The Meaning of Life (part 1)

We were inspired by a fascinating article in the Guardian.

James Bailey set out to recreate an experiment from 1932 – write to a bunch of random, and not so random people. Ask them what they thought was the meaning of life, and compile the answers.

There’s more to James’ backstory, which you can read about in the Guardian article.

Over time, James started receiving replies, from a very wide selection of people.

He features 19 responses in the article, and has a book coming out in December with all 100 responses.

Here are the 19 people featured in the article:

Hilary Mantel, late author
Michael Frayn, playwright and novelist
Kathryn Mannix, palliative care consultant
Bill McKibben, author and environmentalist
Gretchen Rubin, author and happiness expert
Matt Ridley, science writer
Susan Pollack, Holocaust survivor
John Major, former prime minister
Oliver Burkeman, author and journalist
Monica Heisey, author, essayist and screenwriter
Charles Salvador, aka Charles Bronson, one of Britain’s longest-serving prisoners
Fatima Whitbread, retired British javelin thrower
^[1] Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience
Alan Ayckbourn, playwright and director
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

^[1] Especially fascinating, and not at all what I expected based on his profession

This article inspired the WLBOTT team. We had a few idle moments on this beautiful Central Texas spring morning, so we decided to tackle the meaning of life.

It turns out (as it was meant to turn out) that there is a variety of opinions on this subject. We may have to make this a multi-part series.

Our gathering soon led to various special-interest break-out sessions.