Beyond a certain point – itself complicated – our needs are mostly immaterial: love, companionship, sense of place and belonging, meaning amidst the absurdity of the world.

Our current social arrangement compels us to consume things to fulfill these properly meta-physical needs.

It is a tragic flaw of our upbringing that we should seek meaning in the pursuit of mundane and evanescent objects – the accumulation of material possessions, of power over others. We all die, and often too soon, none of this we can take with us. All vanity, as Solomon said.

The good life, the righteous life, the life worth living, begins and ends in the contemplation of the cosmos. In between, it is made of the love of and the love for others, and minute moments of insight into nature – that is, time, death and renewal.

If you are afraid of death, you are afraid of life – and thus you cannot live righteously.