Gnostics, Buddhists, New Agers, etc. say that the external world is an illusion and a distraction from beautiful inner truth. I have come to think that is actually a profoundly wrong answer to the question of how to find meaning in life. [..] I think there is a much more convincing answer to this question [..] I think developing relationships of mutual love (both romantic and brotherly) and doing work (both professionally and for hobbies) that is valuable and satisfying to yourself and others are really what make people happy. It is the lack of these things, not the lack of some esoteric, unexplainable mystical knowledge that you only get after your 16th year of meditating and fasting as a hermit on a mountaintop, that I think makes many people in the modern world unhappy in the face of material abundance.