Projected or perceived legacy after passing is correlated with level of consumption while alive.
Always has and always will be. Roman Emperors, Kings etc. they got to be on coins and have monuments erected after them after their death, AND at the same time they were the person with the most conspicous consumption in the whole country while still alive.
Case in point: Queen Elizabeth II.
It's like Bud Fox said in the movie "Wall Street"- "How many yachts can you water-ski behind?"
I hope you have better luck with it than I did. But I doubt my luck would change if I simply tried consuming even harder.
In countries where there is a fast turnover such as sub-saharn Africa, people don't have such problems. They get out in the morning trying to get more and they die way before they hit the wall of diminishing returns and for sure way before start wondering about the wider scope.
With regards to wondering too much about the wider scope it becomes perfectly clear that having a high IQ isn't always an advantage. You want to be the luckiest dumbass to achieve both maximum consumption and the ability to never ever start pondering concepts such as the wider scope or any of the unsolvable phylosphical questions