Consider the following comments on legacy.
A generation that strips the future for its own comfort calls the wreckage a legacy.
We build monuments to the dead so that we can ignore the living who needed the money.
The desire to be remembered has founded more libraries and more wars than any other.
We are the heirs of what was saved and the debtors of what was spent.
A society that worships legacy will always serve the ambitions of the dead over the needs of the unborn.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that the wish to leave a legacy is a powerful civic force that can build the future or merely flatter the powerful, depending on whom it is meant to serve. Open by acknowledging the good it does, that thinking beyond our own lifespan funds institutions, protects environments and binds one generation to the next. Then complicate it: legacy is also vanity wearing the mask of duty, since monuments, dynasties and named endowments can serve the giver's name more than any living need. A strong third move distinguishes a legacy of works, which others inherit and use, from a legacy of consequences, the debts and damage we leave whether we mean to or not. Caution: resist the cynical reduction that all legacy is ego, which would dismiss the genuine and unglamorous sacrifices people make for descendants they will never meet.