the people hypothesis for the meaning of life

#thought

What's the meaning of life? I don't know, but I do know that, without people--if I were the only person on earth--then there is no meaning.

• This principle also applies at a less grand and philosophical level. Just on a practical, day to day level, I've observed that much of my happiness vs sadness, which I run circles around myself trying to explain, is correlated with how much time I'm spending with people (to a first order approximation, when most of the time I'm alone).
  • For instance, I try to explain my unhappiness with the difficulty in figuring out what to work on; when really the body and mind respond much more quickly to the kind of immediate feedback (gratification) you get from actually talking about what's interesting and hearing others talk about what they're interested in.
  • Of course, this is an over simplification, and there are other factors like how I'm resting and how well I'm compartmentalizing