I might have to become a fan of the boxer, Mike Tyson. He has an ugly history, and now he’s going to be in a match with that jumped-up YouTube influencer, Jake Paul (it’s a fake match, with shortened rounds and padded gloves, but the prize money is real, tens of millions of dollars), and none of that is worthy of respect, but he had an interview with a young kid who asked him what his legacy would be. It sure won’t be boxing with Jake Paul, but this answer was excellent.
I don’t know. I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy.’ I just think that’s another word for ego. Legacy … means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through.
…
I’m going to die, and it’s going to be over. Who cares about legacy after that? What a big ego. So I’m going to die — I want people to think that I’m this, I’m great? No, we’re nothing. We are dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.Can you really imagine somebody saying, ‘I want my legacy to be this or that’? You’re dead. You really want them to think about you? What’s the audacity to think, ‘I want people to think about me when I’m gone’? Who the fuck cares about me when I’m gone? My kids, maybe, my grandkids. But who the fuck cares.
That is such a strong, honest reply, and I love it. It’s an anti-narcissist answer, and I wish more people would share it. I don’t know if Tyson is an atheist, but that kind of stoicism/nihilism is the kind of atheism I favor.
The interviewer was very good at her job, too.
Well, that recontextualizes the old NES game in my brain.
Apparently he’s a muslim.
“The Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.”
To the extent that I’m willing to entertain the idea of an afterlife, I don’t really, I often think of the idea that you have to wait in an area until that last person who knows who you were utters your name, then your released. I want to do good things, but spend as little time in that room as possible.
Yes!
We are all nothing but piss ants in time.