But if all life in the story were to ended the next day, would the respective governments continue to censor and repress? If life were to end tomorrow, would we bother to write anything beautiful and lasting, if we thought posterity to be pointless? If you were a cancer researcher, you might be less motivated to continue your work. It would be unlikely, after all, that a cure would be found in your lifetime, and even it were, how much good would it do in the time remaining?
Likewise if you were an engineer working to improve the seismic safety of bridges, or an activist trying to reform our political or social institutions or a carpenter who cared about building things to last. What difference would these endeavors make, if the destruction of the human race was imminent?
If you were a novelist or playwright or composer, you might see little point in continuing to write or compose, since these creative activities are often undertaken with an imagined future audience or legacy in mind.
And faced with the knowledge that humanity would cease to exist soon after your death, would you still be motivated to have children? Maybe not. Time becomes meaningless when we stop living for the future — every moment we live up till the present is the result of time past, and we can control the path which the present will travel towards the future.
This system pervades all aspects of our life: literature, science, relationships, etc. We are able to create and write things because we expect people in the future will at some point see it, and we are inspired by things that have come before us. But what comes before us is easily changed by those who gets to write the history books. Why bother to control the past if the future is not worth changing?
Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Essential Meaning of posterity. A record of the events was preserved for posterity. Full Definition of posterity. Synonyms for posterity Synonyms fruit , get , issue , offspring , progeny , seed , spawn Visit the Thesaurus for More. Examples of posterity in a Sentence Her broad aim is to reconcile the image of Johnson—the clubbable man, loved by posterity as well as by his contemporaries—and the man racked by disease and tormented by his fear of madness.
If anything, they were held in trust. In trust. Yes, for all of posterity , beginning with Merry and her kids. The truth about what happened will be known to posterity. First Known Use of posterity 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1. Learn More About posterity. Under the direction of my colleague Adam Kissel, The Philanthropy Roundtable is building a network of funders who seek to expand giving to successful civic-education initiatives and, where there are gaps, to launch new ones.
Please contact him at akissel philanthropyroundtable. Contact Us Search. The Roundtable. Philanthropy Magazine. The Almanac. Donor Intent. To Ourselves and Our Posterity.
Adam Meyerson Spring Their support includes: Innovations in curriculum , such as the new electronic Advanced Placement U. The Hewlett, MacArthur, and McCormick Foundations and the Carnegie Corporation are among the funders of iCivics, which uses interactive online games to engage students in Constitutional education. High-quality debate about our core documents. The John Templeton Foundation funded the National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution, where scholars from the conservative Federalist Society and the progressive American Constitution Society analyze where they agree and disagree in their interpretation of every Constitutional clause.
High-level seminars for high-school history, civics, and social-studies teachers, for instance through the Gilder-Lehrman Institute and the Ashbrook Center.
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