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The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
A major, paradigm–shifting work by one of our most dazzling public intellectuals that grapples with humanity’s most fundamental to matter.
MacArthur Fellow and author of Plato at the Googleplex, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein returns with a 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 longing is the source of both interpersonal and societal progress and conflict—the very crux of the human experience. The “mattering map,” a concept that she first introduced in her bestselling novel The Mind–Body Problem, returns to illuminate how our need for significance shapes identity, relationships, and culture. Goldstein seamlessly merges rigorous scholarship with compelling storytelling, offering a framework to understand and harness this universal drive.
The Mattering Instinct is a profound exploration and a major intellectual contribution, decades in the making, of what it means to be human, challenging readers to reconsider their place in the world and their connections to others.
MacArthur Fellow and author of Plato at the Googleplex, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein returns with a 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 longing is the source of both interpersonal and societal progress and conflict—the very crux of the human experience. The “mattering map,” a concept that she first introduced in her bestselling novel The Mind–Body Problem, returns to illuminate how our need for significance shapes identity, relationships, and culture. Goldstein seamlessly merges rigorous scholarship with compelling storytelling, offering a framework to understand and harness this universal drive.
The Mattering Instinct is a profound exploration and a major intellectual contribution, decades in the making, of what it means to be human, challenging readers to reconsider their place in the world and their connections to others.
1 pages, Audio CD
Published January 13, 2026
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January 19, 2026
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.
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.
February 5, 2026
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.
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.
April 11, 2026
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!!!!
---
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."
----------------
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.
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.
February 1, 2026
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.
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.
March 14, 2026
“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/...
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/...
April 2, 2026
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
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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
February 11, 2026
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.
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.
March 6, 2026
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.
February 1, 2026
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!
January 26, 2026
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!
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!
February 5, 2026
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.
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.
February 7, 2026
Rebecca Goldstein builds a rigorous case for something that feels intuitive - we need to matter. A part of me kept thinking she's proving what we already know. I guess there's value in having the research and language for it.
What was interesting was her mention of Martin Seligman's 2018 workshop on mattering and that it predicts organizational health and employee success.
2018 seems late to this insight. haven't we been talking about purpose in the workplace forever?
What was interesting was her mention of Martin Seligman's 2018 workshop on mattering and that it predicts organizational health and employee success.
2018 seems late to this insight. haven't we been talking about purpose in the workplace forever?
February 17, 2026
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.
February 23, 2026
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
April 10, 2026
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
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
February 3, 2026
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.
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.
April 4, 2026
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.
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.
February 22, 2026
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.
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.
February 7, 2026
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?
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?
April 3, 2026
Encontré este libro en un artículo sobre el significado de ser humano en medio de la revolución de la IA. Y aunque este libro no se adentra en ese aspecto, sí pone en sus páginas una comprehensiva exploración del ser y de la necesidad de ser.
Este no es un libro de autoayuda o superación o nada similar, es un libro de filosofía y no es tímido al respecto. La autora es especialmente fan de Spinoza y una parte de su marco referencial viene de allí. Sin embargo, no es un libro que se queda en lo etéreo. La autora sienta las bases filosóficas para luego permitirse desarrollar mediante planteamientos psicológicos y ejemplos, tanto históricos como contemporáneos, su hipótesis central sobre porque el ser humano es materia en busca de importancia (aunque el termino "mattering" en inglés expresa otras particularidades); como eso no solo nos diferencia de los animales sino que nos obliga a justificarnos a presentar nuestra existencia hacia nosotros mismos, nuestros pares, los desconocidos o lo sobrenatural según nuestra propias orientaciones.
Aunque no es un libro prescriptivo, sí entra a describir las diferentes áreas en las que una persona puede encontrar su importancia. También como en busca de esa línea de vital importancia muchas personas han cometido atrocidades, porque el instinto hacia el significado no tiene porque llevar a la bondad y las buenas obras (aunque la autora si toca aspectos morales y como la búsqueda de significado/importancia debería ir acompañada de una perspectiva moralmente aceptable).
