The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us

by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

“[An] extraordinary and urgent book.” —Jonathan Haidt

“The Mattering Instinct is a masterpiece. I wept, I laughed out loud, I came face-to-face with the wellsprings of my life, but mostly I marveled at Rebecca Goldstein’s genius. This book should ignite a revolution.” —Martin Seligman, best-selling author of A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being

A paradigm-shifting work that explores humanity’s most fundamental desire.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2026
Apple Books • Most Anticipated Books of 2026

MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns with a revelatory book about the primal drive that in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most persistent and universal the longing to matter.

Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, Goldstein argues that this need to matter—and the various “mattering projects” it inspires—is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest the very crux of the human experience.

Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; the pioneering psychologist William James, who rose above the depression of his young adulthood to become perhaps the first great theorist of mattering; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns from the trash; and a neo-Nazi skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that hateful past after realizing that mattering isn’t a zero-sum game. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict—and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around.

Deeply revealing and insightful, and decades in the making, The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others—and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Self Help, Audiobook, Sociology, Science

350 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 13, 2026

Reviews

[Seçkin Sosyal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was about meaning, but it was about desire to be important what Goldstein calls 'mattering'. I was expecting a sharper philosophical investigation; instead, it relies heavily on anecdotes and biographical narratives.

Goldstein groups people into four by how they pursue mattering:
- Heroic striver: achievement motivation
- Competitor: social comparison orientation, tendency to instrumentalize others
- Transcender: religious/spiritual orientation
- Socializer: belonging/affiliation motivation

The book mostly consists of life stories that fall into each category. Those categories are presented as heuristics rather than as a framework supported by systematic empirical validation.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that is In support of the theory that humans, have a basic psychological aspect to us, that prioritizes something or makes something “matter.” The thing that matters drives us throughout life. This mattering project varies from person to person and may have good or bad results. Furthermore, this prioritizing or mattering comes to be because of a subconscious, existentialist process.

In her exploration of mattering, Goldstein delves into biology, evolution, psychology, physics, and lots of philosophy. She does so in interesting and insightful ways. Much of the book is composed of mini – biographies of both famous and not so famous people as the author describes how individuals were influenced by their mattering projects.

With all that, I am not fully convinced of the author’s final premise; that because we must prioritize ourselves in life, that this drives an existential crisis in everyone that leads us to develop a mattering project where we find meaning. Instead, an alternate theory, that Goldstein mentions, involving evolved tendencies in humans seems more plausible to me. Nevertheless, regardless of its origins in people, mattering seems real and important, so the book is full of insightful observations and fascinating philosophizing. This seems to be an important topic.

Those who like to delve into psychology, philosophy and who like ruminating on what makes our minds act the way they do will get a lot out of this book. Regardless of ones take on the ultimate premise, this work has a lot of worthwhile things to say.

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

2026-04-11 Just finished this yesterday. Ended well.
Started well: "Every living thing is organically driven by a mandate that ensures it matters to itself—which is to say that it prioritizes its own surviving and thriving. In lifeforms as massive as blue whales and as scanty as a sliver of grass struggling up through a crack in the sidewalk, biology encodes the message of self-mattering." Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy just points out that humans should never forget this and should take it into account how important enlightened self interest actually is.

Page 6 "The logic that seems implicit in the mattering instinct gives rise to the urge to universalize: my reason to live ought to be your reason to live. The seeds of intolerance sprout from this flawed logic." Right on. And her follow-up point: "The differences between us are such that there will always be socializers, transcenders, competitors, and heroic strivers, making it imperative that, if we are to live together with recognition of the dignity of human life in all its incommensurable forms, we find an objective standard that we all can accept to distinguish between better and worse ways of responding to the mattering instinct." This sure seems to imply the classical liberal ideas of freedom, non-aggression principle, free markets, and tolerance, etc.

On the same page she introduces this key concept too: "A life well-lived is a life that, while pursuing mattering in a way that best accords with a person’s individuality, joins forces with life in its resistance to entropy." And again on p. 58 she says "it’s so much easier to destroy than to create. To destroy is to work in the direction of entropy, while to create is to resist entropy. Almost all the things worth doing in this world—learning, loving, creating—require our resistance to entropy."

Fighting entropy, is possibly her main thesis of the book, and I agree, it is one classical liberals should endorse too. I bet Mises would, since his books are major attempts to uncover and vanquish all the ideas that add to destructionism (Marxism, socialism, interventionism, etc.), which is what entropy is all about.

However here is just one (the first in the book?) of her anti-market or at least ignorant of the marketplace comments: Page 8 "In today’s workplace, workers are made to feel they are as fungible as snacks in a vending machine: identical, interchangeable, and easily restocked." Does this happen? Sure. Is it something that all managers, owners, entrepreneurs support and promote? Heck NO. Worker turnover involved HUGE costs. The best companies work super hard to instill a culture of caring and teamwork that involves many efforts and significant pride in giving workers individual attention and rewarding the best creativity, productivity, safety and attention to quality.

Then soon after, on the same page, she writes: "The focused effort to encourage previously marginalized groups to realize their potential and enter the circle of accomplishment has made unencouraged others—specifically white, straight, non-wealthy males—feel that they and their potential don’t matter, inciting resentment."
Oh, Boy. What a misconception of the problem. When she uses the term "unencouraged others" she is totally ignoring what the policies and actions of the government has actually meant to those people she mentions, that makes many of them resentful:
- the stealing from them - the taxes that THEY mostly pay for the "encouragement" of others.
- the laws/regs that forcefully discriminate against them or mandates them to do specific things
- the propaganda that goes with the laws, agencies, court cases, and cultural attacks against them
- the lowering of standards of society and promotion of inferior goals and achievements
- the cover-ups and duplicity of the the politicians, bureaucrats and others who promote these things

Then just one page later she uses another highly charged example without understanding the main problem of government coercion:
Page 9 "the overall effect of the pandemic worked in the opposite direction, so that the divisions already in place among us only deepened and darkened... We even found new ways to oppose one another—the quarantine wars, the vaccine wars, the mask wars, the science wars."
Is it really so difficult to see that the "divisions" and "oppositions" were brought out by the coercive government policies such as:
- mandated [brand new and too little tested] vaccines
- mandated school, religion and business closures
- government censorship of private & public speech, assembly,
- massive propaganda claiming to be in the name of "science" - when in fact it was often just commands made up on the fly with NO or totally mixed message science behind it.
- mandated mask use
- firings of government employees for non-compliance and supporting other private sector firings.
COVID was not so much the problem, but rather just the excuse used to up the government controls that sparked the reactions.

I liked her use of polysemy (look THAT term up), though perhaps she overdid it with the number of times she said "matter longing to matter" or "matter that matters" or other variations on the theme. Page 295 "nattering about mattering"


More author humor and a nice turning another phrase - Page 273 "an antidote against animus."


In following her ideas on the importance of entropy, she discussed Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann, who "solved the irreversibility paradox" which "clarified the notion of entropy." Fascinating story of his life and his fight for his discovery. Page 75 "Boltzmann had devoted his life to a single project—explaining the law of entropy and thereby solving the paradox of irreversibility—and he can’t be faulted for taking his project seriously. It was tantamount to taking his life seriously. The attacks and dismissals made Boltzmann obstinate, obsessive, and finally ill." & Page 78 "
Perhaps one of the reasons that Boltzmann took his peers’ dismissal so much harder than had Mendel—in addition to differences in temperament, which are always significant—is that, in Boltzmann’s case, bad philosophy was holding sway over good science, and that bad philosophy had become accepted by scientists as part of science itself—a maddening situation to a scientist like Boltzmann. And unlike Mendel, Boltzmann had devoted so much effort to getting his work understood by his peers, and so had less faith that his time would come." - I thought of the fellow Austrian, Ludwig Mises who was also characterized as "obstinate" and "intransigent" in his fight for his ideas too. And he similarly fought the changes in economics with the rise of socialism. Pioneers of new ideas often battle huge odds in trying to persuade others of their new way of thinking. It comes with the territory, but the price is something terrible sometimes.

