January 12, 2026 • 41 mins
What does it mean for your life to matter? We all talk a lot about happiness, pleasure, and meaning... but what if the real engine underneath it all is the need to feel we count? Is it possible that depression, extremism, and ambition all stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Join Eagleman with philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, author of "The Mattering Instinct".
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
What does it mean for your life to matter?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Is the drive to matter sometimes stronger than the drive
to survive? We humans talk a lot about happiness and
pleasure and meaning, but what if the real engine underneath
all of it is the need to feel that we count?
Is it possible that depression and extremism and ambition all
stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization
(00:34):
less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Today we're
going to speak with philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, who
has written a new book on what matters to people
and why and why it's not the same for everyone,
and why mattering is a fundamental instinct that underlies all
(00:54):
the others. Welcome to intercouse most with me, David Eagleman.
I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these
episodes we sailed deeply into our three pound universe to
understand how we experienced.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The world.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
When I was younger.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
One of the great mentors I got to work with
was Francis Crick, who had won the Nobel Prize for
discovering the structure of DNA. As you may know, in
the second half of Krick's career, he turned from studying
genetics to studying the brain, and specifically the question of
how the physical stuff of the brain gives rise to consciousness. Now,
(01:52):
Krick had a chalkboard that was full of ideas and equations,
but the most striking thing to me was that that
right in the middle of the board, outlined in a big,
thick rectangle, was a single word. And this word represented
to him one of the central mysteries of biology.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The word was meaning.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
In other words, he had a better understanding than most
people on the planet of the vast and intricate biology
that makes up the human brain. But he recognized that
one of the key questions was why does anything matter
to your brain? You can look at the visual system
and you can come to understand how photons hit the
(02:36):
retina and the signals move to the visual cortex in
the back of the brain, and you can get a
sense of how the sigles move around and get processed,
and get a reasonable understanding of how this all works
from single cells to feedback at the global level. That
equates to expectations. And you can do the same thing
with hearing and touch and so on. But no amount
of that very important kind of science gives you insight
(03:00):
into why anything matters. Why is there any meaning at all?
In other words, why don't we just run like computers,
where we process signals and have inputs and outputs. Why
do we instead care so much about our lives and
accomplishments and whether people like us, and whether events have
(03:20):
meaning to us? Why do we ask whether we are
doing something significant with our time? Now, there's a sense
in which neuroscience speaks to this. We talk about reward
circuitry and prediction errors and salience networks, and psychology gives
us language about attention and bias and motivation.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But behind the.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Circuitry and the jargon, there's still a deep question. You
might be objectively safe and fed and housed, and yet
you need to feel that your life registers, that you're
somehow making a dent somewhere. It's the difference between surviving
and signifying from a neuroscience point of view that remains
(04:05):
difficult territory to access. Evolution can explain why we care
about food and shelter and reproduction, but we humans also
care fiercely about other things, about whether our work is respected,
whether our team wins, whether our group identity is affirmed,
whether a text message gets answered, whether a stranger on
(04:29):
the internet agrees with us, whether our absence would be noticed,
whether someone is proud of us, whether we feel replaceable,
whether our existence registers at all beyond the.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Private theater of our own minds.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And there's a related question, why is one person willing
to sacrifice everything for an artistic project that no one
else understands? And another person finds fulfillment through family and
another through God, another through achievement, another through domination, same species,
(05:07):
same brain architecture. But people can have very different maps
of significance. So the question that's kept nagging at me
ever since I saw that chalkboard in Francis Krik's office
is this, what is the brain's code for meaning? What
does it mean psychologically and neurologically for something to feel
(05:29):
like it matters? Now, this question about mattering and the
brain is a big interdisciplinary question. It lives at the
intersection of neuroscience and psychology and philosophy. So I called
my colleague, the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, because she's been
thinking about the issue of mattering for decades.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
How does this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Longing to matter shape our identity, our relationships, our cultures,
and the political world that we're all trying to share.
Goldstein has just written a new book on this, called
The Mattering Instinct, which is about this deep human drive
not just to survive, but to matter to ourselves and others.