Es un libro muy reflexivo, que se lee muy rápido para todo su contenido y que tiene mucha relevancia en el mundo de ahora donde encontrar nuestro lugar a veces parece más complicado que nunca.
Este no es un libro de autoayuda o superación o nada similar, es un libro de filosofía y no es tímido al respecto. La autora es especialmente fan de Spinoza y una parte de su marco referencial viene de allí. Sin embargo, no es un libro que se queda en lo etéreo. La autora sienta las bases filosóficas para luego permitirse desarrollar mediante planteamientos psicológicos y ejemplos, tanto históricos como contemporáneos, su hipótesis central sobre porque el ser humano es materia en busca de importancia (aunque el termino "mattering" en inglés expresa otras particularidades); como eso no solo nos diferencia de los animales sino que nos obliga a justificarnos a presentar nuestra existencia hacia nosotros mismos, nuestros pares, los desconocidos o lo sobrenatural según nuestra propias orientaciones.
Aunque no es un libro prescriptivo, sí entra a describir las diferentes áreas en las que una persona puede encontrar su importancia. También como en busca de esa línea de vital importancia muchas personas han cometido atrocidades, porque el instinto hacia el significado no tiene porque llevar a la bondad y las buenas obras (aunque la autora si toca aspectos morales y como la búsqueda de significado/importancia debería ir acompañada de una perspectiva moralmente aceptable).
Es un libro muy reflexivo, que se lee muy rápido para todo su contenido y que tiene mucha relevancia en el mundo de ahora donde encontrar nuestro lugar a veces parece más complicado que nunca.
April 9, 2026
In general, I find Goldstein's books to be fascinating, but I struggled with this one a bit. The instinct of mattering (essentially, finding the real, individual expression of purpose for our self) seems at once both vital, and yet too diffuse. As with her other books, this one displays deep erudition, with examples provided from very diverse areas of life and science. The variety keeps the book interesting.
Goldstein divides the types of mattering into four main types: social, heroic, transcendent and competitive. These seem to me to be somewhat capricious. An example in the heroic section, of a man who essentially sacrifices his own brilliance to support his (even more?) brilliant and talented wife, is a good example - while it is understandable how it can be described as heroic, the life of service that it displays could easily have been described as 'service' rather than heroism?
I found the section on transcendent people to be particularly difficult to stay with. Even though Goldstein seems to keep open the possibility of atheist/non-believers as transcenders, the examples seem mostly to focus on transcenders as believers in a divine being. There is irony here, as Goldstein herself does not (any longer) appear to believe in a traditional divine being.
The final chapter attempts to wrap up the arguments, and is interesting in part because it acknowledges some of the difficulties in generalizing and universalizing the forces that drive us. This chapter appears to undercut some of the arguments made in earlier chapters. Each of us is an individual with our own path to find, and the path that we individually find, and how we address other people and their respective paths, makes all the difference.
Goldstein divides the types of mattering into four main types: social, heroic, transcendent and competitive. These seem to me to be somewhat capricious. An example in the heroic section, of a man who essentially sacrifices his own brilliance to support his (even more?) brilliant and talented wife, is a good example - while it is understandable how it can be described as heroic, the life of service that it displays could easily have been described as 'service' rather than heroism?
I found the section on transcendent people to be particularly difficult to stay with. Even though Goldstein seems to keep open the possibility of atheist/non-believers as transcenders, the examples seem mostly to focus on transcenders as believers in a divine being. There is irony here, as Goldstein herself does not (any longer) appear to believe in a traditional divine being.
The final chapter attempts to wrap up the arguments, and is interesting in part because it acknowledges some of the difficulties in generalizing and universalizing the forces that drive us. This chapter appears to undercut some of the arguments made in earlier chapters. Each of us is an individual with our own path to find, and the path that we individually find, and how we address other people and their respective paths, makes all the difference.
