OTOH, people remember (in a distorted way, to various degrees, highly dependent on culture)
Genghis Khan
Attila the Hun
Jesus Christ
Buddha
Moses
A few other prophets
Archimedes
Gaius Julius Caesar
Genghis Khan
Attila the Hun
Jesus Christ
Buddha
Moses
A few other prophets
Archimedes
Gaius Julius Caesar
We know some ancient people's names. We can imagine some depiction of them. We may even know what they supposedly did. How much of it is accurate at this point?
Can the average person, off the top of their head, explain who Attila the Hun was, what he did, and why it mattered with any degree of accuracy?
Even the VERY rare few who are remembered for 1000s of years are remembered more as myths than as the people they were and what they accomplished.
As an example, here's an interesting letter I ran into of him sending a letter to a captain telling him to sell a negro he included with the letter as a slave and fetch him certain goods in return: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/washington-the-writings-o...
Moses probably was not a real historical person, or at least there is a lot of doubt.
Jesus probably was a historical person, but even the rational faithful obviously don't consider the Bible necessarily to be a clear historical narrative.
We know quite a lot about the various Emperors of Rome, and quite a lot about the development of Roman history.
If you actually dig into the history of Rome, it's remarkable how so many of the issues we face today already existed back then, and how much they were able to achieve without Enlightenment principles.
Given how much we depend on the past, how we really are just extensions of it, I find it hard to agree with the premise of the article. Though it's always good to read contrarian ideas, and I do think there is a hint of Eastern wisdom in it as well, to be considered.
In a thousand years, we'll have the same question: name one person from the 21st century. Who will it be? Which of the 15-20 American presidents will even be visible? Who'll be the McKinley and who'll be the Lincoln?
I expect for the 20th century it'll be Hitler or Einstein or Churchill or MLK or someone like that. Surely not Clark Gable or Elvis!
How about games? Go is 2500 years old at this point and still going strong. Sure we don't remember the name of the person who first put it out there, but there wasn't a desire to record that back then. Shigeru Miyamoto will be tied to Mario for a long, long time. Or Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse and theme parks. They might not be household names in a thousand years, but there will be historians and documentaries about them (and hopefully their works will be properly archived so people wanting to be educated on the history of film or games can still enjoy them).
If something or someone leaves enough of an impression on society, they can be remembered for thousands of years, and still be relevant to people in those fields (and even outside of those fields). It's not guaranteed to be remembered, or for the people who were involved with it to be remembered specifically, but the result can be.
And even if it's not remembered by the public at large, there are people out there who will find value in remembering and reminding people about these things.