I now consider both of these monetary ways to extend self.
Legacy Beyond Death
I have suggested ways in which money is different from other valued entities in our life. For some people, money is different because it takes on an obsessive quality, much as in the case of alcohol, cigarettes, mind-altering drugs, and gambling (which is often a companion to obsession with money. I have suggested that this obsession might often relate to the way money becomes a part of our identity.
There are other ways in which money and the accumulation of wealth differ from most of the other entities we may value in life. This difference concerns a specific human motive that embraces a wide variety of human activities. This motive is the desire to somehow leave a legacy so that, in some sense, we remain “alive” after death.
We wish not only to remain in the memories and “hearts” of those we love, but also to remain “present” in specific physical objects (such as the books or paintings we have created). These objects might be money that we have “left behind” in a will, endowment, or simply a stash of cash under our mattress. This monetary legacy is quite compelling and can contribute to a particular pathology. I consider both the “normal” and abnormal desire for a monetary legacy.
In a book on deep caring and generativity, I coauthored with my colleague, Gary Quehl (Bergquist and Quehl, 2019), we proposed that people are generative and serve other people in part as a way to extend their legacy beyond the years they are alive. As noted by John Kotre (1984), generativity is “a desire to invest one’s substance on forms of life and work that will outlive the self.” (Kotre, 1984, p. 10) It is quite understandable and appropriate that Kotre identifies this wish for some form of immortality as a key motivator for generative action, given the strong existential human wish for some legacy of self that lingers after death.
In search of a legacy, there are many ways in which to be generative. Jerome Wakefield (1998, p 171) offers a partial list and considers them all to be bundled together:
“Desire to nurture the young, to be remembered, to be productive, to compose a symphony, to discover scientific truths, to develop oneself for one’s society, and to achieve just laws and institutions are not derived from the same motivational mechanisms. Generativity is to this extent a bundle of mechanisms with varying specific functions.”
It would seem that we seek immortality in a bundle of generativity motives that encourage us to be productive, create something that endures, and raise children (in many cultures, it is the raising of male children that is most important, for they carry your name). Why not add the accumulation of money to this bundle? As Ernest Becker (1975, p. 74) proposed,
“If you gain immortality by leaving behind earthly sons, why not equally gain it by leaving behind vast accumulation of other physical mementos of your image? And so the pursuit of money was also opened up [not just to kings and priests but also] to the average man; gold became the new immortality symbol.”
