March 10, 2026 • 43 mins
In today's episode, Sarah and Laura chat non-fiction reading, and then interviews Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a philosopher, writer, and expert on what it means to matter, and why humans instinctually feel pulled to feel like they matter - even to themselves!
They talk mattering projects from parenting and relationships to the pursuit of excellence. Rebecca's book is called The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us And Divides Us, and she has a substack called The Mattering Map.
In the Q&A, a listener wonders how Sarah is doing about a year after her heart episode and diagnosis.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This episode is airing in mid March of twenty twenty six.
Sarah is going to be interviewing Rebecca Nuburger Goldstein, who
is a philosopher and the author of the book The
Mattering Instinct. So, Sarah, what drew you to this topic.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've read a lot of psychology but not a lot
of philosophy, but it just sounded really interesting to me.
I mean, you hear people say what matters, but then like,
what is that really? And this book really kind of
delves into well, what does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And it was a.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Little bit more jargony and technical philosophy that I'm used to,
but it was also very readable and really interesting, and
I realized that I honestly hadn't read a lot of philosophy,
so it was kind of fun to just like delve
into a different field.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Not since then in the art of motorcycle maintenance. I
loved Sen's fun book.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know, it's polarizing though, Like I think I was
in tenth or eleventh grade and half the class was
like this is terrible, and I remember being like an.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Outlier, yeah, and liking it, really liking it interesting. Okay,
so not a whole lot of philosophy happening in your life.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, And I was thinking back to like Emerson Thau,
I mean that was that was the philosophy.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That was a philosopher that a long time ago in
Miss Goldstein with the mattering instinct.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now, so we're on that. Yeah, So what what what
have you been reading lately?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Then?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Not usually philosophy, Yeah, I mean I usually have some
kind of nonfiction thing going, but it tends to be
more in like personal development or memoir kind of space.
I just recently read Marriage at c That was kind
of interesting, a.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Story about a couple that gets shipwrecked.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And survived for one hundred and eighteen days on a
little tiny raft in the middle of the ocean. But
you are usually reading I don't know about philosophy, but
some interesting non fiction. Esoteric is how Sarah referred to it. Yes, yeah, yeah,
I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. It's either coffee
table books, read white and faded.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Recently, that's put another popular Instagram account that has like
all white linen photos whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
It's very pretty.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But then I also read about like the ancient Earth,
or animal evolution or human evolution. I recently read a
book it was called Close Encounters the Human Kind, which
is about a from a Korean American paleontologist whose name
escapes me at the moment, but it was written for
a very pop audience kind of thing, but about ancient
(03:02):
human kind.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I was like, oh, this is like perfect for me.
It's like a.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Book written right up my alley. So you know, I've
been reading that.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
But also Shakespeare. Do I get credit for that?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Of course you get credit. Well, that's one of your's
your projects.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That's my project. I've been rereading his greatest hits. Greatest
hits defined as the ones I want to reread, and
I made it through as you like it. That's a
fun comedy though, so that woul so very hard. I'm
currently most of the way through Hamlet, yeah, a little darker,
of course, and then I think next month will be
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I started an alternating comedy, Tragedy. I think that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, it's a good one. It's the one I've seen
most often performed. I really like it. So yeah, well
all right, well let's hear Oh, oh, have you been
abandoning books?
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Sarah?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
This was your goal? Are you doing it?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It was my goal and I'm not going to name
the specific book, but I got so I haven't had
the impulse to abandon except for I got like fifty
pages from the end of a book and I was
kind of like, I've had enough of this.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I should have abandoned it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But then I was like tiny party me was like,
what if there's some really interesting thing at the end.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And she saved it for the last fifty pages?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
You know what, should have abandoned it?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Just holding out on you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
My goal is, truly I want to be able to report,
and I'm not going to report with the specific books,
but I want to tell you all that I've abandoned
at least two books this year, So I'm going to keep.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
My eye out for abandonable books.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Abandon a book, not that you start them thinking you
are hoping to abandon them.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
But if it's not winning you over, I have to
imagine that. Like I typically read around fifty books a year,
with fifty picks, there's going to be at least two
that just are not for me at the moment.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I just got to make sure that could happen.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
All right, Well sounds good, Well, all right, well let's
hear what Sarah and Rebecca Goldstein.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Have to say.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, I am so excited to be chatting today with
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who is a philosopher and author of
The Mattering Instinct, which we're going to talk about today.
And this book just came across by radar and I
I thought she would make a fascinating guest, so I'm
so excited to chat with her today.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Rebecca, want to go ahead and introduce herself to our audience.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
Hi, you said it my name? And what I do?
I am? That strange thing a philosopher.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I guess that means you didn't necessarily set out to
do that when you first got started in your career.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
I started in the sciences. I was strictly physics math,
and then I had questions about physics and math, and
through the guidance of some of my professors, I was
made to understand that my problems, the questions were philosophical,
(05:43):
they were philosophical questions, and so I ended up going
to graduate school in philosophy, specializing in philosophy of science.
The wonderful thing about philosophy is there's a philosophy of everything.
You know of philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, philosophy
of science, philosophy of philosophy, you know, philosophy of knowledge,
(06:04):
philosophy of mine. I mean, every area of a human
concern you can think of, there's a corresponding philosophy of it.
And so I've been able to roam as free as
I want. And with this book, I've roamed very far
away from my beginnings.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You did and you didn't, because there are plenty of
hard scientists that are featured in the book itself. But
I'm gonna actually we'll go back to that, because I
would love to know of all the various areas of
philosophy you could have decided to focus on what drew
you to this idea of mattering, And I guess give
our listeners like an introduction to what that even means
to you in the first place.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Yeah, So to matter, as I analyze, it, means to
be deserving of attention. You know, when we say that
something doesn't matter, we say, don't waste your time, don't
waste your energy. It's not deserving. And to a philosopher,
this word deserving is very interesting because it's what we
philosophers call normative, and it has to do not just
(07:04):
what is the case, but what ought to be the
case deserving. This has to do with in some sense ethics,
you know, it has to do with justification. When you
say you're wasting your life on things that don't matter,
you say, there's no justification for spending all your time
worrying about these things. So it really gets to very
(07:28):
much the heart of the questions, this notion of mattering.
What is deserving of our attention? And are we ourselves
deserving of attention? Are we deserving of our own attention
which we are programmed to give ourselves. Leading a human
life is very complicated, and we have to give a
lot of attention to ourselves and the environment and how
the environment is affecting us. We have the emotions built
(07:51):
in to help us with this. So it's so much
about us follows from the fact that we consider ourselves
to be deserve serving of our own attention. We have to.
It's pounded into our identity. But we can step outside
and say, but really, am I so deserving? I'm just
one little thing in all the universe? What makes me
(08:12):
think I'm so deserving of my own attention? And that
pushes us into a different sphere, this sphere, this normalous sphere,
the sphere of justification, of trying to somehow justify yourself
in your own eyes. And I think that's very much
what we mean by a meaningful life. We talk about
(08:33):
people having a meaningful life. What we mean is something like, yeah,
you have found a way to feel deserving of all
of the attention that you have to give yourself. And
perhaps you have some project and what to call a
mattering project, and if it's working for you, that's a
meaningful life. You have a purpose. But we try to
(08:55):
meet this mattering instinct in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And you talk about us about yes, the book is
about all of those different ways and some of the
I would say almost pros and cons or just the
exploration of each of them, and before we get into them,
because we're I'm gonna have you actually go into each
of the sort of four big categories that you talk
about in the book. But you also had a whole
section on how humans like this has to be something
(09:21):
unique to humans so that we maybe don't see in animals,
or that this is something that makes us human. Can
you expand on that a little bit?
