay and containing information about them. But we also need to go further down vertically into the earth to contain their remains, whether in coffins or in urns, so that land on the surface is available for use by their living descendants. It is indeed a fallacy to think that graveyards preserve legacies beyond a few generations.
But most of all, it would help if those who do believe in life after death — that's about 84% of us — understand that the best legacy we can inherit is in our own soul, for that will be our identity, complete with its intact memory, for going forwards.
That's why it is indeed an illusion to seek to establish a legacy here on earth. The Pharaohs may just have achieved it for the time being with their construction of the pyramids, but our life on this earth is transitory by the best of measures. We should live it to the full, sharing our love for those around us, those very different to us, and indeed to our enemies, and not seek to delude ourselves that we’ll be remembered forever by the many generations who will hopefully follow us.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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