Character Death in RPGs: What's the point of it?

What purpose does character death serve in an RPG? I feel like the idea is based around some sort of win/lose scenario to keep the G part involved in the RPG. I'm sure realism is a factor for some people, but that feels like it is shoehorned in as an excuse to me when playing games based in some other reality. I've seen people argue that without the possibility of character death the game it feels as though their choices don't matter since their character can't die. That seems more of a player/GM behavioral issue than a conceptual issue with the game, or at the very least the reaction of someone used to dealing/taking damage as being a core concept of the game.

In most cases, it isn't a game ending scenario where the player has to sit out until the group finishes and starts a new campaign. There generally two approaches groups take to character death: add another name to the cemetery and roll up a new character OR the group makes an effort to bring the character back with some sort of resurrection at a cost. These don't feel like situations with long lasting effects on the player or story. They are more like troublesome slogs you gotta get through before you can get back to fun bit.

I don't think that character death can't have a purpose. There are plenty of games where death is a mechanic that serves some function in the playing of the game according to the lore/story (horror, survival, etc). Sometimes a player will be ready to retire a character and want to come up with some epic way to round off their story and they thing a death would be good, so they work with the GM to make it happen in the story. This isn't about those types of deaths. This is about a player reaching 0HP during an average session. That kind of character death serves no mechanical/fictional purpose, in most games, other than to punctuate the end of that particular character's involvement in the story you're telling with your friends. 

Recently I've been reading through Electric Bastionland by Chris McDowell, and while I could praise the writer and design of this game for days, what's been stuck noodling around my head is the the way he deals with character's reaching 0HP. Characters can still reach 0HP due to damage, but instead of dying your character is permanently scarred in a way that it becomes part of who your character is as you continue adventuring. These scars can have benefits, hindrances, or be superficial in nature requiring the work of a skilled surgeon to fix.

Reading this gave my brain the little nugget of wisdom to coalesce my thoughts around about character death. It stood out to me because it doesn't remove the possibility of characters failing and that failing leading to death. It just gives an option that let's a player continue telling their character's story with a new element to role play and address in game that reflects their recent mistakes.

It seems like this could be a very usable idea for most other games. It would definitely require a GM to create a chart unique to their campaign for the effects of the Scars one gets from hitting 0HP as the one from Electric Bastionland is very....Bastion-y (no spoilers, throw your money at Chris McDowell and read the entire thing, encourage him to make more amazing content). It wouldn't take that long to knock something out for your group that kept everyone involved without having to say: "Sorry Joey, you died so Biljoe Baggins can't be played anymore. Throw the sheet away and make someone else."

I'm gonna try it for a current SWN campaign I'm running. I'll have to take some time to figure out how this will work in the game when they have stockpiles of lazarus patches after a few of them hit 0HP. Maybe I'm a mean spirited GM, but I feel like death should be more complicated than that.