Why You Need Other People

Why are other people important? To rephrase the question, why do some people isolate? The answer may lie in a profound distrust. Once you get to like someone, you depend on them. The good feelings stimulate the neurotransmitters to produce serotonin and you have at the worst the beginnings of addiction. Hermetic type personalities have perhaps suffered some kind of trauma in which their inclination— perhaps to overdependence— has been disappointed. Even though loneliness is painful, the loss of the once idealized object is even worse and leads to unbearable rage. If “no man is an island” as Donne famously said, then such a geography is exactly the compromise individuals who suffer from this form of narcissism eventually choose. It’s what might be termed “non-assisted” living. You may have noticed creatures like this. Perhaps it's you or some part of yourself. At the very least the self-protective emotion is not unfamiliar to anybody who has endured the breakup of a love affair or marriage. After such wounds one is naturally prone to a certain degree of recusal. Who needs him or her is the way many navigate these kinds of reversals. Most people don’t move to an isolated cabin in Montana after they have been rejected and then become the Unabomber. The question of why other people are important might seem to beg a long answer, but it can be said in two words: self-conception. It is through other people’s eyes that you're able to understand both the limitations and ultimately capabilities of the self.