In exploring this concept of entropy, she muses: "The preponderance of possibilities in our disfavor
explains why there are so many more negative emotions than positive ones, so many more bad choices that lay open to us than good ones, so many more ways to achieve unhappiness than happiness—all because there are so many more ways to achieve disorder than order." In reading that, does anyone else besides me think of Murphy's Law ("Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." and/or the multitude of ancillary observations...)?

Page 68 "Being motivated by self-mattering isn’t tantamount to selfishness. Selfishness means caring only about getting results that benefit yourself, while self-mattering is having our brain function as nature has built it to function—..." Well, there is the issue of long-term vs. short-term views of mattering. Ayn Rand's view of selfishness is a longer-term view, which this author seems to ignore or misconstrue, as too many others do too.

Page 106 "It is almost certain that what Jefferson had in mind was not the episodic emotion of happiness, but rather what the ancient Greeks had called eudaimonia... The term is most saliently tied to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics, sometimes described as the first attempt at establishing a science of happiness. But a first attempt at a science of eudaimonia is closer to what
the philosopher was up to. In fact, Aristotle was at pains to distinguish what he meant by eudaimonia from happiness. He emphasized that our pursuit of eudaimonia typically involves struggles and suffering—in other words, unhappiness. “Eudaimonia, then is not found in amusement;" Great point. I refer the reader to the book: "The Virtue of Happiness" by Joel Wade, who expands on this too!

But then she goes to a very disputable place:
Page 112 “Since the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation left without guaranteed parenting leave, paid sick and vacation days, and one of few rich countries that fails to subsidize childcare, it isn’t surprising that U.S. parents have the biggest happiness gap compared to nonparents. The U.S. simply asks too much of parents at a time when the economic costs of supporting children are enormous and the time to raise them effectively has been whittled away by employers that favor long hours and no breaks.” Vs. The happiness of US parents in previous generations with vastly less taxes, regulations - government!!!!!


Her comment here made me think of a movie:
Page 159 "Would you, asks Nozick, opt to plug in? Both he and I suspect that you would not, not for all the subjective sense of meaningfulness in the world. That’s because these subjective feelings are not what we want from our one and only life. Implicit in the distancing from ourselves that our self-reflection yields is the longing to live a life that objectively matters, rather than subjectively feeling that it does." Any reader think of the movie Sleeper by/with Woody Allen and the machine, the "Orgasmatron" ?

Page 169 "And what cultists feel, first and foremost, is that they matter in a way that had been lacking before. The words of Angela Rubino, the Georgia woman who dived into dumpsters to gather proof that the 2020 election had been stolen, are to the point. “This can’t be what life is, that you get up and go to work and come home. That as humans, we’re nothing.” 1. Anti-Trump slap - w/ "cultist". 2. anti-election fraud evidence 3.Sad person who has little understanding of bigger meaning to life/work.

Page 170 "The longing that provides the allure of cults is existential, and the existential always trumps the rational." Until the existential (or cultist) crashes into reality.

Page 192 "We are, in being creatures longing to matter, unavoidably value laden, with values unavoidably differing. The clash of values engendered by the mattering instinct sets us up against one another. Is no common ground possible for the normative creatures that we are?
Yes, there is common ground - See Mises' essay: "The clash of group interests" - Classical liberalism and voluntary markets vs. coercive interventionism and socialism.

Another gem she highlights: Page 205 “The odd opinions and extravagant actions that men are led into by enthusiasm,” wrote Locke, “provide a sufficient warning against it; but many men ignore the warning, and once they have started to think they are receiving immediate revelation—illumination without search, and certainty without proof or examination—it is hard to cure them of this."

But then followed by this wacky characterization: Page 206 "many of the Enlightenment’s leading lights, including Hegel..." Hegel an Enlightenment leading light???????? The opposite, I am afraid.

Page 235 "You may fall victim to the fallacy of sunk costs: I’ve already sunk so much time and effort into this project that if I give it up now, it will all be for naught. But trying to recover sunk costs is fallacious, like crying over spilled milk," Very good. Nice economic concept used and explained!
Especially great point about why leftist/statists may not be willing to give up their bad ideas even
in the face of horrible facts about them!! (i.e. Not one successful socialist country: USSR, Mao's China, Cuba, Eastern EU, N. Korea, Cambodia, Venezuela, etc. etc.)

Page 236 "Just as it hampers a person romantically to believe that there is some one person out there who alone can “complete you,” so it can hamper us to believe there is only one project that can channel our longing to matter." Re: the 2nd half of this quotation, Barb Oatley's book Mindshift was great on this. She explored how important it is for everyone to work on multiple work skills, or mattering projects.

Her description of "Mattering Adjudicators" was fascinating and seemed very real to me.
Page 242 "Sometimes it’s the mattering adjudicator’s own mattering that’s on the line, and when it is, things often don’t go well for those they are adjudicating."
She had a very sad but fascinating story of the great Ignaz Semmelweis, pioneer of antiseptic procedures, especially for hospital birthing rooms. It reminded me of how the government medical establishment used the covid hysteria to implement their terrible mandates of dangerous treatments, masking, propaganda and destruction of careers and businesses.

Page 276 "The paramount question then is: How do we live together without either wanting to throttle each other or pretending that we are all alike?"
At a minimum - understanding and accepting Ricardo's law of comparative advantage. Read more Mises - Liberalism would be a great start.

I love this statement: Page 277 "Intolerance blooms in the soil of our faulty logic."

I love this pushback by the author on a phrase I have never liked, since it does not well describe the actual positive method for Silicon Valley progress: "Page 286 "“Move fast and break things” is the very negation of how we should act in the face of the law of entropy. As the law tells us, breaking things is easy. It’s resisting entropy that’s hard." Well said. Schumpeter's phrase is better: than the Silicon Valley one: "Creative destruction" - but even that needs clarification and there are better ways to describe the issue. I think Jerry Muller might have in his Great Courses on Capitalism, but don't remember exactly.

Concluding remarks and theme - that is just wonderful! "Page 292 "since seeking our sense of mattering is what we are driven to do, the most peculiar, human, and poignant thing about us, we can seek to matter by resisting entropy in ways as expansive as possible, allying ourselves with life and not with death, with happiness and not with sorrow, with creativity and not with destruction,
with knowledge and not with ignorance, with care and not with cruelty, with clarity and not with confusion, with peace and not with turmoil, with beauty and not with ugliness. That’s ethics."

Love that!!!!

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Parts I don't understand:
On Page 31 she makes a statement that I don't understand. If you do, please let me know: "A presumption that females matter less than males gave us the Latin materia, which gave us the English noun matter."

Page 61 "there is no designated instinct for self-mattering, self-mattering being the organizing principle behind all the instincts." No self preservation instinct? vs. altruism vs. Self interest/selfishness vs. Page 62 "Our agency is future oriented, pointed in the direction of our self-interested survival and flourishing, just as the organizing principle of all the instincts—our self-mattering—would have it." vs. Page 63 "The welfare of itself—that is, of you—is the very function for which your brain evolved its stupendous complexity, with your self-mattering—that is, regarding yourself as deserving of your own attention— implicit throughout the entirety of the dynamic attentional-emotional-motivational system that is you."


