Live to leave a legacy.
I did not know Max Chiswick; in fact, I had never even heard of him before clicking on a link I saw online and reading the eulogies his friends and community had written. They were beautifully written, inspirational at least and life-changing at most. They spoke highly of his drive, achievements, quirks, and mannerisms, among many other things.
Some excerpts from Suzy Weiss' My Friend Max:
I was in the presence of a mind that was efficient and smooth, expansive in its thinking, genius in its way, and deeply special.
Having adventure was also of high-value. When Covid-19 hit, he went to the Central African Republic to seek out elephants, another one of his weird, intense interests. He once walked 20 miles in one day to the town of Tzfat, Israel, not far from the Sea of Galilee, to eat unlimited schnitzel before a religious fast. He rode his bike from Cairo to Cape Town. And in the days before he died, last week, he’d hiked the length of Israel. He’d been travelling for weeks—to Singapore, Senegal, San Francisco, Miami—but he was planning to come back to New York this past weekend.
And an excerpts from Ross Rheingans-Yoo's When each proud fighter brags:
He was earnest and optimistic—unpretentious and generous—passionate and kind. He believed that we could just build things if we wanted to, and that it didn’t need to be more complicated than that. I find it easy to get wrapped up in anxieties and doubts and paralysis when starting a new project, but when Max went first to break the ice, he just…started doing things. Programming. Organizing. Planning. He wrote first drafts, plans, and prototypes like breathing.
Even faster than he started things, he collected inspirations and ideas. He wanted to write “Bet Mitzvah, a set of materials that introduce betting and related concepts and the value that they can impart, especially as you become an adult.” He wanted to fix certain shortcomings in the Pluribus paper(the first AI to beat serious human players at multiplayer poker), and wanted to write up his arguments and re-analysis. He wanted to make a site to track the quality of hotels’ breakfast eggs. He wanted to ride a bicycle from LA to NYC eating supermarket rotisserie chicken every day, and made a site for tracking what Chabad houses he wanted to visit in the future (or for the countries you’ve visited, for the goyim among us).
And an excerpt from Old Jewish Men's BHIF: Old Jewish Men loses a friend...:
He was, somehow, in every country in the world while also in transit, chatting with you from 36,000 feet in the air. At one moment he was teaching probability and risk assessment to kids in Senegal, the next cruising a comped buffet in Vegas while also magically seeing you tomorrow for Shabbos dinner in Crown Heights. The lifestyle left friends confused yet impressed by his ability to juggle time zones. Somehow Chiswick always managed to be where you needed him. He lived everywhere and nowhere. But he wasn’t a ghost. He was the opposite: a constant presence in the lives of those he loved and who loved him. He could sleep on anything, and even preferred couches and floors. He talked a lot about airline travel, about points and how to spend your way into what he called “premium status.” It was in a way a joke, but also, a way of life.
While eulogies should be consistent in descriptions across writers, few ever reach this level of authentic praise, instead choosing to cite achievements over of personal and communal impact (which are arguably two different things).
Now go read each piece in full and tell me it doesn't fill you with a deep desire to go out and live as Max did.
In my culture, eulogies are only written for great people or great friends. Obituaries—very matter-of-fact biographies with little to no praise—are much more common. I suspect this is because there are few great people out there because if there were people would make more of an effort to eulogize them (did someone say revealed preferences?). (This focuses on purely optional praise and excludes obligatory services where everyone must mourn, e.g., the pope, a president, etc.)
From this, it can be argued that a person's value can be measured by the total value of their posthumous praise, calculated by the following with varying weights:
A person with lots of small praise was probably popular but not a great person. A person with small amounts of high praise was probably a great person to the few they impacted. A "great" (in the literal sense of the word) person would have significant numbers and height of praise.
That I can't find anything close to Max's eulogical turnout speaks to both him as a person and the small number of people like him that have died.
We are driven by status and accomplishments, both of which largely contribute to the legacy we leave behind. And despite it seeming (being?) futile to leave a legacy after death, we still push for it.
Celebrating "famous" people like this for their contributions is net good for the world because others will see it and want to be revered in the same way. For the guy who wants to be well-known and leave his mark, he'll know this is one path while also getting the general direction. For the guy who doesn't realize he wants to be well-known and discovers it by reading a eulogy, he also uncovers the path and direction. They are rewarded with fame and fortune upon death and we are rewarded with the fruits of their labor that ensured the riches.
If people want to leave a legacy, we should keep the gate locked with the key being good deeds. Once they get the key and open the gate, may the eulogies flow like the good that once came out of them (or preferably, is still coming out of them!).
And yet, we still fail to publicly praise and cherish people while they're still alive, probably out of a combo of awkwardness (it's much weirder to say things like this to people while they're still alive) and ignorance ("how much good would giving praise do?"), leading us to only do it after they die. These people should be lifted up as community beacons to emulate in hopes that others follow suit. Can you imagine a world with 10, 100, 1000x the number of Maxes running about?
Take this opportunity to either publicly or privately praise the people who come to mind.