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Yes, I think that what we are creatures of matter
who long to matter. You can only do that in English,
by the way, but thank goodness for English, because it's
such a short way of getting to what I think
is the core of us. We are physical systems, and
I can go back. I mean, I'm still enamored of science,
(09:50):
and so I've wanted to derive this feature of us
from the laws, ultimately the laws of matter that shaped us,
going all the way back to my beloved physics, the
law of entropy, which basically says that all things are
going towards destruction, including us, including the universe. But still
(10:12):
that doesn't mean that we don't matter. We certainly matter
to ourselves. All animals we get this from, you know,
the natural selection. All animals are first and foremost committed
to their own surviving and thriving at least long enough
to pass on their genes, which is the whole mechanism
(10:34):
for how natural selection works. They don't stop and think,
but why why why should I be so devoted to me?
What's so special about me? But we can do that,
we alone do it. It's these great, big brains that
we have evolved for other purposes entirely that give us
the capacity to step outside of ourselves, in the capacity
(10:57):
we have for self reflection and to guard ourselves as
another object in the world that we can interrogate, that
we can try to discover things about. Right, That's what
psychology is all about, That's what going to therapy is
all about. To discover things about this very object that
one is. And one of the things that we discover
(11:18):
is that we each take ourselves very seriously. We have
to get on with our life. But there comes the step,
and I think it comes to all of us on
some level. Some of us it comes over and over again.
Some of us we confronted in early adolescents or early adulthood,
(11:39):
and we come to a conclusion about it and get
on with our lives. But what comes the step where
we ask this self reflective question that demands of us
some kind of justification. This is the way I'm going
to prove to myself that I am truly deserving of
all the attention that I have to give myself. I'm
(12:00):
a great animal lover. I've spent a lot of time
in Africa. I've spent a lot of time with the chimpanzees,
and there's so much that's human about the chimpanzees. When
I watch a mother chim staring, and my whole apartment
is plastered with pictures of the chimpanzee mothers staring, that
(12:21):
eye contacted with their infants. I mean, it's just and
I see us in this. But as complicated as the
chimpanzees are, none of them sort of step outside, Well,
what's this all about? What's this life all about? What
is it that I'm supposed to do with this short
time here? What is the purpose? What provides the coherence
(12:44):
to this life of mine? And that's something that just
comes out of this very big brain we have. I
tell a long story about how it gets there. But
that's the short story of this cutting to the chase.
We are creatures who engage in justification, and most importantly,
justification about ourselves, about how we are pursuing our life.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Totally beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And there's there's some scenes in your book that you
describe with I think chimpanzees, like sitting there huddled in
awe at a sunset. But then you still argue that
they're not doing it because they're asking about the meaning
of life. They're just pure, like unadulterated awe, which is
a little bit different.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But it was a beautiful scene anyway. I might have cried, Yeah, no,
when I think about it was you.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
And I'm not somebody who talks in terms of the
supernatural at all. My focus is very much scientific. But
that was almost to me a miraculous experience that I
was hiking in a cape of Good Hope, and I
thought I was completely alone, high up on a mountain
looking out at the sea, where there was this rainbow
(13:52):
rising up out of the sea. It was miraculous, you know,
I mean, it wasn't, but it was so beautiful and
I was all struck. And then I noticed a little
bit beneath me there were It wasn't monkeys, it was.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That boom oh yes, yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
That are the most frockouss crazy creatures, you know, chattering, chattering,
And there was a whole family sitting there staring out
at the same side. I was staring at totally silent,
and I thought, oh my, as if this experience is
not great enough, I am sharing it with another species.
We are both sharing on It was. Yeah, it was
(14:33):
one of the highlights of my life. Yes, so cool.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
We're going to take a quick break and then we're
going to get into kind of four areas of types
of I guess mattering projects that people tend to take on.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
And then I have lots of questions, so we'll be
right back, all right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So in your book, which by the way, comes with
a useful mattering map that you can refer to to
kind of understand the kind of big areas of mattering
that you talk about, but you kind of focus on
four the hedonics drivers, the socializers, the transcenders, and the competitors.
Can you share a little bit about this framework you
came up with for our listeners to understand what all
(15:21):
of these are.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
I started to talk to people about it, and it's
the most interesting conversations I've found that you can have
with people about how they think about their life in
the large picture, you know, what it's about, what would
cause an existential crisis, make them feel like, oh, I'm
doing it all wrong. You know, I've been totally mistaken.
(15:44):
I've constructed my life on false pharmases. And I have
found also doing a tremendous amount reading about it. It was
just my little hobby on the side and biographies and
that kind of but also magazines also advice columnists fascinating
for getting a picture of human mention. And I started
(16:04):
to think, I mean, people have so many different mattering projects.
I once met a man I was waiting for actually
was my future husband, in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel,
and this guy comes and sits next to me and
he's trying to pick me up. Pretty obviously. I started
to talk to him about mattering. What makes him get
(16:25):
up in the morning and get on with his life.
He was a genuine, honest to god pick up artists.
That was his mannering project. I was just part of
his project, you know. And he had his statistics, he
had books, he had his heroes, and so over the
years you talk to people and you see, oh my god,
the variety of the diversity of ways that people try
(16:49):
to answer this longing that we all have to justify
ourselves in our own eyes. But I was looking for patterns,
you know, in the scientific way. You want to see patterns.
And here's that's what I came up with talking to
tons and tons of people, and I'm reading not as
much as I could about it. There are, first of all,
those that I call the transcenders, and they understand this
(17:11):
question in transcending terms, in metaphysical terms, in religious or
spiritual terms, that there is a transcended being, whether they
call it God or not, who created the laws of
nature without and the moral otter within, and created each
one of us. And that is our purpose to live
(17:32):
out the purpose that God has for us. And of course,
depending on their view of God, you might have a
very different view about that plan. And religious people often
clash off and violently about what that plan might be.
But that's how they see it. And I'm not such.
I was born to be such a believer. My family
is very religious, but I'm not. And you know, when
(17:54):
I tell people when they ask me about that, and
I answer, honestly, they're just flabberc acid. What gets you
out of bed in the morning, You know that that
is really what so answers their longing to justify their
way of life in their own eyes. So those are
transcenders and it's a very powerful way of going about trying.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
To yes, like they can't even anything else.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
You matter, You have a role to play in the
narrative of eternity. I mean, doesn't get bigger than that.
Then there are heroic let me go to socializes, because
I think most people that I've spoken to are socializers.
When I ask them do you matter? They understand it
to me? Do you matter to other people? And it
(18:42):
may be people who are in their lives, you know,
their family, their friends, their neighbors, their community workers, their colleagues, whoever,
the people who are in their lives who are paying
them attention, whether they deserve it or not. And depending
on their relationship with these people, that's how they justify
(19:03):
their life. And those advice columns that I love to
read are all about that kind of thing, you know,
the problems that arise with people in your life. So
it doesn't necessarily go well, none of these ways necessarily
go well, it's hard to be human. That's the overall
message that I have as if we all didn't know that.
But some of these socializers, it's not. They want to
(19:24):
matter to people who aren't necessarily in their lives. That's
what the craving for fame, which is a very strong
craving in many people, especially millennials I've found, really want
to be famous, and their statistics, there are polls that
show this to be the case, and they will give
up their intimate relationships with their family, with their loved
(19:45):
ones to be famous, which is to matter to a
bunch of strangers. That's what it means to be famous.
One cynic that I read, I can't remember who it
was said to be famous means that you matter to
a lot of people that you are very happy don't
matter to you. So it's asymmetrical kind of but yes,
(20:07):
it's a strong But if you're trying to convince yourself
that you're deserving of your own attention, which I think
the mattering instinct is all about the fact that hordes
of other people are paying you attention, seems good evidence,
you know, Okay, So there's the socializers, and most people
who are are socializers with their people in there, with
(20:29):
their family yea, their children there, yeah, and then they're
there heroic strivers. Heroic strivers don't care about mannering to others,
not to God, not to other people. They have some
standards of excellence they have fixed in their minds, and
it could be intellectual, artistic, athletic, entrepreneurial, ethical, and military,
(20:54):
I mean all sorts of standards, and they need to
feel that if they're not realizing them, they're coming closer,
they're approaching it.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Most of the.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
People I know spending my life in academia are heroics drivers,
and it might be important to get acceptance from other
people just to be able to pursue these goals. You know,
if you're you can't get into graduate school, you can't
pursue the goal, or can't get into medical school whatever.