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2026-03-14 Started this book early this morning, since I could not sleep. Very captivating. Powerful thesis. But gosh, the author has some very foolish statements that really turn me off. It's as if she had never heard of Ayn Rand, Ludwig Mises, or Nathaniel Brandon - anything to do with objectivism, praxeology or Brandon's psychology work. But perhaps that is exactly the case, so it just shows ignorance and potentially independent confluence. We shall see. But the baggage, after all these years is so sad.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely highlight passages when I read, but this book had me reaching for the pen repeatedly.
Goldstein's central claim is simple: the longing to matter is the engine behind almost everything we do. Not Maslow's pyramid where you work your way up to meaning after handling the basics. The mattering instinct runs underneath everything, constantly.
Her taxonomy of how people pursue mattering—transcenders, socializers, heroic strivers, competitors—gave me a new lens for understanding people whose choices previously seemed inexplicable. The stories she tells to illustrate these types are what make the book work. This isn't dry philosophy.
The passages on relationships and how people get pulled into destructive groups stuck with me most. You can't argue someone out of a mattering project. They leave only when they find an alternative path to mattering that works better.
Where I struggled: Goldstein's standard for healthy mattering is whether it increases flourishing, connection, knowledge, beauty. But everyone believes their project does this. The framework offers no defense against self-deception. It's a sharp tool for understanding others but suspiciously forgiving when turned on oneself.
Still—the book changed how I see people. That's enough.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Mattering Instinct”, de Rebecca Goldstein, não vem anunciar nenhuma revelação nem abrir uma via realmente nova, embora se aproxime de uma das questões mais antigas de todas. A autora diz que não está a escrever “sobre o sentido da vida”, mas essa recusa é mais estratégica do que real: é disso que o livro trata, embora prefira fazê-lo a partir de uma pergunta mais concreta e psicologicamente manejável — o que fazemos para sentir que importamos, e com que custos.

Mattering map.jpg
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2026/...

À esquerda surge o continente dos Transcenders, desenhado quase como atlas de religiões (Cristãos, Muçulmanos, Budistas, Hindus, etc.). É a região onde o mattering se ancora num “além”: Deus, o absoluto, uma ordem cósmica, um sentido transcendental. Goldstein é suficientemente honesta para reconhecer a potência desta estratégia: ela promete algo que as outras não prometem: fundamento. Ao lado, no centro, vem o enorme continente dos Socializers, subdividido em “Family”, “Friends & Lovers”, “Community”, “Non-intimates”, “Fame seekers”. Aqui, importamos porque pertencemos, porque somos vistos, porque somos amados, porque alguém nos dá atenção. A presença destas subdivisões é um detalhe bom: lembra-nos que “o social” não é uma categoria moralmente pura; há intimidade e há fama, há comunidade e há culto, há calor e há manipulação.

À direita aparecem os Heroic Strivers, com rótulos como “Artistic”, “Intellectual”, “Athletic”, “Ethical” e até uma “Bay of Excellence (Beware the shoals of perfectionism)”. Goldstein acerta no tom: a busca de excelência traz um brilho que pode virar faca. E, por fim, os Competitors, com “Individualist” e “Group”, e duas baías deliciosamente venenosas: “Bay of Resentment” e, noutra ponta, aquela zona em que a competição se torna identidade. É aqui que o livro ganha atualidade: esta tipologia descreve bem a diferença entre quem quer “fazer melhor” e quem precisa que o outro “fique abaixo” para respirar.

O mapa é simples, e por isso é útil; mas também é, como eu senti ao longo da leitura, um pouco abstracto quando tentamos usá-lo como instrumento fino. Ele não é um modelo explicativo com eixos e hipóteses testáveis; é uma cartografia de temperamentos existenciais. Funciona melhor como espelho do que como método. A sua força está em oferecer uma pergunta clara: quando digo “quero que a minha vida importe”, em que continente estou a falar? E a sua limitação está em não nos dar um mecanismo para resolver o conflito entre continentes, porque quase todos somos feitos de mistura.

O livro organiza-se, então, em torno destas quatro “estratégias” de mattering: transcender, socializar, esforçar-se heroicamente, competir. Goldstein percorre-as com exemplos, e a pedagogia é boa: os casos têm textura e evitam o tom de tese. O problema é que, para leitores que já andam por estas zonas há muito tempo, a surpresa é pequena. A autora escreve bem, mas a ambição é mais de clarificação do que de descoberta.

Onde o livro se torna mais interessante é quando Goldstein tenta evitar o relativismo total. Se há quatro estratégias, se há múltiplas formas de “importar”, então qualquer forma vale? Não. Ela insiste que há “mattering projects” que são moralmente corrosivos: podem funcionar psicologicamente (dão energia, dão rumo), mas destroem o outro. E introduz um elemento crucial: os “adjudicators”, os árbitros sociais do mattering (instituições, gatekeepers culturais, sistemas de reconhecimento) que muitas vezes erram e moldam destinos com injustiça. Aqui, o livro toca num nervo real: o mattering não é só interior; é distribuído, e assim pode ser conferido ou retirado.

E depois vem o fecho normativo, onde eu senti a autora a querer, com alguma pressa, construir um critério “secular” que substitua a transcendência. A proposta dela (numa linha) é que “viver bem” está ligado a resistir à entropia, criar ordem local contra o caos: conhecimento, beleza, compaixão, tolerância, cuidado. É uma boa ideia e, ao mesmo tempo, frágil: soa a filosofia com vontade de ciência, e pode parecer um pouco “grande palavra” para fechar um livro que vive sobretudo de tipologia. Ainda assim, percebe-se que ela quer que o mapa não seja apenas descritivo.

Eu gostei muito do segmento sobre William James, precisamente porque ele encarna uma forma de viver sem garantias absolutas, mas sem ceder ao cinismo. E gostei também do tratamento do competitivo, sobretudo quando a autora aproxima essa psicologia da figura de Donald Trump: não tanto como retrato jornalístico, mas como exemplo de uma forma de mattering que vive de soma-zero, de humilhação e de performance de dominância. Não é preciso gostar do exemplo para reconhecer a sua utilidade.

No final, "The Mattering Instinct" fica como um livro honesto, que oferece uma cartografia visual memorável. A tese talvez seja menos “filosofia do sentido da vida” e mais “inventário das estratégias com que evitamos cair no vazio”. Não me tirou o chão. Mas ajuda a identificar e a nomear esse chão.

Publicado no Nx - https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2026/...

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

البحث عن القيمة
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يمتلك البشر ملامح فريدة تميزنا عن بقية المملكة الحيوانية، وهي نتاج رحلة تطورية طويلة ومعقدة:

- الجسد العاري وتبديد الحرارة: فقد أسلافنا الفراء حين انتقلوا من ظلال الغابات إلى هجير "السافانا"، مما سمح لأجسادنا بتبديد الحرارة بكفاءة عالية عبر التعرق.
- أيدٍ صانعة للحضارة: منحتنا الأصابع المتمفصلة قدرة مزدوجة؛ قبضة قوية لإحكام السيطرة، ومهارة فائقة على طوعت لنا استخدام الأدوات الدقيقة.
- ضريبة القوام المنتصب: حرر السير على قدمين أيدينا لنبدع بها، لكنه فرض على هياكلنا العظمية تعديلات جعلتنا، دون غيرنا، عرضة لآلام أسفل الظهر المزمنة.
- دماغٌ خارج نطاق القياس: نتمتع بـ "معدل تضخم دماغي" استثنائي، حيث تبلغ نسبة كتلة الدماغ إلى الجسم لدينا ثلاثة أضعاف ما هي عليه لدى أقرب أقربائنا من الرئيسيات.

