I call it hubris: people thinking their little lives are so important, they can't imagine it ending and eventually being totally forgotten, lost to the sands of time. Walt Whitman saw young men mowed down by the score in the American Civil War. It inspired him to write Leaves of Grass. In the grand scheme of things, that's exactly what we are. Leaves of grass.
"I bequeath myself to the dirt
to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles."
-- Walt Whitman
Religious preachers always prod their followers to seek answers to why they are put in their universe, what could be the divine purpose behind it and make the topic complicated and the question very convoluted.
To this idiocy, India's famous atheist and Richard Dawkins awardee Javed Akhtar asked them..."Why not ask why a cockroach is on the ground? Why not ask why the tick is in your hair? The real answer to all that is we are just biology and we will die just like a cockroach and tick will die. There is nothing freaking divine about that".