I personally believe that true contentment in life is if you can do something meaningful to help others. The human connection is such a basic thing in life. We want love, not just sex.
You might think that getting lots of money would make other people like you more but I think that is the opposite. Billionaires really aren't that "likable" are they?
Whether we suck up to a billionaire or try to perhaps con them somehow WE know that we don't "like" them very much.
But really I don't know any billionaires, I've only seen them on TV, so I may be wrong.
I'm sure that billionaires are constantly approached by people wanting to be their new best friend. That would make any billionaire rather standoffish and close with any friendship reciprocation.
For example, as I get older, I hear more and more first-person stories about families falling apart because of probate shenanigans.
You don't want to reach that point. You want to stay below that point, because what brings satisfaction and happiness in life is something called the "power process". The Unabomber explained it well [1]. The Unabomber unfortunately used bad methods to spread his ideas, but the ideas themselves were good.
[1] https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-po...
Maybe I'm somehow crazy on a forum of tech "entrepreneurs"... but, I like to do stuff like learn to sing and play the guitar, speak new languages, get better at drawing and painting, or plunge ever deeper into the worlds of math and physics... all of which seems eminently compatible with this "power process" thesis and which are all much more pleasant when you don't simultaneously have to work.
That sounds like the exact opposite of what you're saying.
It's entirely possible to do most of those as a hobby. If you do need to go full-time on it, you can usually accomplish a lot in 2-3 years, and then jump back into the workforce when you get bored with your hobbies.
And money. Living modestly and pursue hobbies is much, much harder to accomplish financially than it seems for most people. I don’t want to make this a conversation about healthcare, but that’s a huge part.
i think if you reached the point where you solved the thesis, don't have to work, and you're doing all those things...
you're not coming back to post about it on a forum of tech "entrepreneurs" :^)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave#Return_to...
There are dozens of reasons to want to have enough money that, no matter what happens, you know you won't end up homeless and destitute.
And unfortunately, in America today, that's a lot of money, due to our for-profit healthcare system making medical emergencies sometimes cost millions of dollars.
If I were handed enough money tomorrow that it would guarantee I and my family would never have to work another day in our lives, I don't think any of us would choose not to work. Instead, we'd be free to choose work that we want to do, rather than worrying about what will pay well enough to keep us fed and housed.