- عبقرية "تجعيدات" الدماغ: تضخمت القشرة المخية (مركز معالجة المعلومات) لدرجة أنها اضطرت للانكماش والتجعد لتتسع داخل الجمجمة، مما أعطاها مظهر "ثمرة الجوز" الشهير، إلا أن كبر حجم الرأس هذا جعل من عملية الولادة لدى البشر تجربة محفوفة بالمخاطر والصعوبات.
- اللغة: جسر الأجيال: لدينا قدرة فطرية على التواصل لغوياً، مما يتيح لنا نقل المعرفة وتراكم الخبرات عبر الأجيال، وبفضل ذلك، لا يضطر كل جيل إلى "إعادة اختراع أي شيء" من الصفر.
- الطفولة الممتدة ونضج العقل: نتميز بفترة "عدم نضج" طويلة جداً؛ تبدأ بعجز الرضيع المطلق، وتمتد حتى العشرينات من العمر حين يكتمل أخيراً نمو الفص الجبهي، وهو المسؤول عن الحكمة، واتخاذ القرار، وكبح الجماح.
- الاحمرار خجلاً.. توقيعنا البشري: نحن الكائنات الوحيدة التي يشي لون وجهها بمشاعرها؛ فالاحمرار اللاإرادي عند الخجل أو الارتباك هو ما وصفه "تشارلز داروين" بأنه "أكثر التعبيرات غرابة وإنسانية على الإطلاق".

لكن، وبمعزل عن كل تلك الملامح الجسدية والعصبية التي تجعل منا كائنات معقدة، تبرز "غريزة الشعور بالقيمة" بوصفها السمة الأكثر غرابة والأشد التصاقاً بجوهرنا البشري.
تكتسب هذه الغريزة فرادتها لكونها المفتاح لفهم سلوكياتنا البشرية "غير المبررة"؛ تلك الأفعال التي لا تخضع للمنطق الحيوي الذي يحكم بقية الكائنات. فبينما يمكن تفسير سلوك الحيوان من خلال أهداف غريزية محددة مثل:
- تجنب الألم والموت.
- السعي وراء لذات الطعام والتكاثر.
تأتي أفعال الإنسان لتكسر هذا القالب؛ فنحن نقوم بأشياء لا تخدم "الآلية الداروينية" التقليدية التي تهدف فقط إلى ضمان بقاء الجينات وتوريثها للأجيال القادمة. نحن نبحث عما يجعل لحياتنا معنى، وعما يجعل لوجودنا ثقلاً في هذا العالم، وهو دافع يتجاوز مجرد البقاء المادي إلى الرغبة في أن نكون "مؤثرين" ولنا قيمة لا تنتهي بموت الجسد.
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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
The Mattering Instinct
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Brandi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know why we spent so much time talking about entropy? There was just a lot of physics, in general. And she didn’t actually spend much time talking about her four different mattering instincts, which the book was supposedly about. I didn’t understand the organization of the book and was very glad when it was over.

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mattering is something a lot of us take for granted, and it’s one of the reasons I grabbed this book. The author is a philosopher, and this is a super good book discussing the importance of mattering. She discusses how it can lift us up when we feel like we matter, or it can lead us to some terrible things when we feel like we don’t matter.

At times, there are too many stories in the book. I would have preferred she stick to the philosophy stuff. But other than that, phenomenal book.

[Jenni Stephens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some great points, which could have been a 20 page essay

[Dhiraj Sharma Nyaupane · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are matter longing to matter."

[Lisa Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very intriguing. I do think the categories are well thought out and useful in terms of understanding others. I think her ending was her falling into the trap of hypocrisy that she actually lays out in the book but over all a thought provoking read!

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all long to matter. Needing to matter drives some of our most selfish and selfless impulses. Some people choose to pursue mattering by harming others; they seem to believe they have to matter more than someone else. Some choose to pursue mattering by creating something new to benefit themselves and others. Others choose different forms of mattering.

This book got me to think a bit about how I pursue mattering and what I see in others. I don't quite fit the categories, but I'm guessing those were based on allistic (nonautistic) people. Perhaps autistic people like me are a bit different with this.

I hadn't quite put this term to what I've seen with supremacists, but it makes sense to me. They seem to see mattering as a finite resource, and thus if someone else matters, they see it as taking something from them. So they choose to push back and "prove" they matter more.

I found this book fascinating. Sometimes the author provides extensive background, which is excellent for those who don't have it. It can be a bit tedious in parts if you have the background knowledge already, though I liked seeing how the author explained it in relation to the topic.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!

[Wally Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, like many of us, continues to try to understand both physical reality and other people. She grew up in White Plains, NY, where she graduated from an all-girls high school whose primary concern was to prepare girls for a life of Orthodox Jewish marriage and motherhood. By her senior year she was regularly playing hooky, mostly going to libraries to try to get herself some semblance of an education. She is a professor, the mother of two adult daughters, and an atheist.

She married at nineteen and, because her husband was pursuing his graduate studies at Caltech, she spent her sophomore year of college at UCLA. After that year, she and her husband returned to New York City, he to continue his graduate studies at Yeshiva University and she to continue her undergraduate studies at Barnard College. She graduated summa cum laude and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy with a concentrate in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind.

She returned to Barnard, where she taught courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of mathematics. It was during her tenure at Barnard that, to her own surprise, she wrote her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem which became a critical and popular success. She says that writing the novel changed her relationship with academic philosophy. She has now published ten books: novels, nonfiction, and a book of stories.

Her latest book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. She says she had been gestating its ideas ever since The Mind-Body Problem, when she first introduced the idea of the mattering map—a way to illustrate the different modes of mattering—in her effort to understand the sadness of her main character. The Mattering Instinct is influenced by Baruch Spinoza’s own attempt in the Ethics "to firmly ground an objective ethics on secular grounds that we can all accept, no matter our theological beliefs, or lack thereof."

On page 1 of The Mattering Instinct Goldstein writes, "Every living thing is driven by a mandate that ensures it matters to itself—which is to say that it prioritizes its own surviving and thriving." In human beings "self-mattering engenders one of the most persistent forces in human motivation, which has us striving not only to survive and thrive but also striving after an existence that we deem meaningful in our own eyes." I.e., I am significant—important even—not only to myself but to other people.

While there are many ways to matter in one's own eyes, Goldstein identified four mattering types: socializers, transcenders, competitors, and heroic strivers—four islands in the Sea of Longing on the mattering map. The longing to matter, she points out "can bring out the best and the worst of us, while generating bottomless disputes as to what is the best and the worst of us . . .At their worst, these divides can make us regard targeted others as hardly mattering at all."

The Mattering Insinct describes the characteristics, the strengths, and the weaknesses of socializers, transcenders, competitors, and heroic strivers. (Which are you? I'm apparently an heroic striver.) Goldstein illustrates each flavor of mattering with a short bio of someone famous or obscure who exemplifies the characteristic. The book goes a long, and original way to explain why and why not people act the way they do and don't do. It can also help motivated readers minimize the worst in themselves.

