As I posted to someone below you, I am married and have three kids. I have also lost a lot of my friends - I am an Iraq war veteran and was in the Air Force from 2003 until last Feb.

All of that has led me to my conclusion because I see what is left after these people have gone away - and largely it's...nothing. Once their friends and family die, their "legacy" dies too, there is nothing lasting beyond those narrow impacts. So I feel like it's almost the easy way to go to focus on those around you and those relationships because they give the most immediate and personally impactful response - but they forgo a much wider and more grand legacy that could extend centuries.

The urge to have a legacy is a manifestation of the fear of death, and is primarily an exercise of ego. It does not have to overtake one's life.

If you were born into a very tough situation in a war torn or third world country, you'd do what you needed to with what was given to you. While we do have a lot of material wealth and might have more free time, we still face the same great equalizer: death. As do our civilizations and our planet (and likely us, way before that). Given the constraints, you can simply "try your best". Living without regrets might be a job to one person, a 90 hour startup to another, traveling and learning to others. Whatever your belief is, following it is the best that you could do. Ultimately you have to answer to yourself & be able to live with yourself. Personally, living selfishly, while it maximizes certain things simply goes against my core beliefs. I don't necessarily know that living less selfishly is necessarily better. But for me, it is. Your beliefs, may defy logic, and may not necessarily maximize legacy, wealth or whatever, but in having acted you will have done your best given the situation to be able to live with yourself, which is all you can ask of yourself.

If you have to be less rational to accept an answer, doesn't that imply that the answer is wrong?

Oh, wait, everyone with a scientific turn-of-mind has already been labelled a "robot". Beep boop, then /s.

Why do people want to make a lasting change? Purely for intrinsic reasons? Or is there some hidden assumption like for example that it will make them happy in their later years?

Yet you seemed to want to draw a distinction between happiness and a lasting impact. Though the distinction was perhaps just with the family/local impact.

> I also don't think there's some kind of "altruism" that isn't ultimately just another way of getting happiness - maybe a more intellectual one, out of the feeling of doing something one considers morally good.

Right, but a family-related happiness is less because it's just a result of chemicals (oxycotine?) that are related to survival, a sort of failure mode? You said yourself that it is less fundamental. What is fundamental? And why is your derivation of happiness higher than those who go by the supposed more base instincts of focusing on their family? Because the hormonal causes are harder to pin down and analyse? So what? Something more complex and harder to describe is better?

If you feel happy, I think the distinction of why is unimportant.

The world I see does indeed need to improve a bit, on all possible levels. If you strive to improve mankind as a whole, or at least big parts of it, please go ahead and do your best. Just don't neglect that personal, "local" aspect as so many do these days (ie crappy parents raising even crappier kids). This world also needs happy, balanced and positive people, not only depressed, exhausted overachievers (or overaimers) I see so often around me.

I tend to focus locally (friends, family, coworkers), and let the effects seep wider if possible, on their own. One example - 2 weekends ago, I took my girlfriend to Mont Blanc with guide, on skis, and on top, after gruelling march on skis, I surprised her proposed marriage. The reactions from people around, but also total internet strangers were overwhelming, quite a few wrote that in these (for them) depressing days, seeing this gave them positive energy and hope (for life, relationships, people around etc.).

Did I change the world with it? Of course not, I am not the first nor the last guy that did it. Does this have some, maybe minor but positive impact on other people? Definitely yes. Enough drops in the pond can also have an effect.

Impact exists with our without legacy. The network effect of your friends' lives may be outwardly invisible, but the impact of their work, on the lives of anyone they lived near and around, had fun near and around, served near and around, worked near our around... is quite vast.

You don't have to be Abe Lincoln or John Rockefeller to have lived a meaningful life.

For one Lincoln was around that time, so was a host of others that are famous.

Just remember that everybody's legacy is fleeting. In a generation, Steve Jobs will probably be remembered like the Duesenberg brothers.

For example Leo Szilard I feel had a much broader and deeper impact on the world than did Einstein, but with significantly less fame. Same with Woz vs Jobs etc...

For there will come a day when even Jesus, Shakespeare, and Newton will be forgotten. Eventually, we will all be forgotten.

  I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

By which math? 90% of the world doesn't know 90% of the history and doesn't care to know. The same history that includes big names of their era. Steve Jobs may be held up as an Ozymandias of our day, but will he be remembered for any of his "accomplishments" a thousand years from know? I doubt it. Why? How many Steve Jobs does 90% of our planet remember from 1000 years ago? One, two, ten, Zero? So is it about a named legacy or an anonymous one? If you are talking about impact. Sure. How about your impact on those whose actions affect your life the most? Whose choices influence your decisions about your life? Why does the focus have to be binary? Either, or?

I get strong feelings of love and need for relationships, but I sometimes feel they're more of an hormonal failure mode than anything fundamental. I want to love and be loved, and be the best I can be for those close to me, but I don't feel that those in my immediate vicinity are somehow morally more important than all those random people I don't know.

I guess there might be no good answer, but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you. Maybe it's a common sentiment, but there are people who genuinely don't feel that way.

Apart from the genetics thing, part of it is that most people are not going to be involved in impactful work. They do bullshit jobs and fret over it way too much than they really should. In turn, they lose out on quality family time and take people close to them for granted. So some of the comments about 'deathbed regrets' is actually valid for such people. If they were really fretting about solving cancer, aids or any thing that would change millions of lives, the apparent wisdom would immediately make less sense.

"firsts" aren't really such a big deal.

1. There are many many "firsts". 2. Each one isn't really a "first", because so much of what we do is gradual, that's arbitary where you draw the line of accomplishment.