But I know somebody who put his entire early life
(21:25):
in being an Olympic swimmer. He was a varsity swimmer
at Stamford. He was an excellent swimmer, and then he
didn't have the exact right measurements, you know, for proportions
of his shoulders to his legs or whatever. It couldn't
be an Olympic swimmer, and so you know he closed off.
This is a bad thing that can happen with heroics, drivers, competitors,
(21:47):
these are people. So when I asked going back to
heroic service, when I asked them, do you matter that?
They hear it as have I achieved something? Have I
achieved what I have set out to achieve? And it
doesn't have to be grand. It has to be grand
for them. So for example, a marathon runner who devoted
a tremendous amount of time and energy, it was her
(22:08):
mannering project. She just wanted to finish and not be
the last one. I mean, that was what she was
going to justify herself to herself. Okay, competitors here, the
question is they get very discomfited when I ask them,
what makes you feel like you matter? Because to them,
mannering means mattering more than others. It's a competition. It's
(22:29):
zero sum to the extent that others matter, it's taking
something away from their own mattering. It's a very adversarial situation.
Sometimes my favorite story is a scientist. I know a biologist,
an excellent biologist. He won a Nobel Prize, and somebody
(22:50):
else who also knows him quite well said to me, well,
I'll just call him x. X was happy for all
of fifteen minutes in his life when he got that
call from Stockholm, and then he realized after fifteen minutes
that other people have also gotten that call from Stockholm,
(23:10):
and they're what his happiness. He's a real competitor, you know.
So competitors can do great things. They can also drive
us crazy, and that some competitors are in competition with
other individuals. There are competitors that belong to a group
and they see their group as being in competition with
another group that doesn't matter as much, and they're trying
(23:34):
to right this wrong of mattering can become their mattering project.
And one of the people I profile a fascinating person.
Of everybody I think I've spoken to over all the years,
he fascinating me the most. He was a ex neo
Nazi skinhead who was committed to making sure that these
(23:57):
people who were taking mattering away from from his white
Christian people were not going to succeed. And he did
terrible things like that, and he hated people of color.
He hated Jews. They believed Jews were putting people of
color up to this, and so we had this whole
(24:17):
theory and he came out of it, but he understood
exactly what I was talking about. When I was talking
about the longing to matter, that was exactly he felt
a deficit in that, and he felt that other people
were taking his mattering away from him. So we can
express itself in so many ways. I say that it
can be responsible for the very best in us and
(24:39):
the very worst achievements and atrocities, love and hatred.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, that story was such a fascinating one. The relationship
that you built with him and learning about what brought
him to the place that he was in the first
place was incredibly powerful. We're going to take a quick break,
and then I have so many questions about how these
might interact, as well as maybe a little bit about AI.
So we're gonna take a little bit of a right turn,
so we'll be right back. All right, We are back,
(25:20):
And my question I have so interesting that you use
the example of a marathon runner in that prior when
you were talking about he down ex drivers, and I guess, well,
the reason it's interesting for me is because I'm a
former marathon runner who then who was really really into
it and then had a major health problem that meant
I suddenly could not run anymore for the rest of
(25:40):
my life. I felt the pain of a mattering project
getting stolen away from me. However, I think the one
thing that helps I believe I had multiple battering projects.
I mean I have to believe that, because otherwise I
think I would have lost my way and it'd be
over right.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
But instead it was like, Okay, well, thank god.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
I also have my wonderful family, and I have my writing,
and I have this out of my friends and traveling
and all the other things. So can you be more
than one thing? Is this more about like what's dominant?
But you can still have multiple mattering projects?
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Oh yeah. And I think aside from mattering, we have
this other need that comes to us by way of
being gregarious creatures evolved from precarious species. We are. You
know that we do need to have most of us
close relationships, at least one close relationship. I do know
(26:32):
some mathematicians who seemed to their relationship is with the
numbers and that's it. But I mean, for most of us,
what I have found, and I'm actually experiencing this right
now with somebody, a very close friend, who has gone
through a terrible shift in their life, with everything that
(26:52):
mattered to them is gone, is taken away. This has
brought him and his love one closer together. The intimacy
is vibrant, more vibrant than ever. And he said to me,
if that had gone, and I had, he's the mattering
project going, well, I don't think I could have gotten
(27:15):
past that if that intimate relationship had gone, I would not.
But the reverse is not true. This is a very
bad thing that's happened to this person, and he must
rebuild his life, and it's bad, but it's become the
source of strength in this intimacy. And that need of
ours that I think is universal, excluding some mathematicious, but
(27:39):
generally universal, has nothing to do with trying to prove ourselves.
I mean, to have people in your life means they
are going to regard you as deserving of their attention
and hopefully their care, no matter what. So his wife
might have loved him for the big things he was
doing in the world, but the love can survive. I
(28:01):
mean for creatures like us, these creatures who are in
the business of justifying ourselves to ourselves. It's also just
such a relief, It's such a safe spot to have
that these people who to whom you matter, and hopefully
they matter with you as well. It's best when it's reciprocal.
It's not always reciprocal, but it's best when it is.
(28:23):
So that thing having your family that you mentioned after
losing what was in fact and mattering project is I think,
outside of this whole mattering thing, it's always there, It's
always in need, and it can carry us through some
very difficult periods in our life. It is a matter
I think of preponderating. These are empirical hypotheses, and there
(28:47):
are some psychologists, particularly those who do positive psychology, becoming
extremely interested in my theory, and they are going to
test my various empirical hypotheses. I'm a philosopher, and even
when I was in physics, I was a theoretical physicist.
I'm not an experimentalist in any shape or form. And
so I have what all I can report is what
(29:10):
I have none scientifically found through these many conversations, is
that broics drivers tend to be heroic strivers. If one
mannering project fails, they will find something else. Some other
standard of excellence. And it's interesting that you mentioned you
(29:32):
have your family, yes, but you have your writing. What
else did you mention my podcast or yes? I mean
you there's an excellence, there's a trying to and a
creativity something that can be perfected, the writing, the podcasting.
You know that you feel that you're striving towards making progress.
(29:53):
And that's one of the people that I profile. And
again he's someone who's well known. His name is gun Kurtz.
He's also a very close friend. And he had set
out his whole life was music. He got into music
very young. He was very talent. He went into classical guitar,
but he won fellowships to big conservatories and one contest
and you know, he's a really talented guy and his
(30:14):
whole life was music. He couldn't make it though as
a professional. It's very hard to make it as a
classical guitarist. So you're not hired by orchestras, you know,
and there are no concerti written for the classical guitar,
so you either make it as a soloist or you're
playing for weddings and mar mitzvahs, you know. And then
he didn't want that and he had a real existential crisis,
(30:36):
and for years and years he was really in the
dumps and felt like a failure. His whole life was
music and he couldn't listen to music. It pained him.
It was like being spurned by the love of your life.
You know that it had worked, and then they spurned you,
and you count haven't You don't even want to hear
(30:57):
about them, you know, you just yeah. But over the
years re educated himself. He went he got his doctorate.
He's still a heroic striver in comparative literature. He became
a writer. He's a successful writer, and now he can
even go back to practicing music. And it's like when
(31:19):
you become friends with that lover who broke your heart,
you know, and after the heartbreak is over, you can
go back and be friends. Well, he's become friends again
with music, but it's not his life. And he said
that he can tolerate failure in his writing life, because
of course, to be a heroic striver is you have
a lot of failure in your life. You know, the
higher you aim, the more you court failure. He can
(31:43):
tolerate failure in his writing life much better than he
and still go on much better than he could in
his musical life, so there can be these big changes,
and I'm also interested. And again I hand this over
to my friends the psychologist to test how aging X
one's mannering project and does it affect the genders differently,
(32:05):
because when he hears about a lot of men who
were incredibly ambitious as they coming up in the world,
and then as they get older, it's like, Oh, I
had a family, That's what I wanted to vote myself to.