[Mike Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and Educational

This was a very interesting book to read. Author Rebecca Goldstein argues that humans are unique among animals because our advanced brains spend so much time focusing on ourselves that we then are forced to justify all that attention to the world at large. And how our need to matter (to ourselves and everyone else) can drive some incredible achievements but also be the blame for some heinous actions.

Some of the tangents in this book were, in my opinion, unnecessary (I didn't need a whole chapter on entropy) while some helped her make her point. I found her explanation of eudaimonia very enlightening (eudaimonia is living a life of deep satisfaction as opposed to seeking fleeting happiness). As someone without children, I also found her section on the "parenthood paradox" to be interesting ("prospective parents imagine that children will increase their happiness, the reverse is true. Parents tend to experience less happiness than the childless") as well as her explanation for it ("the United States had the largest happiness penalty for parenthood among the 22 developed countries . . .Since the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation left without guaranteed parenting leave, paid sick and vacation days.")

Goldstein also spent a little time discussing the Axial Age which got me interested enough in the subject to seek out a book about it. It is interesting that once we humans became civilized enough that many people had their base needs met (food, shelter, etc) the major religions began popping up all around the world (as one philosopher put it, "Grub first, then ethics.") and I think that all ties into our advances brains. We are the only animals with the intelligence enough to contemplate our own existence and to be aware of our own inevitable demise. Other animals certainly have a survival instinct but it's doubtful they spend their time wondering what it all means and thinking there has to be a bigger purpose to it all. With death as an inevitable end for us all, it's no wonder we seek escape from that fate in the form of religions that give us another go around (reincarnation) or an eternity of bliss. Which isn't to say those options are false, but if humans created them, it makes sense why we did.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. it was a little meandering at points so it wasn't quite perfect but in the end I learned a lot and was interested throughout most of the book.

[Sparhawk Mulder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A persuasive and beautiful read, to me. I think Newberger Goldstein has done a great job identifying a specific, powerful, and (nearly) universal psychological force in humans, and not only explains it in detail but also in nice prose. I enjoyed her subsequent exploration of the different forms and consequences of this mattering instinct; her choices of example biographies are quite good, I think. It’s tricky to use the biographies of historical people as part of a psychological argument - it’s just so easy to presume what people were thinking - but her examples were reliably and thoroughly sourced and also quite moving. This is not the most efficient way to lay out a strict philosophical argument, but this book is built to be legible and both emotionally and logically convincing to anyone picking it up. I was initially skeptical of the book (given the quality of the reviewing authors blurbing on the back cover) but came away mostly convinced and very happy id read it. I’ll certainly be recommending it to some friends to see what their opinion is.

[Daniel Schulof · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great explanation of the irrefutability of the law of entropy. Solid when it’s telling historical anecdotes. But sadly this is not a serious/professional work of philosophy. Load-bearing aspects of the primary argument are not remotely persuasive, so the extensive material devoted to mapping out and speculating about the ramifications of the argument reads as a waste of time. Not recommended.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write quoted on p17
from a poem by WS Merwin

So I have decided, having just now finished this provocative book, to mark it as read rather than let it languish on my currently reading list while I let it simmer.

One thing quite clear to me is how GR is one of my most important "mattering projects" and it matters to me to write a good enough review. Soon enough!

[Laura Gibbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was informative and the subject matter was interesting. I found parts of it to be somewhat boring in that the concept being discussed was obvious in its exploration, but I found the topic overall to be enjoyable to dissect and think about. I think the author did a good job analyzing and communicating a rather abstract subject, with as much detail and clarity as possible, which I appreciated.

[Jack Reimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good analysis of our desire for significance. What is your Mattering project. Understand other people’s mattering projects. Our projects are universalized, everyone must have my mattering project

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

better to die for an idea that will live, then to live for an idea that will die. sbbiko
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure it's not to be happy. Wittgenstein
sex is one of the 9 reasons for reincarnation, the other 8 don't matter. h miller

[Tiago Flora · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more enriching than my rating suggests. Goldstein has found a vocabulary for a litany of feelings that seem universal and universally important. The last 2 chapters are deeply moving. This is a book I will reread. But that doesn't make it a superbly well-written one.

While I liked the content, much of it could have been condensed into an outstanding Substack article. I think that would have been a better format for Goldstein's ideas. But a book carries respect inaccessible to web pages. Hopefully, it carries more longevity as well.

[Masnoon Majeed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca Goldstein describes the mattering instinct as the deep urge probably all of us feel to objectively matter. She explains how we cannot help but pay attention almost all of the time, and since we are stuck inside our own bodies and minds, the object we end up paying the most attention to is ourselves. We pay so much of this attention that the question "why me?" becomes inevitable. We feel that we subjectively matter, but whether that subjectivity is in any way objective is the question that eats us.

This made me think that perhaps one reason we reach for other people is that all this attention to ourselves is simply too much to bear on our own. So we seek friends, partners, children, pets… something that lets us stop thinking about ourselves for a while, someone to help share the burden of being ourselves. She explains that the more we see ourselves as something vast — a "vast expanse of consciousness over time and space," something special — the more we feel the responsibility and pressure to do something meaningful with the life we have.

She also identifies something distinct about mattering: a mattering machine, one that makes us feel we matter, is even more instinctively unpalatable than a pleasure machine. I have some ideas on why this might be, but I don't think I understand it fully…

She poses many questions that I have often asked myself. Like, should I merge my identity with something greater than myself, or do I achieve mattering simply by doing my best by the people that life has contingently bound me with? She also takes the vulnerability of life seriously. When life becomes precarious, in the big shifts that threaten our sense of mattering, the question grows louder. All living things, she writes, can be wounded and wasted by what they meet in the world, and it is exactly this that should make us treat one another kindly.

To matter rightly, she says, is to support life's fight against entropy. Biological life is itself a struggle against entropy, and almost everything worth anything, every friendship, every relationship, takes energy to build and to keep. There are so many more ways for things to go wrong than right, and yet, with effort, we manage to hold them in some kind of order, and that holding seems valuable. So she enjoins us to create order, and to support others in their own fight against entropy, as the way to get mattering right. She adds a condition: what matters to me, if it is objective, must matter more widely too, so good mattering is the kind that helps with the struggle of mattering, mine and yours both. She makes the whole argument through people, famous and not, William James, Wittgenstein, Baba Amte, case studies of how different lives answered the same question.

What I liked

Her description of the instinct is spot on. The grounding in attention especially that we are condemned to attend to ourselves, and that the "why me" falls out of that is a clean and convincing account of where the longing comes from. Her summary of how that longing arises, as the mind trying to rationalise its own self-mattering, is a good one.

I liked the case studies. Watching how real people, well-known and obscure, made sense of their own version of the question kept the book alive rather than abstract.

But the best part of the book, for me, was what the book let me do. I read it as a kind of live experiment — going along with her ideas, then turning the same gaze back onto myself, asking the questions of my own life as they came up. It became almost a meditation on mattering, mine specifically, and it helped me make sense of my own past, present, and future.

And her entropy guide, for all its problems, is interesting. The recognition that life is a struggle against entropy, that everything worthwhile takes energy to sustain, and that the quiet daily act of keeping things from falling apart is itself worth something, is worth being mindful of as we live.

What I disliked

My deepest problem with the book seems committed to finding a yes to the meaning question. It never really sits with the other possibility: that the honest position might be to leave the question open. A clean yes and a clean no might both be wrong.

