Is the belief in, and the desire for, personal immortality ultimately the result of a desire for meaning in one's life? I think so, and here are the reasons why I say that:
In the classical Hellenic and Roman cultures, the belief in some form of personal immortality, at least a meaningful one, was absent from the traditional culture. In the Iliad, when Achilles sees the ghost of Paris, he says, Amazing, even after death something remains, but there is no heart of life in it. Whatever immortality there was, to the Hellenes and Romans, a shadow existence not worthy of the the name. Yet, by the end of the Roman Republic, the quest for some form of life after death was a central part of much religious practice. What changed?
This is what I think changed everything: the death of the free city-state, and its replacement by the large bureaucratic empire. Most Greek states had been swallowed up by the despotic Hellenistic kingdoms like that of the Ptolemies, the Seleucid Empire, Pontus, Pergamum, and so forth. In the free city states, which were small, the individual counted; he could make his mark, he was known. This was true in the Roman Republic as well. Each citizen who owned property could state his views and vote for candidates for office and actually participate in the enactment of legislation. He had some control, at least, over the laws that bound him and regulated his life. (Contrary to popular belief, the Senate did not make laws.) With the death of these free republics, meaningful citizen participation ended. The free citizen of a Republic had become the helpless subject of a despot.
It is about this time that we see the increase in the popularity of the mystery cults, in their focus on personal survival and meaning after death. Is it surprising, when this life had reduced people to cogs in a bureaucratic machine?
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