More than once, I've had a conversation roughly similar to the following:
Me: "I want to live forever, of course; but even if I don't, I'd still like for some sort of sapience to keep on living."
Someone else: "Yeah, so? You'll be dead, so how/why should you care?"
I've tried describing how it's the me-of-the-present who's caring about which sort of future comes to pass, but I haven't been able to do so in a way that doesn't fall flat. Might you have any thoughts on how to better frame this idea?
This may seem like nitpicking, but I promise it's for non-troll purposes.
In short, I don't understand what the problem is. What do you mean by falling flat? That they don't understand what you're saying, that they don't agree with you, or something else? Are you trying to change their minds so that they'd think less about themselves and more about the civilization at large? What precisely is the goal that you're failing to accomplish?
On the occasions I've had this conversation, IIRC, I don't seem to have managed to even get to the stage of them understanding that I /can/ care about what happens after I die, let alone get to an agreement about what's /worth/ caring about post-mortem.