What she does instead, I think, is smuggle meaning back in through a side door. Other thinkers have done it with God, or with History. She does it with thermodynamics. The fight against entropy arrives just in time to make the contradiction bearable, to hand us something cosmic-sounding to point at so we don't have to keep staring at the silence.

And here is where the book goes into trouble. One of her insights is that for so much of life we cannot actually be sure whether our mattering project mattered at all. That is the key. She could have built the whole book around it. Instead she raises it and walks straight past it. Also, if we can't be sure our mattering project matters, then how can we be sure the struggle against entropy matters either? But if our mattering projects matter regardless of our certainty about mattering, that could actually ground the entire mattering project, not on a surely meaningful, awesome struggle against entropy, but as a possibly meaningful mattering, meaningful to the extent anything can be.

She also gets something else wrong: she says that self-mattering is the organizing principle behind all the instincts, the way knowledge is the organizing principle behind all the departments of a university even though there is no Department of Knowledge. I do not think this works. The departments really do all serve knowledge, but the instincts do not all serve the individual's mattering. Biology spends the individual all the time to keep the line going: the body ages on a schedule, the salmon dies after spawning, the parent starves so the child can eat. At the level of the individual, biology does not care about you; what it preserves is the continuity, not the self. So the real organizing principle is the survival of the line, and the individual is just the vehicle.

The four types I struggled with, for two reasons. First, the categories, transcenders, socialisers, heroic strivers, competitors, feel arbitrary, though I'll grant that all categories are a little arbitrary. More than that, the book reads the heroic striver as good and the competitor, particularly the kind who competes to the exclusion of others, as bad, with the transcenders somewhere in between, better than competitors but not as good as heroic strivers. I don't think she explored the categories in an unbiased way, and some of that bias gets reflected in her conclusions. The desire to give others meaning, the kind a cult leader has, is not always evil: it could just as easily be a religious leader who genuinely guides their community — in her own terms, creating good order and helping others create order. Second, the line between the four types is far more fluid than you'd expect from a personality classification. I can think of times I have acted like all four, and I am not sure they work as distinct, useful categories.

There is also her assumption that order is good, which I think can be questioned. A dictator might serve the struggle against entropy rather better than a democracy. She could have a partial answer, that my struggle should not impede and should ideally support yours, but an authoritarian system might still be better at giving everything structure than a free one. Does this mean Goldstein could be on the side of whatever most efficiently creates order, the order in which love and flourishing thrive, even if that turns out not to be a democratic, liberal world?

And there is a gap I kept feeling: she pays little attention to how different the need for mattering becomes in a secular world. In a stable society held together by shared myths, I suspect the mattering crisis is far milder. It is in the secular, strongly individualist, weakly collective world that it is hardest…

One thing the book made me think about is what happens to mattering now. She writes about mattering turning people cruel, but I think the bigger change is still coming…

Once upon a time, if making others laugh was your mattering project, to matter you only had to be the funny one in your village, not better than every comedian who speaks your language. For a singer, being a decent ballad was enough; you did not have to compete with Ed Sheeran on the same platform.

As the world becomes one global village, the bar for mattering keeps rising and there is less and less room to simply be good. An ordinary editor in an ordinary town used to get by; now only the best survive. I think this is the part she misses: usually, to be good is to matter. The best chef in the world rarely asks whether his work matters; the mediocre one is asking a different question When you are genuinely good at something, the mattering question gets easier — it quiets down on its own. Her account of the musician who had to build a new relationship with music precisely because he wasn't good enough at the old one. But I want to take this one step further: we simply have less and less room to be good.

We have less room to be good, not in narrow specialist jobs but in the broad things anyone used to be able to do: to be an artist, a leader, and now with AI even a doctor or a writer. A society held together by shared myths where being good at something was humanly possible, made mattering easier. A global village with AI on top of it does the opposite, forcing us into accepting mediocrity, which might precipitate an even deeper crisis of mattering.

Overall, I gave the book four stars, because despite some issues, it is well-written book, and a good book to reflect on: what is your mattering project?

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To matter means, at its most basic level, to be deserving of attention.” (5)

“What I’m arguing is that the mattering instinct is not, in itself, an adaptation, that is, a distinct psychological faculty with an evolutionary function. It is instead engendered by two other features of the mind interacting with each other. It is thus closer to what evolutionary scientists call a spandrel (from the architectural term for the tapering space between two arches, namely a feature of an organism that was not directly selected for its adaptive value but arose as a by-product of other features). In the case of the mattering instinct, the first feature is the self-mattering that is necessary for our pursuing our lives and is pounded into our very identity. The second is the cognitive capacity to reflect and analyze on all things, including the self. Longing to matter—that is, the mattering instinct—is what happens when our cognitive processes try to rationalize our self-mattering.” (90)

“Being motivated by self-mattering isn’t tantamount to selfishness. Selfishness means caring only about getting results that benefit yourself, while self-mattering is having our brain function as nature has built it to function—as the outcome of biology’s response to the law of entropy. Within the normal course of your life, engaged as you are in all its myriad details, there is no distance to be gained between you and your self-mattering, no question as to whether you will regard your own flourishing as deserving of your special attention. Your self-mattering is one with your engagement in your life. It’s one with your being you.” (68-9)

“So yes, there can be mattering projects that are destructive, aims that are heartless, savage, and unforgivable unleashed by the mattering instinct. But in each of us the longing that makes us human speaks to something estimable in demanding that we justify ourselves to ourselves. That estimable something is what we vaguely have in mind when we speak of the dignity inherent in being human...to claim our unique human dignity is to honor what is so remarkable in being matter longing to matter—the staunchly realist position we take toward our own mattering that has us striving to earn the smattering of mattering that will reconcile us with our self-mattering selves. Plato wrote that even in our reaching for beauty, there is beauty. So, too, in our reaching for mattering, there is mattering.” (97)

“The Bible presents the exit from paradise as a fall, but not in my retelling. Paradise was living in a purely Darwinian existence just like all the other animals. Paradise was feeling no need to seek the values that could justify ourselves to ourselves, just as the other animals feel no need. Once we knew what we knew about ourselves, it was time to move on. We weren’t banished from the garden but left of our own choice, although full of uncertainty. That is the excruciating aspect of the exit from paradise—not the justificatory work that we feel called upon to do but the uncertainty over whether the work ever accomplishes its aim. The knowledge of ourselves born of the fruit transformed us into values-seeking creatures who lacked the knowledge of values, despite the fruit that the garden had grossly mislabeled. And we never know whether all our normative struggles to go beyond the Darwinian instincts of the animals have added up to a hill of beans—or rather, to skip several chapters ahead in Genesis, to an ill-chosen portion of potage. By the sweat of our brow, we toil at trying to convince ourselves that we deserve the self-mattering that makes us who we are.” (101-2)

[Mohammad amin Abbaszadeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

خواندن The Mattering Instinct (غریزه مهم بودن) اثر ربکا گلدشتاین برای من بیشتر از آنکه مطالعه‌ی یک کتاب فلسفی باشد، تجربه‌ی روبه‌رو شدن با یکی از عمیق‌ترین نیازهای انسان بود؛ نیاز به اینکه احساس کنیم «اهمیت داریم». گلدشتاین از همان ابتدا نشان می‌دهد که میل به مهم بودن، دیده شدن و اثر گذاشتن، صرفاً یک خواسته‌ی روان‌شناختی نیست، بلکه نیرویی است که بسیاری از تصمیم‌ها، روابط، باورها و حتی تاریخ بشر را شکل داده است. هنگام خواندن کتاب بارها احساس کردم نویسنده در حال نام‌گذاری احساسی است که همه تجربه کرده‌ایم، اما کمتر توانسته‌ایم آن را با این دقت و ظرافت توصیف کنیم.

