I feel like we need both. There are mental/emotional experiences I have on the regular which there is no point in trying to communicate to someone else but still bring me great benefit. We need to value our alone time, absolutely.

We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives, which is why I think it's so important to develop high-trust relationships with at least one or two other people so we can continue to grapple with the fact that we all have different perspectives, weaknesses and strengths and can usually learn more and get significantly more things done when we cooperate than when we're running solo. Which requires trust.

YMMV, of course. Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy. But that's not most of us. And even those people eventually get too old to keep taking care of themselves.

> We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives

This implies that almost everything you value is something transient that can, and one day will, be taken away. If not willingly, then by death. Doesn't it make more sense to have a few core values that don't depend on others and then build relationships and all the rest upon that foundation?

To steal from Alan Watts, lets use an example. Imagine a whirlpool in a clear stream. It has great beauty and takes intricate forms as it dances a whirls. You sit beside it and enjoy watching it for hours.

Now ask yourself is it the particular group a H2O molecules that make up the whirlpool that you love? If so it will be gone in an instant, and each moment for you will become another in a series of great losses as the molecules are swept away by new ones. Is it the pattern the water makes that you love? No, the pattern itself changes every moment as well. The change itself is part of what mesmerizes you.

What you love about the whirlpool is something deeper, and more fundamental, something that change can't take from you. That's the thing you have to build your appreciation of life from. Other people are just the molecules and ripples.

> Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy.

I would argue that a man who can't stand to be alone with himself is either a bad man who is a good judge of character, or an incomplete person.

I don't mean that everyone should go live alone, just that everyone should be able to. You're probably right that most people can't do it, but the majority is often wrong.