(06:13):
Rebecca Goldstein is a MacArthur Genius Fellow, a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she was
warded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. So today
we're going to explore her idea that each of us
carries around a kind of inner mattering map that tells
us who and what is significant. Here's my interview with
(06:36):
Rebecca Goldstein. So, Rebecca, to get us oriented, what do
you mean by the mattering instinct? And how do you
explain that to people at dinner parties.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think we are programmed to act on a very
deep motivation that often goes hid in. But it is
a long matter.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What do you mean by matter?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, we use this word matter all over the
place of the verb to matter. We talk about what matters,
and we talk about who matters. And I think its
core meaning, deep down is to be deserving of attention,
So it has that notion of deserving this built into
(07:24):
it what philosophers call a normative concept, something that has
to do with with our values. So that term mattering
already gets us into this domain of values. We want
to know what's a value, We want to know who's
(07:45):
a value, And our mattering instinct is that we desperately
want ourselves to be among those who matter, who are
deserving of attention, interestingly, our own attention.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And you argue that this longing to matter is the
crux of human motivation. What makes you feel that this
longing to matter is more important than the pursuit of
pleasure or truth or survival?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, I mean many of us pursue are mattering by
ketenistic pursuit of pleasure, of truth, the knowledge of beauty,
of creativity, of power, of fame. But beneath all of
these things is this more basic, uh, motivation to to
(08:41):
prove that we are deserving of all of the attention
that we have to give ourselves in order to live
a coherently human life. Uh. And we that that is
what I think the longing to matter is all about.
And all these other motivations that give us the arc
(09:03):
of the narrative of our life, our ways of trying
to respond to to realize this deep longing. It's even more.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Powerful than the longing to live to survive.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
People will sacrifice their lives if they think that that's
what's required in order to realize their mattering instinct, or
in the very very tragic cases where they think they can't,
which is clinically known as as depression, whose most characteristic
(09:42):
expression is I don't matter. Others do, but I don't,
I can't, I never will. They will, in fact often
and their life or or contemplate empty their lives. So
it's belief deeper even matter instinct.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For survi, how do you distinguish wanting to matter from
the desire to be admired or loved? Are these different flavors?
Are they trying to get it the same thing?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Freud had said that the two cornerstones of our humanness.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Are love and work, and I would amend pride.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
And volubility to say that are the two cornerstones of
our humanness? Are longing for connectedness, which is also involves mattering,
but distinct from that as a separate motivation. This longing
(10:44):
to matter so connectedness, I think has something to do
with having people in our lives who will give us
special attention, whether we deserve it or not. It's kind
of unconditional. That's what we needed as the helpless creatures.
(11:05):
We're born into a helplessness unmatched in the animal kingdom.
You know, it takes to our early adulthood for the
last bits of our brain, when we're all the mature
stuff takes place to fall into place. So we're extremely
dependent on other people, and we are like that for
the rest of our lives. That there must be certain
(11:27):
people that I count as those people who are in
my life, my families, my friends, my you know, romantic partner,
my colleagues, my neighbors, perhaps the members of my community
whose attention I feel is coming to me. And just
as we felt as children led the attention of our
(11:48):
family members were coming to us.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
And that's always in place.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
We are gregarious creatures, evolved from gregarious creatures, born into
a great helplessness. It takes a very long long time
for us to outgrow that is connectedness, and connectedness has
to do with our relationship with others. The mannering instinct
has to do with our relationship with ourselves, and as
(12:13):
I say, if it's not realized, we feel.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Disgusted with ourselves.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I've known some people close to me who have gone
into the deepest of depressions and there's this kind of
just self clothing. They can't stand to be in the
presence of themselves anymore. That shows that there is something that.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
We all need.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
It in their privation of this need, it's it shows up,
but what a good life, of life of flourishing requires.
And in the book, I define different strategies for satisfying
the mannering instinct. And although I would say that we're
all alive in sharing this deep motivation, in fact, what
(12:59):
I think I think the most elegant expression for what
our species is creatures of manner too long to matter.
And for some people it really is the connectedness that
we all need.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
That doesn't I call them socializers?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
You know that to have the people in their lives
paying the attention to them that they require it does
it for them? That is how their mannering instinct is satisfied.
