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In his 1951 tome The Life We Prize, Quaker writer David Elton Trueblood penned:
"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."
In the 1980s, a number of Republican politicians began attributing variations of the phrase as an "ancient Greek proverb." In the 1990s, it appears in print mainly in the Congressional Record of the United States Congress.
All later references make the false claim of Greek origin. But there is no connection in print—outside the GOP's false claims—between ancient Greece and Trueblood's writing.
So when Reddit user I-Go-To-Sleep asked:
"There is a Greek proverb: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.' What are the greatest examples of this in human history?"
Δεν είναι ελληνικό για μένα.
"That's not a Greek proverb. It’s the invention of a 20th century Quaker writer, whose creation was appropriated in the 1990s by politicians in the United States Congress."
"They added the byline 'Greek proverb' to make themselves seem more intelligent."
~ MazigaGoesToMarkarth
Regardless, it's still a good question.
Dashrath Manjhi
"Dashrath Manjhi—also known as Mountain Man—was an Indian laborer from Gehlaur village, near Gaya in the state of Bihar."
When his wife died in 1959 due to injury caused by falling from a mountain and due to the same mountain blocking easy access to a nearby hospital in time, he decided to carve a 110 meter-long (360 ft), and 9.1 meter-wide (30 ft) wide path and 7.7 meter-deep (25 ft) path through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel by himself."
"After 22 years of work, Dashrath shortened travel between the Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya district from 34 mile to 9 mile.
He said, "When I started hammering the hill, people called me a lunatic but that steeled my resolve." Though mocked for his efforts, Manjhi's work has made life easier for people of the Gehlaur village.
~ SuvenPan
Fukushima Elders
"The seniors in Fukushima who volunteered to staff the nuclear plant cleanup because they were older. Kazuko Sasaki, a 72-year-old grandmother, was one of those ready to serve."
"'My generation built these nuclear plants. So we have to take responsibility for them. We can't dump this on the next generation' she said."
"The founder of Skilled Veterans is Yasuteru Yamada, a slight, soft-spoken man of 72. An engineer who has spent his life around industrial plants, Yamada says he and his retired colleagues quickly realized after the March 11 disaster that conditions at Fukushima were far bleaker than the government was letting on."
"His decision to gather senior volunteers, he said, was based neither on courage nor altruism, but on a brutally realistic calculus. It would be better to send men and women who have finished raising families and are in the sunset of their lives, rather than younger workers whose lives could be cut short by extreme radiation exposure."
"Yamada said, 'We won't completely replace younger workers. But for work that doesn't require brute strength, we can fill in, where the radiation is especially high'."
~ AhabMustDie
Kotaku Wamura
"The Mayor of Fudai, in Japan during the 70's - 80's. When he was young he survived a tsunami in 1933, saw bodies being dug up during the aftermath.
"He then went into politics to get a wall built to stop another tsunami that he knew would eventually happen again. It began construction in 1972, took 12 years to build and the town considered it a huge waste of tax payers money."
"Fast forward to 2011, the town was in direct line of the worst tsunami to ever hit Japan. The village was barely touched because of Wamura's wall."
"Unfortunately he passed away in the late 80's. But he is considered a hero even if he never got to see his efforts fulfilled."
"He saved the lives of many people in his village even after his death. His name was Kotaku Wamura."
~ CambodianPrincesss
European Cathedrals
"The giant cathedrals in Europe like Notre Dame would take over 100 years to build."
"So the person who started building it would work their whole life on it and know they wouldn't be alive to see it completed."
~ PMMeUrHopesNDreams
"I have recently been to Cologne's cathedral. They started building it in 1248, they stopped unfinished in 1560, then halfway through the 1800s they started building it again, finishing it in 1880."
"632 years. Not only the original builders would not see it finished, but neither would their great-great-great-grandchildren."
~ untamed-beauty
Joseph Bazalgette
"Joseph Bazalgette was a Victorian engineer who masterminded London's modern sewer system in the 1860's."
"He foresaw the insane population growth and when all the calculations were made on how big to bore the 'pipes' underground, he essentially said 'nah, let's double it'."
"Now, infrastructure that would have been unable to cope in the 1960's is still in use today."
King Sejong
"The written Korean language, hangul. One dude—King Sejong—basically sat down and created a whole alphabet so people wouldn't have to continue using the adopted Chinese hanja that were complicated and difficult to learn."
"His goal was to increase literacy among all levels of society, not just the wealthy elite who had the time and resources to learn hanja."
"It received a lot of push back from the wealth elites, of course. But following the end of Japanese colonialism in the early 20th century, it gained popularity and is now the official written language in both North and South Korea."