Now I've had heard a lot of stories of that
kind from talking to people, so yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I will be so excited to see where the empirical
research ends up going, so I will absolutely stay tuned
for that. My last question is one I don't I mean,
I feel like you must have gotten this one before,
but we'll see. As I was reading your book, it
struck me that I think a lot of my discomfort
with all things ay I centers around mattering.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
So I'm not the biggest fan of it.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I mean, I understand it's there, I understand it's not
going anywhere. I understand it can do some great things,
and I also hate it. I think I mostly hate
it because it makes me feel like if it can
do things better then we can do Then what's the
point of anything? And goodbye art and music and meaning?
So yes, where do you see Aila?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
What do I say to that? Yes, this is I
think our deep discomfort. And you know, that's why I
really want to put this mattering thing out there. It's
a framework that clarifies a lot of issues, including our
discomfort with AI and what we should do about it.
You know, cann we have some input into where it goes,
(33:29):
you know, And I said, there are two very important
aspects of our flourishing. One that comes to us by
way of our being gregorious creatures. We need this connectedness,
some kind of intimacy with other humans. That's what we
evolve to be intimate with. And we need to have
a way of justifying all the attention that we pay
(33:51):
to ourselves, a way of saying, yes, my life is meaningful,
at least in my own eyes, you know, it's meaningful.
And both of these I think are the cornerstones of
a flourishing human life, and I think AI threatens both
of them. Like there are people who would rather have
(34:11):
intimate relationship with a bot that will make them feel
oh so important, oh so loved, oh so gratified in
every way, and even you can connect it up with
a robot and you can. You don't have physical intimacy
with it. You and it's so much easier to have
(34:33):
this intimacy in some sense with this AI agent that
you've told it exactly how you want to be treated.
And I have listened to recordings. I haven't met anybody
yet who has such a relationship, but I've listened to
recordings with people who have such and that's I don't
think that's great. I really don't even one who married
(34:55):
you had marriage ceremony. Anyway. I think we develop up
in dealing with other humans and their needs and seeing
the reality of them. That's what intimacy is about. The
hardest thing is to recognize the reality of others is
just as real as us.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It's how we grow.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
It's how we grow psychologically, so how we grow emotionally,
so how we grow morally. Right, this bothers me, But
there's the other aspect that you have spoken about. Look,
if an AI can do philosophy much better than I can,
or write novels better than or compose music, well, it's
taken away one of our most meaningful and creative sources
(35:39):
of mattering. So I worry about this one of the
things that can't take away from us. And here's what
is that. You know, one way to be a heroic
striver is to be an ethical heroics driver. And there
are two people I profile in the book who are
ethical heroic strivers. They just are trying to make a
(36:00):
flourish And that is something that no matter what, even
if nobody wants to write music or paint pictures, or
write novels, or do physics research or prove mathematical theorems,
because AI is doing it so much better. First of all,
I just we want to do it for ourselves. It's
ourselves we're trying to justify. So it's just that is
(36:23):
not going to serve us well, that is not going
to service well, if you can find cures for diseases, yes, yes, everything.
What we should be thinking about is the flourishing of humanity,
and don't take away precious creative sources of certain talented
(36:44):
people feeling that they flourish. There's also great joy. I
know when I listen to a piece of music moves
me and seems a work of genius. Part of my
awe is a human? Did this a fellow human? Health?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Could they do this? I can barely follow this music?
Your molleor I could barely follow it. It came out
of a human's mind. The same with novels. When you
reach Shakespeare, there's a Yiddish word that means to take
great pride, not in yourself, but in another's accomplishment, and
usually parents or grandparents use it about their children or
(37:23):
their grandchildren. I'm felling because of this child's achievements. But
I think that we can fell just of the achievements
of humanity. And they're being a Shakespeare and there being
a Mozart, when there being a Michael Jordan who can
fly all of these and this is a source of
joy in us. It's a generous and expansive source of joy,
(37:46):
the opposite of envy and the opposite of competitive wish
they'd be encouraged to have that feeling.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And not be very shaful with it and protect it.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Not that will take that away from us. The joy
of creating, the joy of participating in others creativity. These
are expansive emotions that contribute to our flourishing. So that's
what should be uppermost here, what will contribute to you
and flourishing?
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Oh I love that question as a framework. Well, our
time is up.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
This has been so interesting, and your book, by the way,
is doing very well for good reason, because it's fascinating.
Give listeners the full title and where it where else
they can find you, if anywhere else?
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yes, So it's called the mattering instinct. How our deepest
longing drives us and divides us. We didn't even get
into the divisions, but you can see how we would
you stake your life on something you think this is
the right way. Everybody ought to do it, the way
I'm doing it. But it's on Amazon, it's on hopefully
it's in bookstores and I'm sure it's everywhere. Yeah, So
(38:53):
I know it's on Amazon.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
And if you like it this we leave a nice review.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Yeah. And I also have a substack that I've just
started because I had to leave out so much in
the book because mattering and death, mattering and agent and
mattering and sexism, you know, all of these things. So
I thought I would start a sub stack and it's
called the mattering Map. Minutes under my map.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
The mattering map. Yes, perfect, Well, thank you so much.
For coming on. This has been so interesting.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Well, thank you so much for having me and for
your interesting questions.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well we are back Sarah interviewing Rebecca Newbigger Goldstein on
the Mattering Instinct. So, Sarah, speaking of mattering projects and
what you guys talked about in this interview. It has
been about a year almost exactly since your heart incident
and all that came out of that. How are you
navigating your post running life, because that was kind of
(39:50):
your big project.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
It was one of my big problems.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I mean, I'm actually really grateful that it was not
like my only mattering project. Well partly because I don't know,
there's so many other wonderful aspects of life, but also
because it would have been a lot to lose all
at once. But it was a mattering project, and I
definitely thought about it a lot as I read this
book and kind of made think about the loss a
little bit more. But all that said, I mean, things.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Are pretty good.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Like in some ways, there are days that I am
sort of glad that I don't have the pressure of
that I was putting on myself previously, and then there's
other days when I'm so jealous when I hear my
friends talk about training for races, or even my husband
who is going to be running a marathon this April,
and I absolutely I am like very happy for him
in doing it. But it's bittersweet to watch someone else
(40:38):
get to have that fun that I was having. But
day by day I'm good. I'm enjoying pilates. I Hey,
I moved up to level two at club. I met
my one of my twenty twenty six goals. So it's
fun to channel it into some other pursuits that are
more friendly to what my heart has going on. And
I mean, honestly, if I was going to lose one
mattering project, that was probably like an okay one I
(41:01):
let go off well, and.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
You found with that you like to be moving towards
something like you don't want to just like go do
occasional strength workouts or something.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You like to move forward with things.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I mean to move forward with all things. And it
doesn't have to be in some like oh I'm winning
in anything. It's just more like, oh, you know, I'm
progressing and in whatever I'm doing, whether it's athletic or
playing piano, and okay, I'm going to learn all the
songs in this book or whatever. I think that's just
part of my personality and I'm going with it.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, I mean the singing is definitely that for me.
I love working toward difficult concert. The music kind of
gets into your brain as you learn more and more
of it. You don't see at the beginning how you're
going to learn this music, and yet you do. You
always do, and it becomes much a part of you
by the time we're doing the performance.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
So yeah, I can see how that would be.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Do you think your sonnets too?
Speaker 3 (41:53):
My sonnets? Maybe?
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I mean the sonnets is something I enjoy doing as well,
and I have kept going forward with that lines a
day for and you.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Must feel like it's like developed, like your skills at
creating them or sometimes.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I mean it's the ones that I think are really like,
I really like those are more random. I feel like
something will seize me and I'll write this so on
it and I'll be like, oh, yeah, I really like
that one. I think the more okay ones like good okay,
like I've sort of learned better how to do that.
There's still terrible ones in there here and there, you
know that.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I but I can see how the singing would have
the same kind of arc as running, especially because it's
like a race, Like you're like I have this target
date and I want to achieve this and that, and
with you, it's like I need to master this complicated
thing and then I have the performance, and then I
get to celebrate, and then I get to start a
new present one.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, totally makes sense.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Oh sorry anyone. Well, we've been talking the mattering instinct
and I think our first philosophy professor interview on this.
