Why Give a Damn?

In a world where all human meaning, value, and purpose - as well as all biological life itself - ends in death, do the events in my life (or any life at all) ultimately matter to the extent that I should responsibly attempt to influence them?

In short, should I - should ANYONE - give a damn about anything?

And, if so, why?

It seems that whatever one’s philosophical or theological commitments might be, well formulated or not, people of all times and cultures act AS IF they matter.

That being the case, either the events of life DO matter or they DO NOT matter and we must live with the NECESSARY DELUSION that they DO matter.

We must live with the delusion because believing that our lives matter is merely part of the operating system of a self-evolving, self-organizing network of systems controlling a biological machine, which survives and passes on its subtly and randomly mutated genetic sequence to its next generation machine.

All to no apparent or ultimate end.

A good shorthand definition of knowledge is that knowledge is JUSTIFIED, TRUE, BELIEF.

If I say I KNOW that the earth orbits the sun, I’m implying that I BELIEVE the earth orbits the sun, it is TRUE that the earth orbits the sun, and I have a sound JUSTIFICATION for believing the earth orbits the sun.

The justification that I REALLY know what I claim to know because God revealed to me in a dream or I came to the belief through a delightful encounter with a certain species of mushrooms does not pass the “justification” criteria.

So, is our near-universal, common, BELIEF in the significance (or, more rarely, insignificance) of life JUSTIFIED through either deductive or inductive reason and evidence?

Can it rise to the level of KNOWLEDGE?