For many, life feels meaningful when… you can achieve goals you desire, improve things in a meaningful way for others, work at a job where you feel you are using your skills to build something notable, or have meaningful, successful relationships with people.
But, at least in the US… education is ruinously expensive, and is far from a ticket to a meaningful job in many cases, and there is more data than ever showing that, basically, if you are not born wealthy, or absurdly lucky, you’ll end up doing worse than your parents.
The world is warming, previously absurd weather is now basically normal, infrastructure falling apart, scams are everywhere, personal debt levels are generally rising to the point that a significant number of people have to finance their groceries.
Divorce rates are high, huge numbers of people either cannot afford the time or money to put into developing a relationship with a life partner. Birth rates continue to decline.
Oh, and we appear to be falling ass backwards into theocratic fascism.
In my estimation, people are more depressed because their material conditions continue to deteriorate, and they realize they are less likely to achieve their dreams, much less what were considered ‘normal life patterns’ by the previous generations (home ownership, family).
The way I see it, meaning in life comes from agency, and beyond that, your ability to decide what is and is not worth doing, learning, cultivating.
Put more and more people in worse and worse conditions, lessen their actual ability to act, to achieve, and many will despair.
…
Personally, I think that religion basically functions as a crutch for those otherwise unable to mentally process the gravity of mortality, by simply telling the believer that death is not really death, everything continues, and if you are good, you will be immortal and happy.
If you take that away, you are left with the world as it is, your life as it is, and you must grapple with a reality that you are finite, in duration and capacity.
…
Its funny you bring up other ancient traditions.
The ancient Greek gods were said to envy mortals.
They found the limited lifespans of mortals made their every action and thought more meaningful, more consequential, more tragic when thrown away, more beautiful when they accomplished great deeds.