[PavlovsCat]

If someone did brain surgery on you to turn you into a bundle of delusions (or insert something similar here, plausible or not), would "you", as you currently cherish "you", still exist? It's not like any of our body tissues are terribly inspiring or important in the great scheme of things. It's rather the things that are directly threatened, our ability to think on our own, to be a person. Physical destruction? Meh, doesn't upset me, not in light of the heat death of the universe. A sane humanity getting destroyed by a comet would be more dignified than our current outlook.

An unexamined life isn't worth anything, and an examined life is not compatible with where we are currently heading. Imagine that story of the naked emperor without that child. For me that's like some kind of event horizon -- if everybody fell for it, and stayed stuck to it, there is no story there, no history, no people in it, nothing going on. There isn't even a "there" there, if there is no hope of it ever changing.