We bring you all sorts of things on Best of
Both Worlds here, but we will be back next week
with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the Best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This episode is airing in mid March of twenty twenty six.
Sarah is going to be interviewing Rebecca Nuburger Goldstein, who
is a philosopher and the author of the book The
Mattering Instinct. So, Sarah, what drew you to this topic.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've read a lot of psychology but not a lot
of philosophy, but it just sounded really interesting to me.
I mean, you hear people say what matters, but then like,
what is that really? And this book really kind of
delves into well, what does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And it was a.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Little bit more jargony and technical philosophy that I'm used to,
but it was also very readable and really interesting, and
I realized that I honestly hadn't read a lot of philosophy,
so it was kind of fun to just like delve
into a different field.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Not since then in the art of motorcycle maintenance. I
loved Sen's fun book.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know, it's polarizing though, Like I think I was
in tenth or eleventh grade and half the class was
like this is terrible, and I remember being like an.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Outlier, yeah, and liking it, really liking it interesting. Okay,
so not a whole lot of philosophy happening in your life.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, And I was thinking back to like Emerson Thau,
I mean that was that was the philosophy.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That was a philosopher that a long time ago in
Miss Goldstein with the mattering instinct.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now, so we're on that. Yeah, So what what what
have you been reading lately?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Then?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Not usually philosophy, Yeah, I mean I usually have some
kind of nonfiction thing going, but it tends to be
more in like personal development or memoir kind of space.
I just recently read Marriage at c That was kind
of interesting, a.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Story about a couple that gets shipwrecked.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And survived for one hundred and eighteen days on a
little tiny raft in the middle of the ocean. But
you are usually reading I don't know about philosophy, but
some interesting non fiction. Esoteric is how Sarah referred to it. Yes, yeah, yeah,
I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. It's either coffee
table books, read white and faded.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Recently, that's put another popular Instagram account that has like
all white linen photos whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
It's very pretty.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But then I also read about like the ancient Earth,
or animal evolution or human evolution. I recently read a
book it was called Close Encounters the Human Kind, which
is about a from a Korean American paleontologist whose name
escapes me at the moment, but it was written for
a very pop audience kind of thing, but about ancient
(03:02):
human kind.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I was like, oh, this is like perfect for me.
It's like a.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Book written right up my alley. So you know, I've
been reading that.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
But also Shakespeare. Do I get credit for that?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Of course you get credit. Well, that's one of your's
your projects.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That's my project. I've been rereading his greatest hits. Greatest
hits defined as the ones I want to reread, and
I made it through as you like it. That's a
fun comedy though, so that woul so very hard. I'm
currently most of the way through Hamlet, yeah, a little darker,
of course, and then I think next month will be
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I started an alternating comedy, Tragedy. I think that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, it's a good one. It's the one I've seen
most often performed. I really like it. So yeah, well
all right, well let's hear Oh, oh, have you been
abandoning books?
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Sarah?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
This was your goal? Are you doing it?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It was my goal and I'm not going to name
the specific book, but I got so I haven't had
the impulse to abandon except for I got like fifty
pages from the end of a book and I was
kind of like, I've had enough of this.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I should have abandoned it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But then I was like tiny party me was like,
what if there's some really interesting thing at the end.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And she saved it for the last fifty pages?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
You know what, should have abandoned it?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Just holding out on you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
My goal is, truly I want to be able to report,
and I'm not going to report with the specific books,
but I want to tell you all that I've abandoned
at least two books this year, So I'm going to keep.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
My eye out for abandonable books.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Abandon a book, not that you start them thinking you
are hoping to abandon them.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
But if it's not winning you over, I have to
imagine that. Like I typically read around fifty books a year,
with fifty picks, there's going to be at least two
that just are not for me at the moment.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I just got to make sure that could happen.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
All right, Well sounds good, Well, all right, well let's
hear what Sarah and Rebecca Goldstein.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Have to say.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, I am so excited to be chatting today with
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who is a philosopher and author of
The Mattering Instinct, which we're going to talk about today.
And this book just came across by radar and I
I thought she would make a fascinating guest, so I'm
so excited to chat with her today.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Rebecca, want to go ahead and introduce herself to our audience.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
Hi, you said it my name? And what I do?
I am? That strange thing a philosopher.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I guess that means you didn't necessarily set out to
do that when you first got started in your career.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
I started in the sciences. I was strictly physics math,
and then I had questions about physics and math, and
through the guidance of some of my professors, I was
made to understand that my problems, the questions were philosophical,
(05:43):
they were philosophical questions, and so I ended up going
to graduate school in philosophy, specializing in philosophy of science.
The wonderful thing about philosophy is there's a philosophy of everything.
You know of philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, philosophy
of science, philosophy of philosophy, you know, philosophy of knowledge,
(06:04):
philosophy of mine. I mean, every area of a human
concern you can think of, there's a corresponding philosophy of it.
And so I've been able to roam as free as
I want. And with this book, I've roamed very far
away from my beginnings.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You did and you didn't, because there are plenty of
hard scientists that are featured in the book itself. But
I'm gonna actually we'll go back to that, because I
would love to know of all the various areas of
philosophy you could have decided to focus on what drew
you to this idea of mattering, And I guess give
our listeners like an introduction to what that even means
to you in the first place.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Yeah, So to matter, as I analyze, it, means to
be deserving of attention. You know, when we say that
something doesn't matter, we say, don't waste your time, don't
waste your energy. It's not deserving. And to a philosopher,
this word deserving is very interesting because it's what we
philosophers call normative, and it has to do not just
(07:04):
what is the case, but what ought to be the
case deserving. This has to do with in some sense ethics,
you know, it has to do with justification. When you
say you're wasting your life on things that don't matter,
you say, there's no justification for spending all your time
worrying about these things. So it really gets to very
(07:28):
much the heart of the questions, this notion of mattering.
What is deserving of our attention? And are we ourselves
deserving of attention? Are we deserving of our own attention
which we are programmed to give ourselves. Leading a human
life is very complicated, and we have to give a
lot of attention to ourselves and the environment and how
the environment is affecting us. We have the emotions built
(07:51):
in to help us with this. So it's so much
about us follows from the fact that we consider ourselves
to be deserve serving of our own attention. We have to.
It's pounded into our identity. But we can step outside
and say, but really, am I so deserving? I'm just
one little thing in all the universe? What makes me
(08:12):
think I'm so deserving of my own attention? And that
pushes us into a different sphere, this sphere, this normalous sphere,
the sphere of justification, of trying to somehow justify yourself
in your own eyes. And I think that's very much
what we mean by a meaningful life. We talk about
(08:33):
people having a meaningful life. What we mean is something like, yeah,
you have found a way to feel deserving of all
of the attention that you have to give yourself. And
perhaps you have some project and what to call a
mattering project, and if it's working for you, that's a
meaningful life. You have a purpose. But we try to
(08:55):
meet this mattering instinct in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And you talk about us about yes, the book is
about all of those different ways and some of the
I would say almost pros and cons or just the
exploration of each of them, and before we get into them,
because we're I'm gonna have you actually go into each
of the sort of four big categories that you talk
about in the book. But you also had a whole
section on how humans like this has to be something
(09:21):
unique to humans so that we maybe don't see in animals,
or that this is something that makes us human. Can
you expand on that a little bit?
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Yes, I think that what we are creatures of matter
who long to matter. You can only do that in English,
by the way, but thank goodness for English, because it's
such a short way of getting to what I think
is the core of us. We are physical systems, and
I can go back. I mean, I'm still enamored of science,
(09:50):
and so I've wanted to derive this feature of us
from the laws, ultimately the laws of matter that shaped us,
going all the way back to my beloved physics, the
law of entropy, which basically says that all things are
going towards destruction, including us, including the universe. But still
(10:12):
that doesn't mean that we don't matter. We certainly matter
to ourselves. All animals we get this from, you know,
the natural selection. All animals are first and foremost committed
to their own surviving and thriving at least long enough
to pass on their genes, which is the whole mechanism
(10:34):
for how natural selection works. They don't stop and think,
but why why why should I be so devoted to me?
