Go out there. Make your mark! Change the World! You can do it.
There is a bit of an obsession with legacy. Leaving some mark behind that proves you were here. That you did something in the world. This can be quite inspiring, but it can be a bad thing too.
Legacies can occur that are both good an bad.
This can be especially bad in politicians, presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, etc when they are obsessed with legacy. They can work hard to implement some change and that change is their legacy.
Well what if that change ends up being bad?
Very commonly if something is bad and they consider it their legacy they will be more concerned with preserving their legacy than the welfare of the people it impacts. "He's attacking my legacy!!!!"
In fact, when it comes to governments and the legacies of "politicians" there are a ton of BAD legacies. How often are they willing to reverse anything, admit it was wrong, and try something different? From what I've seen... not very often.
Yet, that is not the only place this happens. That is just one of the most obvious and easiest to point out.
This insidious need to leave a legacy can impact very small places too and over time grow into a large impact. Again, often not good.
Now people who create music, art, and other physical things have perhaps the easiest time when it comes to legacy. Though they can often be forgotten in time their works are not as insidious as those purely ideological or bureaucratic in nature.
I've often looked at some very seemingly DUMB changes made in places where no change appeared to be necessary and thought that "Hmmmm... Looks like someone was obsessed with their legacy."
Why do I bring this up? The need for legacy can have some profound impacts and can often be used to attempt to rewrite or ignore history.
One recent example that began in the 1950s has been on my mind lately. There are only TWO GENDERS. This has been the case going way back into the antiquities. Male, Female. Now days if you say that people will sometimes get very offended and tell you that you are "so misinformed and clearly have not done your research" which I've had to reply that "yes, I have and I've found the gender studies from the 1950s where some researchers decided to REPURPOSE/HIJACK the term Gender and redefine it." I've also had to state that I do not recognize the authority of these researchers to just rewrite history and redefine words because they want to. I'd be completely fine with them creating a new word. Yet the fact these researchers decided there are more than two genders beginning in the 1950s does not grant them the authority to rewrite history, and the definitions and expect it to be accepted.
Does this mean I don't believe there are Men who are attracted to other Men, Women to other Women, or Men that identify more with women than they do men, etc? No it doesn't mean that at all.
These concepts existed BEFORE 1950. We could talk about them just fine without redefining gender.
If you have a penis and a Y Chromosome then you are a male.
If you have a vagina then you are a female.
There are rare cases such as a hermaphrodite or in the insect world neuters/drones.
Yet when it comes to GENDER studies. What you identify as does not change your anatomy and it does not change the hormones your body produces and potential medical considerations that come with your DNA.
I added this video AFTER I had written my post as it seems relevant
That did not suddenly alter after the 1950s no matter how arrogant the researchers in that study were and how much they may have wanted their legacy to be the redefining of a word with a distinct meaning that had existed for thousands of years. From the word Genus.
This is a danger I noticed decades ago when interacting with people on college campuses quite a bit. I was popular with some intellectual crowds at the time as I was their gateway to the internet, the one who taught them how to use it, etc. (before web pages)
Many of these were psychology or sociology majors. I noticed that most of the psychology majors had some pretty disturbed personalities. Though not all. I often wondered if that was part of the attraction for them.
Then years later I'd watch more and more parenting rules coming from psychologists and social workers and it wouldn't seem like children were doing better and becoming more well behaved more respectful or anything of that nature. In fact, it seemed to be going very much in the opposite direction.
I've often hypothesized that a lot of this stems from people needing to leave a legacy and thus perhaps making large changes where the change was not needed, or was not carefully studied or considered for long term impact. It was quick, it was easy, and they could virtue signal they had a legacy.
Now the term Safe Spaces, and Micro Aggressions, and even Virtue Signalling are all products of this as well. I will tell you I am not a fan of those labels and what they imply with the exception of Virtue Signalling. I believe Virtue Signalling does describe a behavior fairly well. It's been around forever as a behavior. Perhaps before this we would have viewed it as preening, stroking the ego, perhaps a bit of conceit. I'm not sure, I just know those labels did not exist until fairly recent.
Micro-Aggressions is I believe potentially the worst of those. It limits information, and it makes minds static rather than dynamic. It is great for indoctrination if you can set some ideas, and then teach them that term so their ideas will never be assailable from that point on as any challenge can be viewed as a micro-aggression. Essentially, it is a handy tool of creating new religions and or cult like behaviors.
If I am aggressive it will be physical and overt. It won't be some word or phrase that is viewed as though I stabbed you with a knife simply due to it challenging your world view. That's just blind indoctrination and closed minded. Great if you are a zealot. Not so great if you are a rational, free thinking person.