ایده‌ی محوری کتاب این است که انسان‌ها به‌طور غریزی می‌خواهند «مهم باشند»؛ نه فقط برای خودشان، بلکه در نگاه دیگران و در جهان. گلدشتاین این میل را The Mattering Instinct یا «غریزه‌ی اهمیت داشتن» می‌نامد و استدلال می‌کند که بخش بزرگی از رفتارهای فردی و اجتماعی ما را می‌توان از دریچه‌ی همین نیاز فهمید. او با بهره‌گیری از فلسفه، روان‌شناسی، علوم شناختی و ادبیات نشان می‌دهد که چرا موفقیت، شهرت، قدرت، تعلق، عشق و حتی تعصب‌های ایدئولوژیک، در بسیاری از موارد تلاشی برای پاسخ دادن به یک پرسش بنیادین‌اند: «آیا من اهمیت دارم؟»

یکی از ایده‌هایی که بیش از همه برایم ماندگار بود، نگاه نویسنده به مفهوم شادکامی است. گلدشتاین معتقد است رضایت عمیق از زندگی بیش از هر چیز بر دو ستون استوار است: ارتباط و مهم بودن. انسان زمانی احساس شکوفایی می‌کند که از یک سو با دیگران پیوندی واقعی و معنادار داشته باشد و از سوی دیگر باور کند که حضور و کنش او برای کسی یا چیزی ارزشمند است. شاید به همین دلیل است که تنهایی و احساس بی‌اهمیتی، حتی در کنار موفقیت‌های ظاهری، می‌توانند انسان را از درون تهی کنند. این بخش از کتاب برای من یادآور این حقیقت بود که هیچ موفقیتی، جای خالی احساس تعلق و معنادار بودن را پر نمی‌کند.

بخش جذاب دیگری از کتاب، مدلی است که گلدشتاین برای توضیح شیوه‌های مختلف معنا بخشیدن به زندگی ارائه می‌دهد. او نشان می‌دهد که انسان‌ها معمولاً برای پاسخ به این پرسش که «چرا زندگی من ارزشمند است؟» در یکی از چهار قلمرو یا آنچه او به‌صورت استعاری «قاره» توصیف می‌کند، قرار می‌گیرند: قاره‌ی اجتماعی‌ها که اهمیت را در روابط، خانواده و تعلق می‌یابند؛ قاره‌ی قهرمان‌ها که ارزش زندگی را در دستاوردهای بزرگ و اثرگذاری فردی جست‌وجو می‌کنند؛ قاره‌ی رقابتی‌ها که بر برتری، موفقیت و پیشی گرفتن از دیگران تکیه دارند؛ و قاره‌ی تعالی‌گراها که معنا را در خدمت به حقیقت، اخلاق، خدا، علم یا آرمان‌هایی فراتر از خود می‌بینند. آنچه برایم جالب بود این بود که نویسنده این دسته‌بندی را برای ارزش‌گذاری افراد به کار نمی‌برد، بلکه آن را راهی برای فهم روایت‌هایی می‌داند که هرکدام از ما برای توجیه و معنادار کردن زندگی خود می‌سازیم.

بعد از تمام کردن کتاب، بیش از هر چیز این سؤال در ذهنم ماند که معیار اهمیت داشتن را از کجا می‌گیریم؟ از تحسین دیگران، از موفقیت‌های بیرونی یا از همسویی با ارزش‌هایی که برای خودمان انتخاب کرده‌ایم؟ The Mattering Instinct پاسخ‌های ساده و آماده ارائه نمی‌دهد، اما خواننده را وادار می‌کند دوباره به انگیزه‌های پنهان رفتارهایش نگاه کند. برای من، این کتاب یادآور این نکته بود که بسیاری از تصمیم‌هایی که منطقی یا کاملاً شخصی به نظر می‌رسند، در عمق خود از یک میل مشترک انسانی سرچشمه می‌گیرند: اینکه احساس کنیم حضورمان در این جهان، بی‌معنا و بی‌اثر نیست. و شاید ارزشمندترین دستاورد کتاب همین باشد که به‌جای آموزش «چگونه مهم باشیم»، از ما می‌خواهد ابتدا از خود بپرسیم برای چه کسی، برای چه چیزی و به چه دلیلی می‌خواهیم مهم باشیم؟ این پرسش، مدت‌ها پس از بستن کتاب، همچنان با من ماند.

[Paul Sand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had bad luck with self-help books lately. (I'm not sure why I keep checking them out! It's not like I need help!) But good news, readers: although Goodreads sticks a "self help" genre tag on this book, it's much more, and better. (Other Goodreads tags: Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Science. All accurate.)

It's very good, well deserving the praise you can read on the book's Amazon page and elsewhere. I regularly blog my "top 10" nonfiction reads for the year. If I make it to 2027, I can guarantee this will be on that list.

The author, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writes superbly on this topic she clearly cares so much about. She does not talk down to her readers, she doesn't avoid fancy lingo, like "ontological". I think she assumes you're gonna catch up via Google.

(Example, page 86: "It was a trompe l'oeil at an ontological level, a trompe l'ontologie." Well, shoot. There's two things I have to look up.)

She is, however, not above a bit of wordplay. Page 64, the bit that made me smile is bolded:

There are exceptions to the constancy of self-attention. You might have sometimes experienced extraordinary intervals when your attention was drawn so fixedly toward something outside of you, perhaps as you concentrated on a task that so entirely absorbed your attention that you lost all sense of yourself—together, most tellingly, with the psychological sense of time's passage. That is how fundamental to us our self-attention is: Escape it temporarily, and you temporally escape temporality. These extraordinary episodes have come to be called flow and they are so psychologically distinct precisely because they are so anomalous.

The book is also full of I-didn't-know-that items. Example: back in the early 20th century, pretty and rare feathers were worth (ounce for ounce) four times more than gold. And so: "The costliest loss of valuables aboard the Titanic lay in the boxes of feathers that went down with the ship."

All this, and I haven't really talked about the book's subject: mattering. It's a near-universal human instinct, coming into play when you have won the basic struggle against entropy, and assured your self-preservation. Then you start wondering: what was the point of all that. Isn't there more? Shouldn't I (somehow) matter?

There are a number of tactics people use to scratch this itchy instinct. The author has composed a "mattering map" showing the four basic varieties (if you don't want to track down the book, it's reproduced in the WSJ review). Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but you will almost certainly recognize your neighborhood.

Finally, the author tells fascinating stories of the famous and not-so-famous, and how they worked out their mattering instincts. (That bit about the feathers above? It's about this cat burglar…)

In short: this book has my highest recommendation.

[Greg Talbot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eudaimonia feels tough these days. The polycrisis narratives in American culture feel ever-present. The dismantling of democracy by the Trump administration—an endless attack on the free press, the perverse protection of wealthy perverts and attacks on Epstein victims, the weaponization of the FBI by a drunken toady, and the fascist assault on free and fair elections—are reminders that the best days in America are past or in the distant future. The natural environment continues to recede, and our technologies distance us from true connection.

Despite the injustice and tyranny of our times, there is always the knowledge that inhumane forces must push against the humane ones because, inherently, we matter. "Self-mattering is a feature of all living things" (p. 60), Goldstein writes. We are inherently tribal—we may propose that it is Black lives that matter, or fetuses that matter, but a reverence for life, for life's sake, is at the heart of our civilization. From examining storied lives, Goldstein investigates and categorizes the ways people seek to matter. We strive toward heroics, we transcend toward the moral infinite, we make babies, we seek pleasure, we build, we destroy, we honor the force inside.