~ kabneenan
"It is supposed to be the only natural language with a 'functional' alphabet, meaning an alphabet where there is a clear mapping between the shapes of the letters and how they are pronounced."
"That is otherwise only seen in constructed languages like Elvish and Klingon, where it is common."
~ a_green_leaf
"It was drafted in the 1400s and it's famous for being the most intuitive writing system even in 2023."
"That's really cool."
~ cryptic-coyote
Chauvet Cave Preservation
"The preservation of Chauvet Cave was second to none in the archaeological field."
"From day one, the three explorers who found it took the utmost care and precautions to ensure they left as little trace as possible in the unopened, pristine chapel of charcoal and ocher."
"There are strict limits and guidelines for traversing the cave and special access for research purposes, and no tourism."
"We’ve learned an immense amount about the site due to their forethought."
~ cavepainted
William Wilberforce
"William Wilberforce. He campaigned in the British Government for over 40 years to stop and prevent slavery."
"He was successful in abolishing the slave trade throughout the Empire with the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and then the ownership of slaves altogether with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833."
"He died three days after hearing the Abolition Act had passed in Parliament, after a lifetime of campaigning for it. He is buried in Westminister Abbey which is reserved for monarchs and national figures of significance."
"His campaign for Abolition was the blueprint that other abolitionists soon followed up with. There are many generations living because of this man's choices."
"And if his good karma wasn't already high enough, he was also a founding member of the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA)."
~ killingjoke96
NASA Voyager Program
"The Voyager spacecrafts. One of them is the only object that's left the solar system."
"They're still sending back data. And they're each carrying a gold record encoded with information, our planet's greeting card to the cosmos."
"It's hard to overstate how much that project changed humanity's knowledge of the solar system. The Voyager probes were crucial to discovering volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, the first volcanic activity confirmed outside of Earth."
"Before the Voyager mission, Earth based telescopes thought there were only a handful of rings around Saturn. Voyager found thousands of rings there, found thin ring systems around two other outer planets, found dozens of moons, and more information than one comment can do justice to."
"NASA is still planning future missions based on information the Voyager spacecraft discovered. If alien life gets discovered on Europa or Titan, you can thank the Voyager engineers and scientists."
"Most of them could have earned far more money in the private sector. Being part of this effort was their dream job."
"And they won't see this work through to the end. They can't. Voyager began the planning stages fifty years ago. Human lives just aren't long enough. And they knew it."
~ doublestitch
Cassini Map
"The Cassini family map, a first of its kind map of France. It took 4 generations of family members and 6 decades to complete."
"Imagine being that second family member. Your whole life, your father works on this map, only for you to work your whole life on it while raising your son to do the same, and it takes a whole other life for it to be completed."
~ Glum_Tank6063
Capability Brown
"In a very literal sense, the landscape gardens of Capability Brown."
"He carefully crafted these gardens, directing the planting of trees and bushes to create a beautiful vista, where it would take decades for the plants to actually grow to fulfil his vision."
~ BobbyP27
"There's actually quite a few Capability Brown gardens/landscapes around where I live and I've been visiting them since I was little."
"Just recently, I was walking around one with my in-laws and my mother-in-law commented on how well a particular set of trees framed the view of the bridge over a stream."
"Brown had that stream moved, the bridge built, and the trees planted, and it took a hundred and fifty years for them to grow tall enough to frame that view so nicely."
"Now those trees are nearly three hundred years old and it looks just like he intended it to."
~ anaximander19
Meghalaya Organic Bridges
"My favorite is easily the tree root bridges in Meghalaya."
"Meghalaya has a monsoon season where they get the vast majority of their annual rainfall, so the many small streams turn into impassable raging rivers."
"In order to get around, they developed a method of making very strong bridges by stringing the roots of the trees so that they grow across the chasms. This was obviously a slow process that would take several generations of caring for the trees to complete."
"In the end, after passing the knowledge and responsibility down to their children, and their children’s children, they would have a strong bridge that could last hundreds of years."
~ plead_tha_fifth
Nikolai Vavilov
"Nikolai Vavilov, Russian botanist, who along with his fellow researchers all starved to death in order to preserve the Leningrad Seed Bank which came under heavy German attack during the Seige of Leningrad in 1943."
"In case it's not clear, they died of starvation protecting the seed bank—which was full of edible seeds and tubers."
"I can't fathom the self control that took."
~ ampersand12
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
"Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a Chinese-American women's rights activist and suffragette."
"But because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, she was not allowed to be a US citizen."
"She knew that even if she succeeded, she would still not be able to vote."
~ Pandagineer
Insulin
"Insulin patent was sold for $1."
"We managed to f*ck that one up."
"But it counts as planting the trees, even if we’re too stupid to sit under the shade."
What examples would you provide?