Intuitively - without having analyzed this song much - I would say that the bottom line is that we are all connected in that we share the same fate. We do lead different lives, but in the end we are all the same and "show our pain in unison" and ultimately deal with life and death in the same fashion.

The moral of the song is (in my conception) :

"We can live 'In So Many Ways'

This is another outstanding and powerful song. This song describes the social nature of humans (We rise and fall as one ... We feel our pain in unison.) I really like that because it rings so true. Think of pigeons in their flock - they need to be with the others. Think of a fox, they work alone. We may act like the fox or the rugged individualist but we are so dependent on each other, nothing really can mean anything except weighed against others, or seen by others, etc.
I don't think it points out the futility of life but rather its finite nature, and our obliviousness thereto. A fox does not have a futile life, nor does a pigeon, nor a tree. And neither does or should us humans. The song points out how thoroughly unaware we are of our animal, finite reality. The tree and fish may be unaware but they don't have the ability to be aware either. We do but generally live in ignorance of the bigger picture, as we catapult ourselves through the haze, ignoring mortality, and claiming sanctity.

I would tend to believe that this song discusses how complacent people are to the thought that they are going to heaven as soon as they die. Essentially, people live their lives for the selfish goal of their eternal immortality rather than a better and more altruistic approach to helping other people out.

I think this song is about how the human being tends to live life without thinking of consequences and I think he (the writer) is contemplating this, instead of looking at life itself, he looks at how others tend live it. We see that he says 'Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity and wait to see what happens up on high' He's saying how people live like nothings going to happen now, they settle for the common things (mediocrity) and then just see what happens in the end, they don't do anything to fix it or make it better. 'In so many ways we live to follow the sun, in so many ways we exalt and fail as one, in so many ways we want so bad to be done, in so many ways we show our pain in unison' We rise together, we fall together, were all so the same in so many ways, some people fail to see that, we run after something we can never get...maybe happiness, maybe love...i don't know...trying to catch the sun ... This probably made no sense to any of you but this is how I see it...its the fate of us and our lives

'In So Many Ways' is a classic last-song-on-the-album. I think the main goal of this song is to point out the futility of life. A key line is 'Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity'; it states how we go through life like we're going to live forever, while we strive to be accepted as a normal person. The back-and-forth rhythm of the lyrics seems to represent the constant contradictions we face every day. We want to love, we want to hate...we want to live, we want to die. 'In So Many Ways' is a message about the fleeting days we wander aimlessly through, and I think it fits the 'No Substance' theme very well.