Links are imperative, not from any technical standpoint, but because they prevent readers from getting trapped on pages and subsequently dying of starvation. If left on the article, the dead readers will eventually start to smell...
Madness string 5130
But there are other metrics to life. The people you help along the way, the friends you meet, the families you make, all of these people are impacted by you. And then they'll impact others, and those others will impact even more people.