And I think that's probably true for most people. I've
been talking to people about this for over four decades now,
just because I find it really interesting. I find the
(13:39):
diversity of the way that people try to realize this
common motivation fascinating. But there are other.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Ways of doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
It's still needing that connectedness. I think that's always a
given in almost everybody's life. I know a few mathematicians
who don't seem to connectedness at all. But there are
these other ways of doing it. The people I call
transcenders who seek their mattering in some sort of metaphysical
(14:12):
belief about the nature of the universe, that there is
some transcendent presence, whether they call it God or something else,
who purposefully created them and whose purpose gives them their purpose,
gives them what I call mattering project Uh, that's what
makes them feel as if they matter.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
So there are these transcenders religious the spiritual.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Uh, there are people I call heroics drivers, and they're
not trying to really matter to others, not to other mortals,
and not to you know, some transcendent being that they
may believe exists. It's there. There's it's really a matter
of some standards of excellence that they've said for themselves
(14:56):
to be intellectual, artistic, athletic, ethical, and maybe some combination
of those and that's that's what gives the purpose to
their life. And then there are the competitors who understand
this question of mattering in zero some terms. To matter
(15:16):
to them means to matter more than others. So it's
interesting when I talk to people about mattering, people hear
that question, how do you go about your mattery? According to.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Their strategy A central idea and your framework is the
mattering map.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
What is the mattering map?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And how does that differ from values or identity or
personal narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yeah, sort of contains all of those things, I think.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
But what I've noticed in this pretty long life at
this point is that it's hard to live a human life.
People need to feel like some purpose, something that gives
some coherence to their life, and a life that's meaningful
in their own eyes.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
But the projects that are taken.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
On within these four strategies are so diverse, so many,
I mean pick up artists and just reading today in
the Washington Post about a man whose project was to
walk the whole planet. He's almost done with it now,
(16:28):
but that's his project, or you know, I don't know.
You saw that movie Julia and Julie about this young
woman who liked to cook but she was in the doldrums.
I think she was a would be writer and it
wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And her project was to.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Make every true perfection, every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook
in the Heart of French Cooking a tattoo. Artists, so
train spots, analytic philosophers, mathematicians of the Saints. So there
are many, many, many regions on the mattering math. And
(17:08):
I think of these four strategies as the kind of
continents of the mattering math. There are transcendors, many ways
of being a transcender. Christianity itself has forty four thousand
worldwide detominations. Words have been shed, I needn't say over
the disagreements among those who are very close on the
(17:29):
mattery map. But you know the way one defines this,
and it does have to do very much with our
identity and what we think we're about, what we're supposed
to do here. As I say, what makes our lives
keeps us engaged in our lives. And it's when it
dies you're in bad shape and we don't know how
(17:50):
to go forward.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
So in your book, you bring this idea to life
through several stories. Scott Joplin, William James, a woman rescuing infants,
a former neo Nazi skinhead. Tell us about those people
and how they matter to the story and what they
represent about mattering theorious theory.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
But to really bring these ideas alive, you have to
look at people's lives stories. I could just start with
William James. Actually William James, who was a great favorite
of mine, both a psychologist and a philosopher. Multi talented.
He got a medical degree first. He wanted to be
(18:50):
an artist. He did have great artistic talent. His father
was a kind of a religious thinker, Sweden Bornian, very
supportive family, very supportive community. Multi talent, but he didn't
know where to put his his talents. He was what
(19:13):
I call the heroic driver, or somebody who was mattering.
Instinct demands excellence in some or more areas that they're
very high standards of excellence, and he wasn't fulfilling those.
He went from art to medicine and he fell into
(19:35):
a really deep depression. He was prostate on his bed.
He you know, he couldn't get any energy. He is
such an example I think of what happens to a
person who's got all of the connectedness, the beautiful, wonderful relationships.
(19:56):
But that's something else that by temperament, by talent, whatever
it is, uh, demands of his mannering instinct, something aside
from connectiviusy Is was a heroic striver. And until he
found his niche in psychology and philosophy, lending them together
(20:17):
in a way that I re there, he couldn't go
forward and uh, and then he was known as a
person of tremendous energy. He was just always going. And
so this to me, I mean he I should say
that he had a sister. She was the youngest of
those five children, and she had she was also born
(20:37):
to be a heroic striver. She had the same kind
of temperament as her search to older brothers Henry and William.
