Religion

Except that then you realize that the universe doesn't really care if you live or die and makes no provision for you.

Everything else, from religion to politics, literature and consumerism, boils down to trying to make meaning. And part of that meaning for humans is to make tribes and acquire rank in those tribes, and oppose my tribe against your tribe. Because without the constant fighting and bickering, there's less self-importance and meaning.

Until the universe drops some sort of galactic Lysol on Earth and we're all gone and it's all been meaningless. Without there being anybody there to even judge our existence as meaningless--for that would require somebody noticed and actually had to consider if there had been meaning.

My son used to have a rather large tank with Madagascan cockroaches. You could hear the males hissing as they challenged each other for territory.

Then my son lost interest in them. We didn't notice when he stopped feeding them. They slowly ate through the cardboard scaffolding. Then corpses. Then there were a few dozen on top of a mass of cockroach feces and remains. I walked near their tank one day, got a whiff of the scent, I put them outside in January. It was cold enough a week later that they all died of cold.In March I dumped them in the garden and turned them under. You could see bits of exoskeleton the next spring--durable stuff, chitin.

But in June my son asked where his cockroaches had gone. We're like those males hissing over a square inch of cardboard egg container, only of less importance. And they had somebody ask about them, long after they were gone.

We make our own meaning. Criticizing how somebody else makes their meaning because it's obviously wrong and saying this other utterly pointless and meaningless way of making meaning is right boils down to gentle hissing sounds.