What's so special about me? But we can do that,
we alone do it. It's these great, big brains that
we have evolved for other purposes entirely that give us
the capacity to step outside of ourselves, in the capacity
(10:57):
we have for self reflection and to guard ourselves as
another object in the world that we can interrogate, that
we can try to discover things about. Right, That's what
psychology is all about, That's what going to therapy is
all about. To discover things about this very object that
one is. And one of the things that we discover
(11:18):
is that we each take ourselves very seriously. We have
to get on with our life. But there comes the step,
and I think it comes to all of us on
some level. Some of us it comes over and over again.
Some of us we confronted in early adolescents or early adulthood,
(11:39):
and we come to a conclusion about it and get
on with our lives. But what comes the step where
we ask this self reflective question that demands of us
some kind of justification. This is the way I'm going
to prove to myself that I am truly deserving of
all the attention that I have to give myself. I'm
(12:00):
a great animal lover. I've spent a lot of time
in Africa. I've spent a lot of time with the chimpanzees,
and there's so much that's human about the chimpanzees. When
I watch a mother chim staring, and my whole apartment
is plastered with pictures of the chimpanzee mothers staring, that
(12:21):
eye contacted with their infants. I mean, it's just and
I see us in this. But as complicated as the
chimpanzees are, none of them sort of step outside, Well,
what's this all about? What's this life all about? What
is it that I'm supposed to do with this short
time here? What is the purpose? What provides the coherence
(12:44):
to this life of mine? And that's something that just
comes out of this very big brain we have. I
tell a long story about how it gets there. But
that's the short story of this cutting to the chase.
We are creatures who engage in justification, and most importantly,
justification about ourselves, about how we are pursuing our life.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Totally beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And there's there's some scenes in your book that you
describe with I think chimpanzees, like sitting there huddled in
awe at a sunset. But then you still argue that
they're not doing it because they're asking about the meaning
of life. They're just pure, like unadulterated awe, which is
a little bit different.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But it was a beautiful scene anyway. I might have cried, Yeah, no,
when I think about it was you.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
And I'm not somebody who talks in terms of the
supernatural at all. My focus is very much scientific. But
that was almost to me a miraculous experience that I
was hiking in a cape of Good Hope, and I
thought I was completely alone, high up on a mountain
looking out at the sea, where there was this rainbow
(13:52):
rising up out of the sea. It was miraculous, you know,
I mean, it wasn't, but it was so beautiful and
I was all struck. And then I noticed a little
bit beneath me there were It wasn't monkeys, it was.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That boom oh yes, yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
That are the most frockouss crazy creatures, you know, chattering, chattering,
And there was a whole family sitting there staring out
at the same side. I was staring at totally silent,
and I thought, oh my, as if this experience is
not great enough, I am sharing it with another species.
We are both sharing on It was. Yeah, it was
(14:33):
one of the highlights of my life. Yes, so cool.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
We're going to take a quick break and then we're
going to get into kind of four areas of types
of I guess mattering projects that people tend to take on.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
And then I have lots of questions, so we'll be
right back, all right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So in your book, which by the way, comes with
a useful mattering map that you can refer to to
kind of understand the kind of big areas of mattering
that you talk about, but you kind of focus on
four the hedonics drivers, the socializers, the transcenders, and the competitors.
Can you share a little bit about this framework you
came up with for our listeners to understand what all
(15:21):
of these are.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
I started to talk to people about it, and it's
the most interesting conversations I've found that you can have
with people about how they think about their life in
the large picture, you know, what it's about, what would
cause an existential crisis, make them feel like, oh, I'm
doing it all wrong. You know, I've been totally mistaken.
(15:44):
I've constructed my life on false pharmases. And I have
found also doing a tremendous amount reading about it. It was
just my little hobby on the side and biographies and
that kind of but also magazines also advice columnists fascinating
for getting a picture of human mention. And I started
(16:04):
to think, I mean, people have so many different mattering projects.
I once met a man I was waiting for actually
was my future husband, in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel,
and this guy comes and sits next to me and
he's trying to pick me up. Pretty obviously. I started
to talk to him about mattering. What makes him get
(16:25):
up in the morning and get on with his life.
He was a genuine, honest to god pick up artists.
That was his mannering project. I was just part of
his project, you know. And he had his statistics, he
had books, he had his heroes, and so over the
years you talk to people and you see, oh my god,
the variety of the diversity of ways that people try
(16:49):
to answer this longing that we all have to justify
ourselves in our own eyes. But I was looking for patterns,
you know, in the scientific way. You want to see patterns.
And here's that's what I came up with talking to
tons and tons of people, and I'm reading not as
much as I could about it. There are, first of all,
those that I call the transcenders, and they understand this
(17:11):
question in transcending terms, in metaphysical terms, in religious or
spiritual terms, that there is a transcended being, whether they
call it God or not, who created the laws of
nature without and the moral otter within, and created each
one of us. And that is our purpose to live
(17:32):
out the purpose that God has for us. And of course,
depending on their view of God, you might have a
very different view about that plan. And religious people often
clash off and violently about what that plan might be.
But that's how they see it. And I'm not such.
I was born to be such a believer. My family
is very religious, but I'm not. And you know, when
(17:54):
I tell people when they ask me about that, and
I answer, honestly, they're just flabberc acid. What gets you
out of bed in the morning, You know that that
is really what so answers their longing to justify their
way of life in their own eyes. So those are
transcenders and it's a very powerful way of going about trying.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
To yes, like they can't even anything else.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
You matter, You have a role to play in the
narrative of eternity. I mean, doesn't get bigger than that.
Then there are heroic let me go to socializes, because
I think most people that I've spoken to are socializers.
When I ask them do you matter? They understand it
to me? Do you matter to other people? And it
(18:42):
may be people who are in their lives, you know,
their family, their friends, their neighbors, their community workers, their colleagues, whoever,
the people who are in their lives who are paying
them attention, whether they deserve it or not. And depending
on their relationship with these people, that's how they justify
(19:03):
their life. And those advice columns that I love to
read are all about that kind of thing, you know,
the problems that arise with people in your life. So
it doesn't necessarily go well, none of these ways necessarily
go well, it's hard to be human. That's the overall
message that I have as if we all didn't know that.
But some of these socializers, it's not. They want to
(19:24):
matter to people who aren't necessarily in their lives. That's
what the craving for fame, which is a very strong
craving in many people, especially millennials I've found, really want
to be famous, and their statistics, there are polls that
show this to be the case, and they will give
up their intimate relationships with their family, with their loved
(19:45):
ones to be famous, which is to matter to a
bunch of strangers. That's what it means to be famous.
One cynic that I read, I can't remember who it
was said to be famous means that you matter to
a lot of people that you are very happy don't
matter to you. So it's asymmetrical kind of but yes,
(20:07):
it's a strong But if you're trying to convince yourself
that you're deserving of your own attention, which I think
the mattering instinct is all about the fact that hordes
of other people are paying you attention, seems good evidence,
you know, Okay, So there's the socializers, and most people
who are are socializers with their people in there, with
(20:29):
their family yea, their children there, yeah, and then they're
there heroic strivers. Heroic strivers don't care about mannering to others,
not to God, not to other people. They have some
standards of excellence they have fixed in their minds, and
it could be intellectual, artistic, athletic, entrepreneurial, ethical, and military,
(20:54):
I mean all sorts of standards, and they need to
feel that if they're not realizing them, they're coming closer,
they're approaching it.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Most of the.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
People I know spending my life in academia are heroics drivers,
and it might be important to get acceptance from other
people just to be able to pursue these goals. You know,
if you're you can't get into graduate school, you can't
pursue the goal, or can't get into medical school whatever.
But I know somebody who put his entire early life
(21:25):
in being an Olympic swimmer. He was a varsity swimmer
at Stamford. He was an excellent swimmer, and then he
didn't have the exact right measurements, you know, for proportions
of his shoulders to his legs or whatever. It couldn't
be an Olympic swimmer, and so you know he closed off.