At times, I was thrilled with Goldstein's cross-study pollination. Have I ever considered the second law of thermodynamics—the inexorable move toward entropy—as a way to understand the social world and relationships? I have not! And there is something to it—it may indeed, as Goldstein states, be the second law of thermodynamics, but the primary law of relationships. But there were many other times when I found a book smattered with interesting trinkets, but missing an organizing principle. Another recent book of equal ambition, Michael Pollan's "The World Appears," an exploration of consciousness. It attempts a similar exploration of a large unseen topic—consciousness—but pulls the thread delicately through stories that channel our attention through the layers of research. and thought experiments. Although I admired Goldstein's intelligence and usage of 20-cent words, I felt largely unconnected from the story. The content canvasses a large number of stories, but the depth is missing. It felt more like Goldstein was poking at my attention, telling me there is a story, instead of providing a well thought-out and organized book.

I think most people would agree "mattering" is incredibly important - and it's strange more of our education system doesn't center a civil and moral investigation. I think Goldstein is on to some incredibly important ideas here. There are leaders that arise, from the Greek philosophers, to William James, to MLK, and help our society see itself better - and I would start with their work since their clarity is unmatched.

[Martin Smedjeback · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't people care!? The world is burning and so many, both humans and animals, are suffering. I sometimes think this when I see people living their ordinary lives. We need more people who care about the bigger issues in our societies. But I also believe that more people would find meaningful lives if they engaged with broader societal issues.

After listening to *The Mattering Instinct*, I realize that many people have found something to live for, but I may have missed it because it differs from my own life project. It is so easy to think that everyone should adopt one's own "mattering project"—like the philosopher who says truth is what everyone should strive for, the religious person who says everyone should live for God, or the activist who believes everyone should champion their specific cause.

The author Rosenberg's answer is that everyone finds their own mattering project, but that we should nevertheless choose them with care. She argues that they should be ones that do not contribute to entropy (disorder), but rather build order. I personally believe they should be projects that do not contribute to the suffering of sentient beings, and ideally bring more happiness and meaning to a greater number of people.

"Eat what you want, but don't give a damn about what I eat" is the kind of comment I often get when I bring up animals or veganism. Could it be that they feel they don't share my mattering project and want to tell me not to interfere with what they care about? That is perfectly reasonable. Of course, not everyone has to be involved in what I am involved in, but at the same time, I think we should be able to choose actions that, as far as possible, do not contribute to suffering—similar to how we have laws today that prohibit the abuse and murder of humans. People don't have to be animal rights activists, but that doesn't mean they need to contribute to suffering through their purchases of animal products, in my view.

While listening to the book, I had several 'aha' moments. I lost my Christian faith as a young adult, but it didn't mean that much to me. Now I realize that the reason it didn't feel like a crisis was probably because I had never been a "transcendent striver," but rather a "heroic striver." Meaning that, based on Goldstein's "mattering map," I hadn't found my purpose in the spiritual, but rather in a striving to work for a better society.

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to reflect on the point of our existence, and a great complement to the happiness literature out there.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, it seems all we do on the Internet and social media is argue about whose activities are most superior and most important. We all want to "matter," but we can develop elaborate defensive arguments about who gets there the best. Many times, our own need to matter gets in the way of recognizing what matters to other people. And yet needing to matter at something is one of the deepest human longings. We need to feel like we have a beneficial place in the universe. In this book, public intellectual Rebecca Newberger Goldstein analyzes the mattering instinct, how it moves us, and how it can divide or unite us.

She calls each person's drive to matter, their "mattering project." The ability - and the education - to find a good mattering project that benefits other people is a social privilege that borders on or even extends to being a right. When people embrace mattering projects that oppress other people, they end up being counterproductive. Good mattering projects counter the decay (entropy) inherent in the universe. In this sense, her naturalist analysis sounds kind of like Christian takes about the so-called fall, philosophically present centuries before we knew about entropy.

Different people have different "continents" of mattering projects, and just like cross-continental communications today, different continents have trouble understanding each other. One person's mattering might center around accomplishment while another's centers around doing for others. Another's might center around competition. Still another's, finding transcendence or God. Many of today's social conflicts can be explained by one person's mattering project fighting against another's mattering project.

This book offers a very deep analysis of what humans do to matter. It offers new language that might be used psychologically to understand human behavior, whether in the counseling office or dealing with the public. Importantly, it addresses what happens when people feel like they don't matter: A charismatic figure often takes advantage of them. This book posits an understanding that I hope becomes incorporated into our wider social vocabulary in the future.

[Morgan Lambresi · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Overall, the book was good. It gave some new insights into the different ways that people define mattering, which is a necessary insight to keep us connected. A big part of this book is that we all have different aspects to us that make us strive for different things, which should bring us together rather than divide us.

Some parts of the book were, in my non-scholarly opinion, too dense. After getting through the first 6 of 8 chapters, I really only felt like I had read through a few different ideas. While that means the ideas were more detailed, which I appreciate, they were also semi-redundant.

My favorite part of this book was the law of entropy, which was a recurring theme. Essentially, all living things have an inclination to decay and for humans in particular, the mattering-project that we take on in our lives is our way of resisting this decay. At least that was how I understood it.

The last thing I'll add was her take on transcenders as a form of mattering. While I will not say that I think she was unfair or biased, I would say that when on the topic of transcenders (people who believe in God or a higher power as their source of mattering) she seemed eager to talk about her atheism and how transcenders have a right to matter as we all do, but they shouldn't try to push it on everybody else. This point is understandable, as somebody who wouldn't categorize themselves as a person who gets their meaning from transcendence, but I felt that she of all people, would have pointed out the idea that transcenders get their mattering from getting others to follow in the same path. With Christianity in mind, a phrase such as "If I believe this to be the truth, it is now my job to tell everybody about it" is common. So, wouldn't that naturally be apart of their inclination to matter? Just a thought.

Good book, good ideas, will likely read again to try to see the book from her eyes, because it didn't fully click for me this time around.

On to the next.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know. It isn't completely wrong but didn't feel right to me either. I accept that there is a basic human tendency to find things that matter and then try to give them importance in our lives, but I'm not so sure that it is fundamental. It dances around more basic issues, such as free will and the old philosophical question of the one and the many. I see "mattering" more as a useful lens for analyzing behaviors that in some cases can work well, and in other cases is more likely to be a psychological Procrustean bed. It is a bit like analyzing literature through a Marxist or Freudian or Feminist lens; you can do it with any work of fiction, and it fits some like a glove, but others not. Still, it can almost always reveal some truth as long as you don't take it too seriously. I felt, for example, that none of Ms. Goldstein's four strategies for mattering fit me. There were elements of me in all of them, but I cross over back and forth between them and then sometimes color outside the lines completely.

I found it interesting that Ms. Goldstein rejects the importance of asking "What matters?" as a general question that should have the same answer for everyone. She makes a decent case that the concept is better understood and applied on an individual level. What matters to you may be different from what matters to me. That got me wondering about whether the whole concept of mattering really applies outside of contemporary individualist societies in the Western European tradition. Maybe in a more collectivist Asian society it would be more "What matters to us?" than "What matters to me?". Or in Buddhist thinking where the ego is dissolved don't you either have to ask the generalized "What matters?" or quit asking the question at all since there is no "you" to ask it?