Death

Hans Castorp, the 23 year old protagonist of Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” utters these words: 

"For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts." 

Unfortunately man has indeed let death have sovereignty over his thoughts. The article in the following link discusses "how the fear of death gave birth to religion."

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5282/how-the-fear-of-death-gave-birth-to-religion

One might imagine in the beginning woman and man asked two questions: Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? These are inherent mysteries and deserve to be treated as such. The woman and man recognizing they were finite and thus were going to die chose to answer the second question with a palliative—heaven was created and with it an elaborate dogma written in a book that praised God and promised her their obedience.

If this supernatural phantasmagoria were totally innocuous it would be moot. However, it is not innocuous and thus it is deceitful and denies people the occasion to seek authentic meaning in life consistent with the facts of existence.

Why is it that more people do not free themselves from the religious indoctrination of their Youth? Tradition performs the great cover up. Generation after generation are indoctrinated in the religion of their parents. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and many other sects think their set of beliefs is the only set of beliefs that will lead one to salvation.

Like the character in Juan Carlos Onetti's, in “A Brief Life” who said:

I saw the methodical, the jovial, the resolute, the resigned, the incredulous, I saw the sad; I saw all those who will die without knowing themselves(129).

we let death have sovereignty over our thoughts.