I'll be honest, I really don't get this one besides the guy getting super meta.

I do wonder how meta people got in historical times. They definitely thought about their legacy, how others would perceive them when they were dead, but how layered did it get? "Will people think I did X because I was worried about my legacy?" Trying to both not get all "lol historical people dumdums with no resemblance to the thoughts we had today, even though they too were intelligent humans" or "lol historical people thought exactly as we do today, no concepts had to take time to learn and permeate culture before they became something people would think about, 'we stand on the shoulders of giants' and they had the exact same quantity of and access to these giants that we do today"