March 28, 2026
We are creatures made of matter who long to matter. Our biological necessity of self importance - “if I am not for me, who will be?” - acts in opposition with our ability to self reflect, forcing us to ask ourselves, “why do I matter?” “Why, for all the millions and billions of creatures on this Earth, and all the ones that came before and will come after, do I matter? Am I worthy of all the attention I give myself? Should I give myself this attention? Ought others?”
The longing to matter is separate, but related to our desire for connection - a different topic I have also read about and is covered in a book I recommend called Together.
Interestingly, not everyone comes up with the same answer to this question. People are residents of different regions in the metaphorical mattering map. There are transcenders (the religious), socializers (for which both “the public” and their own intimate community may matter), heroic strivers, and competitors.
The book does not claim any of these mattering projects is objectively better than the other, nor is the book a prescription to pick one mattering project, but it did provide me comfort in wading through my own personal existentialism.
The question to matter is perhaps the oldest question of all, and I enjoy reading the well-crafted thoughts of philosophers before (or parallel to) me. It’s like being lost in the woods and spotting a well worn trail; it makes the journey a little easier for a while, and brings comfort in knowing I am not the first human to be lost here.
I think as of now my mattering project is socializer - in some combination of community, family, and friend.
Maybe also ethics heroic striver.
The longing to matter is separate, but related to our desire for connection - a different topic I have also read about and is covered in a book I recommend called Together.
Interestingly, not everyone comes up with the same answer to this question. People are residents of different regions in the metaphorical mattering map. There are transcenders (the religious), socializers (for which both “the public” and their own intimate community may matter), heroic strivers, and competitors.
The book does not claim any of these mattering projects is objectively better than the other, nor is the book a prescription to pick one mattering project, but it did provide me comfort in wading through my own personal existentialism.
The question to matter is perhaps the oldest question of all, and I enjoy reading the well-crafted thoughts of philosophers before (or parallel to) me. It’s like being lost in the woods and spotting a well worn trail; it makes the journey a little easier for a while, and brings comfort in knowing I am not the first human to be lost here.
I think as of now my mattering project is socializer - in some combination of community, family, and friend.
Maybe also ethics heroic striver.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 4, 2026
The point of this book is that people look for reasons to matter--reasons to push back against entropy and find meaning. Goldstein writes that there are basically four ways to do so, and thus four categories of humans.
You have your transcenders, who believe that they matter because they believe a divine being says they do. Then you have your socializers, who try to find satisfactory mattering (her word) either from intimates or non-intimates (put fame seekers in that second subcategory).
Next are the heroic strivers--who try to matter via artistic, athletic, intellectual, or other endeavors. Lastly you have the competitors, who try to matter by being superior, either in a group (team) or as an individual.
The book is full of rabbit trails and anecdotes. It's always interesting even if often off-topic. My main problem (as someone in group one) is that Goldstein believes these groups are more or less and fixed, and any group's strictures should not be demanded or sought in others. I don't think this is right. In fact I think it's selfish. But Goldstein probably would have predicted that response.
You have your transcenders, who believe that they matter because they believe a divine being says they do. Then you have your socializers, who try to find satisfactory mattering (her word) either from intimates or non-intimates (put fame seekers in that second subcategory).
Next are the heroic strivers--who try to matter via artistic, athletic, intellectual, or other endeavors. Lastly you have the competitors, who try to matter by being superior, either in a group (team) or as an individual.
The book is full of rabbit trails and anecdotes. It's always interesting even if often off-topic. My main problem (as someone in group one) is that Goldstein believes these groups are more or less and fixed, and any group's strictures should not be demanded or sought in others. I don't think this is right. In fact I think it's selfish. But Goldstein probably would have predicted that response.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
We all want to matter
This book introduced me to a universal human need that I now recognize and acknowledge but had never really thought of---the need to MATTER. Everyone wants to matter, to live lives we see as meaningful . We want to matter in different ways, though, depending on your personality and circumstances. Goldstein identifies and explores four mattering types: socializers, transcenders, competitors, and heroic strivers. She gave me a lot of food for thought.
