Impact is everything, anymore. Whenever I think about what a good legacy is, or might be, I'm always stymied by the fact that nearly every figure in America's pantheon has been a victim of the cultural iconoclasm our society is undertaking. Whatever else they may have done, they're above all else, now racists.

In ten years, given the rate of social change, everything I do today will likely be considered outmoded, backwards and probably contemptible.

In our increasingly atheistic society, even if I have a negative impact on history, I will likely be unpunished.

If I wanted to make myself a legacy, and had suicidal tendencies, the shortest path into the history books is clearly a destructive one.

Well yes; you are correct. But, it's also meaningless. When I was 19, my girlfriend's 8-year-old brother killed himself on Father's day to get back at his dad. Almost all kids believe in some fairy tale about the afterlife, almost glamorizing it. So far, we have no evidence of anything like this. You can't be famous after you're dead because you don't exist at all. You'll never see the newspaper article, and frankly the world as you experience and believe doesn't exist outside of your head anyway. Nobody actually cares about you as you know yourself. If they ever do hear your name, it will be something else in their mind. The real you is at best somebody else's worm dirt. That thing you did is now just something that happened to somebody else. You're not even relevant anymore. When I was in school, it seemed like the whole point of life was to torture future kids with the requirement to learn your name. And yes, that is exactly why people take on a destructive path when generative significance seems impossible. It's easy. But it gets you nothing. I don't think it's so much atheism as much as dark nihilism. If you worshipped, above all, your own life, not your own pleasure or comfort, but life itself, the sanctity and freedom of your own mind, then you would not care about fame or the famous.

Cue Kevin Tillman: "He's not with god; he's ..."

At any scale, or with any perspective, all things become meaningless. You live, you die, others do the same.

Yet that rarely stops anyone from pursuing purpose or meaning, and for the ambitious, a legacy of any sort is the closest they'll ever be to reaching immortality, or relevance beyond their immediate sphere of influence. If you're purposeless, why shouldn't your decisions echo throughout history, and make you moderately less so on a less cosmic scale?

Nihilism is an outgrowth of atheistic convictions, when adopted without a supplemental normative framemework that prescribes and justifies a system of values, or when adopted by the depressed or otherwise mentally ailing.

I've seen no coherent argument that life should be considered sacred in the face of a universe devoid of meaning or purpose, whether one's own or that of others. The concept is hardly a cure for nihilism. Offering it as a more legitimate alternative simply because it's more comfortable or reassuring to many people occupying a nihilistic space.

I can't argue against this. Okay, another story: long ago I was in the Air Force, and I sat at lunch with a guy that was having his last meal before being shipped off to military prison, several years for admitting to taking LSD at a party after the fact. He told me he was looking forward to it, quiet time alone with his thoughts. Somebody very close to me called me two weeks ago and told me they didn't want to live anymore, and I told them that story, and they told me that it put things in perspective for them, and they were willing to keep going with that in mind. I've been pretty low. I've had a near-death experience. I can't rationalize the value of life versus the inevitability of death. But it just seems so pervasive in everybody that has come close.

I should also mention that this guy, with everything taken from him, made to feel completely insignificant, was able to save maybe a few lives, and he'll never know about it.