The Only Way for Love or Knowledge or Beauty or Happiness to Matter Matters

The idea seems to be that the only way for love or knowledge or beauty or happiness to matter is for these states of mind and states of the world to last forever. This is a surprisingly common point of view, as i said, especially among the religious. But there is also something paradoxical about the very idea death as a condition in which every individual life and mind terminates. And my purpose now is to explore that paradox. How each of us lives now will help determine our trajectory here. What we think and say now matters, even if we're not around to experience the consequences.