This is a bad thing that can happen with heroics, drivers, competitors,
(21:47):
these are people. So when I asked going back to
heroic service, when I asked them, do you matter that?
They hear it as have I achieved something? Have I
achieved what I have set out to achieve? And it
doesn't have to be grand. It has to be grand
for them. So for example, a marathon runner who devoted
a tremendous amount of time and energy, it was her
(22:08):
mannering project. She just wanted to finish and not be
the last one. I mean, that was what she was
going to justify herself to herself. Okay, competitors here, the
question is they get very discomfited when I ask them,
what makes you feel like you matter? Because to them,
mannering means mattering more than others. It's a competition. It's
(22:29):
zero sum to the extent that others matter, it's taking
something away from their own mattering. It's a very adversarial situation.
Sometimes my favorite story is a scientist. I know a biologist,
an excellent biologist. He won a Nobel Prize, and somebody
(22:50):
else who also knows him quite well said to me, well,
I'll just call him x. X was happy for all
of fifteen minutes in his life when he got that
call from Stockholm, and then he realized after fifteen minutes
that other people have also gotten that call from Stockholm,
(23:10):
and they're what his happiness. He's a real competitor, you know.
So competitors can do great things. They can also drive
us crazy, and that some competitors are in competition with
other individuals. There are competitors that belong to a group
and they see their group as being in competition with
another group that doesn't matter as much, and they're trying
(23:34):
to right this wrong of mattering can become their mattering project.
And one of the people I profile a fascinating person.
Of everybody I think I've spoken to over all the years,
he fascinating me the most. He was a ex neo
Nazi skinhead who was committed to making sure that these
(23:57):
people who were taking mattering away from from his white
Christian people were not going to succeed. And he did
terrible things like that, and he hated people of color.
He hated Jews. They believed Jews were putting people of
color up to this, and so we had this whole
(24:17):
theory and he came out of it, but he understood
exactly what I was talking about. When I was talking
about the longing to matter, that was exactly he felt
a deficit in that, and he felt that other people
were taking his mattering away from him. So we can
express itself in so many ways. I say that it
can be responsible for the very best in us and
(24:39):
the very worst achievements and atrocities, love and hatred.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, that story was such a fascinating one. The relationship
that you built with him and learning about what brought
him to the place that he was in the first
place was incredibly powerful. We're going to take a quick break,
and then I have so many questions about how these
might interact, as well as maybe a little bit about AI.
So we're gonna take a little bit of a right turn,
so we'll be right back. All right, We are back,
(25:20):
And my question I have so interesting that you use
the example of a marathon runner in that prior when
you were talking about he down ex drivers, and I guess, well,
the reason it's interesting for me is because I'm a
former marathon runner who then who was really really into
it and then had a major health problem that meant
I suddenly could not run anymore for the rest of
(25:40):
my life. I felt the pain of a mattering project
getting stolen away from me. However, I think the one
thing that helps I believe I had multiple battering projects.
I mean I have to believe that, because otherwise I
think I would have lost my way and it'd be
over right.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
But instead it was like, Okay, well, thank god.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
I also have my wonderful family, and I have my writing,
and I have this out of my friends and traveling
and all the other things. So can you be more
than one thing? Is this more about like what's dominant?
But you can still have multiple mattering projects?
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Oh yeah. And I think aside from mattering, we have
this other need that comes to us by way of
being gregarious creatures evolved from precarious species. We are. You
know that we do need to have most of us
close relationships, at least one close relationship. I do know
(26:32):
some mathematicians who seemed to their relationship is with the
numbers and that's it. But I mean, for most of us,
what I have found, and I'm actually experiencing this right
now with somebody, a very close friend, who has gone
through a terrible shift in their life, with everything that
(26:52):
mattered to them is gone, is taken away. This has
brought him and his love one closer together. The intimacy
is vibrant, more vibrant than ever. And he said to me,
if that had gone, and I had, he's the mattering
project going, well, I don't think I could have gotten
(27:15):
past that if that intimate relationship had gone, I would not.
But the reverse is not true. This is a very
bad thing that's happened to this person, and he must
rebuild his life, and it's bad, but it's become the
source of strength in this intimacy. And that need of
ours that I think is universal, excluding some mathematicious, but
(27:39):
generally universal, has nothing to do with trying to prove ourselves.
I mean, to have people in your life means they
are going to regard you as deserving of their attention
and hopefully their care, no matter what. So his wife
might have loved him for the big things he was
doing in the world, but the love can survive. I
(28:01):
mean for creatures like us, these creatures who are in
the business of justifying ourselves to ourselves. It's also just
such a relief, It's such a safe spot to have
that these people who to whom you matter, and hopefully
they matter with you as well. It's best when it's reciprocal.
It's not always reciprocal, but it's best when it is.
(28:23):
So that thing having your family that you mentioned after
losing what was in fact and mattering project is I think,
outside of this whole mattering thing, it's always there, It's
always in need, and it can carry us through some
very difficult periods in our life. It is a matter
I think of preponderating. These are empirical hypotheses, and there
(28:47):
are some psychologists, particularly those who do positive psychology, becoming
extremely interested in my theory, and they are going to
test my various empirical hypotheses. I'm a philosopher, and even
when I was in physics, I was a theoretical physicist.
I'm not an experimentalist in any shape or form. And
so I have what all I can report is what
(29:10):
I have none scientifically found through these many conversations, is
that broics drivers tend to be heroic strivers. If one
mannering project fails, they will find something else. Some other
standard of excellence. And it's interesting that you mentioned you
(29:32):
have your family, yes, but you have your writing. What
else did you mention my podcast or yes? I mean
you there's an excellence, there's a trying to and a
creativity something that can be perfected, the writing, the podcasting.
You know that you feel that you're striving towards making progress.
(29:53):
And that's one of the people that I profile. And
again he's someone who's well known. His name is gun Kurtz.
He's also a very close friend. And he had set
out his whole life was music. He got into music
very young. He was very talent. He went into classical guitar,
but he won fellowships to big conservatories and one contest
and you know, he's a really talented guy and his
(30:14):
whole life was music. He couldn't make it though as
a professional. It's very hard to make it as a
classical guitarist. So you're not hired by orchestras, you know,
and there are no concerti written for the classical guitar,
so you either make it as a soloist or you're
playing for weddings and mar mitzvahs, you know. And then
he didn't want that and he had a real existential crisis,
(30:36):
and for years and years he was really in the
dumps and felt like a failure. His whole life was
music and he couldn't listen to music. It pained him.
It was like being spurned by the love of your life.
You know that it had worked, and then they spurned you,
and you count haven't You don't even want to hear
(30:57):
about them, you know, you just yeah. But over the
years re educated himself. He went he got his doctorate.
He's still a heroic striver in comparative literature. He became
a writer. He's a successful writer, and now he can
even go back to practicing music. And it's like when
(31:19):
you become friends with that lover who broke your heart,
you know, and after the heartbreak is over, you can
go back and be friends. Well, he's become friends again
with music, but it's not his life. And he said
that he can tolerate failure in his writing life, because
of course, to be a heroic striver is you have
a lot of failure in your life. You know, the
higher you aim, the more you court failure. He can
(31:43):
tolerate failure in his writing life much better than he
and still go on much better than he could in
his musical life, so there can be these big changes,
and I'm also interested. And again I hand this over
to my friends the psychologist to test how aging X
one's mannering project and does it affect the genders differently,
(32:05):
because when he hears about a lot of men who
were incredibly ambitious as they coming up in the world,
and then as they get older, it's like, Oh, I
had a family, That's what I wanted to vote myself to.
