Something that’s really stuck out to me recently is the vast number of more obscure ways people deal with the dread of mortality. Sure, religious outlines of afterlifes and karmic scales, or adversely the strive for contentment with the null, plainness of the corporeal, will always be commonplace. Yet it seems to be a much more complex situation. Living by ambition itself has its nuances, these different ways of looking at it. It’s important to realize that a true understanding of this way of life implies that there is no dream too lofty. This is the part I feel many miss out on; there is no futility, no flawed ambition simply because in the expectant pursuit of that ambition, the ambition achieves its goal by awarding purpose to the wielder. Conversely, the very contention on the existence of a higher power seems to be for many a deciding factor as to whether life is even worth living. Kant (i think it was him) argues that the fact that man will end his life due to the dread that befalls him when he realizes the absurdity(pointlessness, kinda) of life, means that man is not meant to suffer the torment of conscious mortality, and therefore life is eternal. The character Kirilov in The Possessed, on the other hand is convinced god does not exist, and yet is convinced by traditional justifications that god must exist, and therefore concludes that he is god. He then kills himself to become god in a revolt of a logical suicide. :)
It does seem that this externalization of purpose can be rather destructive, even in a modern context. Being that reliant on a shared concept of a planned existence as the paramount goal of life seems intensely unreliable, and moreover places one in a particularly manipulatable position. This is not to say that religious levity should be the answer for everyone. No blind faith nor theistic effrontery will ever solely bear an answer to the meaning of life. My argument here is of the importance of not having just one source of justification for living, no matter how solid the philosophy may be.
