Dear Editors: Cut the Posterity Bullshit

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Posterity Is Not Payment

If you are telling a writer that posterity will find their work, you are not offering wisdom.
You are declining responsibility.

Posterity does not pay rent.
Posterity does not cover medical bills.
Posterity does not buy time.

Invoking the future is a way to avoid the present.

“After You’re Dead” Is Not a Compliment

Telling someone their work will matter later is not encouragement. It is a euphemism for:
We don’t want to engage with this now, and we don’t want to say why.

It allows editors and publishers to feel magnanimous while doing nothing. It flatters the work while abandoning the worker.

That is not mentorship.
That is deferral dressed up as respect.

If the Work Has Value, Prove It

If the work is good enough to be “important someday,” then it is good enough to be supported now.

Pay for it.
Edit it.
Stand behind it.

If you can’t do those things, say so plainly and walk away. Don’t turn someone’s livelihood into a philosophical abstraction.

Early Work Is Always Inconvenient

Work that identifies patterns early is rarely comfortable. It arrives before consensus, before permission, before safety. That is precisely why it matters.

Refusing to engage with it until history makes it obvious is not prudence. It is cowardice.

Stop Playing With People’s Lives

Writers are not time capsules.
They are not archival material waiting patiently for discovery.

They are living people making tradeoffs in real time. When you hide behind “posterity,” you are shifting the cost of your indecision onto them.

Either participate — or don’t.

But stop pretending delay is virtue.

A Simple Rule

If you won’t pay, walk away.
If you won’t commit, say so.
If you believe the work matters, act like it.

Everything else is just language used to avoid accountability.