Now I've had heard a lot of stories of that
kind from talking to people, so yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I will be so excited to see where the empirical
research ends up going, so I will absolutely stay tuned
for that. My last question is one I don't I mean,
I feel like you must have gotten this one before,
but we'll see. As I was reading your book, it
struck me that I think a lot of my discomfort
with all things ay I centers around mattering.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
So I'm not the biggest fan of it.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I mean, I understand it's there, I understand it's not
going anywhere. I understand it can do some great things,
and I also hate it. I think I mostly hate
it because it makes me feel like if it can
do things better then we can do Then what's the
point of anything? And goodbye art and music and meaning?
So yes, where do you see Aila?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
What do I say to that? Yes, this is I
think our deep discomfort. And you know, that's why I
really want to put this mattering thing out there. It's
a framework that clarifies a lot of issues, including our
discomfort with AI and what we should do about it.
You know, cann we have some input into where it goes,
(33:29):
you know, And I said, there are two very important
aspects of our flourishing. One that comes to us by
way of our being gregorious creatures. We need this connectedness,
some kind of intimacy with other humans. That's what we
evolve to be intimate with. And we need to have
a way of justifying all the attention that we pay
(33:51):
to ourselves, a way of saying, yes, my life is meaningful,
at least in my own eyes, you know, it's meaningful.
And both of these I think are the cornerstones of
a flourishing human life, and I think AI threatens both
of them. Like there are people who would rather have
(34:11):
intimate relationship with a bot that will make them feel
oh so important, oh so loved, oh so gratified in
every way, and even you can connect it up with
a robot and you can. You don't have physical intimacy
with it. You and it's so much easier to have
(34:33):
this intimacy in some sense with this AI agent that
you've told it exactly how you want to be treated.
And I have listened to recordings. I haven't met anybody
yet who has such a relationship, but I've listened to
recordings with people who have such and that's I don't
think that's great. I really don't even one who married
(34:55):
you had marriage ceremony. Anyway. I think we develop up
in dealing with other humans and their needs and seeing
the reality of them. That's what intimacy is about. The
hardest thing is to recognize the reality of others is
just as real as us.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It's how we grow.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
It's how we grow psychologically, so how we grow emotionally,
so how we grow morally. Right, this bothers me, But
there's the other aspect that you have spoken about. Look,
if an AI can do philosophy much better than I can,
or write novels better than or compose music, well, it's
taken away one of our most meaningful and creative sources
(35:39):
of mattering. So I worry about this one of the
things that can't take away from us. And here's what
is that. You know, one way to be a heroic
striver is to be an ethical heroics driver. And there
are two people I profile in the book who are
ethical heroic strivers. They just are trying to make a
(36:00):
flourish And that is something that no matter what, even
if nobody wants to write music or paint pictures, or
write novels, or do physics research or prove mathematical theorems,
because AI is doing it so much better. First of all,
I just we want to do it for ourselves. It's
ourselves we're trying to justify. So it's just that is
(36:23):
not going to serve us well, that is not going
to service well, if you can find cures for diseases, yes, yes, everything.
What we should be thinking about is the flourishing of humanity,
and don't take away precious creative sources of certain talented
(36:44):
people feeling that they flourish. There's also great joy. I
know when I listen to a piece of music moves
me and seems a work of genius. Part of my
awe is a human? Did this a fellow human? Health?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Could they do this? I can barely follow this music?
Your molleor I could barely follow it. It came out
of a human's mind. The same with novels. When you
reach Shakespeare, there's a Yiddish word that means to take
great pride, not in yourself, but in another's accomplishment, and
usually parents or grandparents use it about their children or
(37:23):
their grandchildren. I'm felling because of this child's achievements. But
I think that we can fell just of the achievements
of humanity. And they're being a Shakespeare and there being
a Mozart, when there being a Michael Jordan who can
fly all of these and this is a source of
joy in us. It's a generous and expansive source of joy,
(37:46):
the opposite of envy and the opposite of competitive wish
they'd be encouraged to have that feeling.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And not be very shaful with it and protect it.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Not that will take that away from us. The joy
of creating, the joy of participating in others creativity. These
are expansive emotions that contribute to our flourishing. So that's
what should be uppermost here, what will contribute to you
and flourishing?
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Oh I love that question as a framework. Well, our
time is up.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
This has been so interesting, and your book, by the way,
is doing very well for good reason, because it's fascinating.
Give listeners the full title and where it where else
they can find you, if anywhere else?
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yes, So it's called the mattering instinct. How our deepest
longing drives us and divides us. We didn't even get
into the divisions, but you can see how we would
you stake your life on something you think this is
the right way. Everybody ought to do it, the way
I'm doing it. But it's on Amazon, it's on hopefully
it's in bookstores and I'm sure it's everywhere. Yeah, So
(38:53):
I know it's on Amazon.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
And if you like it this we leave a nice review.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Yeah. And I also have a substack that I've just
started because I had to leave out so much in
the book because mattering and death, mattering and agent and
mattering and sexism, you know, all of these things. So
I thought I would start a sub stack and it's
called the mattering Map. Minutes under my map.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
The mattering map. Yes, perfect, Well, thank you so much.
For coming on. This has been so interesting.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Well, thank you so much for having me and for
your interesting questions.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well we are back Sarah interviewing Rebecca Newbigger Goldstein on
the Mattering Instinct. So, Sarah, speaking of mattering projects and
what you guys talked about in this interview. It has
been about a year almost exactly since your heart incident
and all that came out of that. How are you
navigating your post running life, because that was kind of
(39:50):
your big project.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
It was one of my big problems.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I mean, I'm actually really grateful that it was not
like my only mattering project. Well partly because I don't know,
there's so many other wonderful aspects of life, but also
because it would have been a lot to lose all
at once. But it was a mattering project, and I
definitely thought about it a lot as I read this
book and kind of made think about the loss a
little bit more. But all that said, I mean, things.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Are pretty good.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Like in some ways, there are days that I am
sort of glad that I don't have the pressure of
that I was putting on myself previously, and then there's
other days when I'm so jealous when I hear my
friends talk about training for races, or even my husband
who is going to be running a marathon this April,
and I absolutely I am like very happy for him
in doing it. But it's bittersweet to watch someone else
(40:38):
get to have that fun that I was having. But
day by day I'm good. I'm enjoying pilates. I Hey,
I moved up to level two at club. I met
my one of my twenty twenty six goals. So it's
fun to channel it into some other pursuits that are
more friendly to what my heart has going on. And
I mean, honestly, if I was going to lose one
mattering project, that was probably like an okay one I
(41:01):
let go off well, and.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
You found with that you like to be moving towards
something like you don't want to just like go do
occasional strength workouts or something.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You like to move forward with things.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I mean to move forward with all things. And it
doesn't have to be in some like oh I'm winning
in anything. It's just more like, oh, you know, I'm
progressing and in whatever I'm doing, whether it's athletic or
playing piano, and okay, I'm going to learn all the
songs in this book or whatever. I think that's just
part of my personality and I'm going with it.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, I mean the singing is definitely that for me.
I love working toward difficult concert. The music kind of
gets into your brain as you learn more and more
of it. You don't see at the beginning how you're
going to learn this music, and yet you do. You
always do, and it becomes much a part of you
by the time we're doing the performance.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
So yeah, I can see how that would be.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Do you think your sonnets too?
Speaker 3 (41:53):
My sonnets? Maybe?
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I mean the sonnets is something I enjoy doing as well,
and I have kept going forward with that lines a
day for and you.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Must feel like it's like developed, like your skills at
creating them or sometimes.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I mean it's the ones that I think are really like,
I really like those are more random. I feel like
something will seize me and I'll write this so on
it and I'll be like, oh, yeah, I really like
that one. I think the more okay ones like good okay,
like I've sort of learned better how to do that.
There's still terrible ones in there here and there, you
know that.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I but I can see how the singing would have
the same kind of arc as running, especially because it's
like a race, Like you're like I have this target
date and I want to achieve this and that, and
with you, it's like I need to master this complicated
thing and then I have the performance, and then I
get to celebrate, and then I get to start a
new present one.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, totally makes sense.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Oh sorry anyone. Well, we've been talking the mattering instinct
and I think our first philosophy professor interview on this.
We bring you all sorts of things on Best of
Both Worlds here, but we will be back next week
with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the Best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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