Unfortunately, the book was spoiled for me by the author’s style , which I found wordy and academic. At one point I even entered a comment, “pompous gobbledegook”. A good example (and shorter than most} is “We are not only gregarious but altricial---meaning born helpless and requiring long periods of care from others.(The root comes from Latin alere -meaning to nurture, to nurse- making for the other half of alma mater.)." First of all, it would be best in general not to use a word you do not think your reader will know. If you think it is a term they should know or that you will be using a lot, it is good to define it, but you really do not need to provide the derivation. It is off-topic, even for readers like me who are interested in language. There are wonderful very appropriate references in the book to thinkers, writers, and leaders in the past and present day, but she too often added irrelevant information about the person, which annoyed me. Get back on track!
If you can be patient and not be put off by the writing, there are some very good ideas in this book that can help you understand your own motivations and that of others. And that is certainly something that matters.
I received an advance review copy of this book from Edelweiss and Liveright publishers.
This book introduced me to a universal human need that I now recognize and acknowledge but had never really thought of---the need to MATTER. Everyone wants to matter, to live lives we see as meaningful . We want to matter in different ways, though, depending on your personality and circumstances. Goldstein identifies and explores four mattering types: socializers, transcenders, competitors, and heroic strivers. She gave me a lot of food for thought.
Unfortunately, the book was spoiled for me by the author’s style , which I found wordy and academic. At one point I even entered a comment, “pompous gobbledegook”. A good example (and shorter than most} is “We are not only gregarious but altricial---meaning born helpless and requiring long periods of care from others.(The root comes from Latin alere -meaning to nurture, to nurse- making for the other half of alma mater.)." First of all, it would be best in general not to use a word you do not think your reader will know. If you think it is a term they should know or that you will be using a lot, it is good to define it, but you really do not need to provide the derivation. It is off-topic, even for readers like me who are interested in language. There are wonderful very appropriate references in the book to thinkers, writers, and leaders in the past and present day, but she too often added irrelevant information about the person, which annoyed me. Get back on track!
If you can be patient and not be put off by the writing, there are some very good ideas in this book that can help you understand your own motivations and that of others. And that is certainly something that matters.
I received an advance review copy of this book from Edelweiss and Liveright publishers.
January 16, 2026
This book isn't an easy read because it delves into psychology, physics, metaphysics, sociology, and philosophy. It's a smogorsboard of concepts but it does do a good job walking through the basis of the concept of Mattering and how that drives us. Should be read by anyone trying to lead organizations motivate people on their mission and values.
Did Not Finish
March 30, 2026Learning the science behind this most primal of yearnings is so interesting to me, but I found the book to be very academic. This book is aimed at people with a scientific and/or philosophical background. As I have neither, it was hard to keep going through all the technical stuff that builds the foundation.
March 30, 2026
зацікавилась цією книжкою через інтерв'ю авторки, але прочитання було максимально нудним, хаотичним, нецікавим, і не науковим. авторка мала ідею з великим потенціалом, але не змогла її розвинути та заглибитись в неї. Замість аргументів купа цитат від рандомних людей (від знаменитостей до "мого друга Васі").
February 26, 2026
I enjoyed the author’s approach to mattering and what moves us to get up each day. While her work is scholarly in nature, it’s written with plenty of anecdotal evidence as to not be hard to understand. I think her framework is an important one that can help us understand each other and ourselves.
March 24, 2026
Many interesting anecdotal stories from the lives of famous people. An attempt to integrate them into some conclusions, un-scientific, but plausible. Outsized attention to entropy containment as life's goal.
Too poetic for my liking, especially, coupled with a singing voice of the reader.
Too poetic for my liking, especially, coupled with a singing voice of the reader.
April 2, 2026
Meh. A bit of a long way to say something pretty basic: "be curious, not judgmental" - Walt Whitman and Adam Smith - "man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely". A little more developed and nuanced than that, but not by much.
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