In the end, though, isn't it all about one thing? The Man With The Scythe, the Thirteenth Trump the Rider on the Pale Horse (whose name, apparently, is Binky). We all know he's waiting for us, and with all the caution, healthy eating, exercise and medicine in the world, we can't avoid him. But the prospect of our own personal extinction, the idea that we will just stop. That everything we feel and know and recall will simply be gone, and that we will not be aware that it has ever been. That idea is so terrifying that it became the second reason for religion. The comfort of believing that we will somehow continue after our body packs it in, that we will, in some conscious form, be there forever. So we create afterlives, and those who would rule over us create rules for getting to said afterlife.