Being a Victorian woman, she had no place to put that,
and she turned it into She was a mattering project
was an invalidist. She was an invalid. She was a
lifelong invalid. When she finally developed cancer at age I
(21:02):
think was forty two, died at forty four, she was grateful,
but at least she had a diagnosable illness.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I mean, you know, she was suffering from severe depression.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And so to me, this family, the James family, it's
almost like an experiment and to see what happens when
a person, given their temperament isn't, for whatever reason, isn't
given the means to.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Realize what.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
They're mattering instinct demands of.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
It's very hard to be a heroics driver, but it's so.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Much harder to be going to be a heroics driver,
not allowed to be one for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So this illuminates the connection between mattering and mental health.
Let's move to Scott Joplin. What does that story tell us, Yes, it's.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Not Joplin, who was known as King Ragtime, and I
don't know if you know his music, ly wonderful he
has it became he was forgotten for a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And then this was in the seventies with what was that.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Movie That's Staying Right and that that's that music is
played and he was buried in a pauper's grave, and
after that, you know, he was dug up and he
was I think he was given a posthumous polar surprise
for not for his Ragti music.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
He didn't take that so very seriously. He wanted to
be a classical musician.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
And he did compose classical pieces.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
He composed two operas, one of which was lost and
the other Tree Minitia, which has been in some sense
found not with the full orchestration that he had provided,
but musicians have provided the orchestration. I think marvelous. He
(23:01):
tried to do something extraordinity. His mattering project was to
bring the Black American experience.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Into music and to try to create the.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Highest forms of music from the African American experience.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And it was in Congress it was considered ridiculous. He
got He poured.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Everything into this mattering project, kept perfecting it, could not
get anybody to perform it. The idea of opera using
the grand forms of opera from classical music, to speak
of the African American experience in the United States post
(23:45):
Civil War during reconstruction was just considered preposterous. Poured everything
into it. As I said, died of pauper. He could
have just kept creating his ragtime pieces, could have tried
to create more popular forms of music, but to show
(24:06):
the African American experience in its most glorious setting. This
was his mattering project.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So tell us about the mattering project of your of
the neo Nazi skinhead that you met.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So, yeah, I'm very interested in where the mannering instinct
is really not being realized and many people are driven
to quite horrible ideological extremes. This is very rich pickings
for ideologies to go amongst those who are wanting to
(24:44):
feel that they don't matter. And I really wanted.
Speaker 8 (24:48):
To talk to an inceel involuntary selibates, and I spent
a lot of time online reading their message boards.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
And the extreme things they say, and the resentment is
just boiling up because they feel that they don't matter,
They're not getting what they feel they need, and they
blame it on those from whom they want this young women.
And I was also reading about neo Nazis and I
(25:25):
really really wanted to get to know one. Most of
them didn't answer me when I wrote to them, but
there was this one who answered me. He is an
ex Nazi skinhead. He grew up under terrible circumstances and
the really mean streets of Philadelphia, horrific family life.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
His mother was a drug addict, his stepfather was a
brutal ex Navy man who would eat this young man,
and much so that sometimes on the way home from school,
he would try to get hit by a car.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
And during one summer he met some neo Nazi skinheads
and they were very impressed with him because he actually
he actually knew that the enemy had gone to school
with black kids and as they had into you know,
he was a street warrior in Philadelphia. And then they
(26:30):
told him because he really felt like he didn't matter,
they really puffed him out, they flattered him, and they
told him, look in the mirror, you are a white male,
heterosexual American. You matter more than all these others. They
(26:51):
are stealing You're mattering. And this is very typical of
certain spheres of the mattering man to think of mannering
as zero sum to the extent that others matter, they're
taking away pieces of the pie from you. That is
how he was telling his story in terms of the mattering,
(27:13):
of feeling that he mattered, feeling that he was powerful,
feeling that he had to make to punish those who
were stealing mattering from him. It is very typical of
certain areas problematic, troubling and troubled areas of the mattering
that that people feel that others are stealing mattering from
(27:36):
them and there's not enough mattering to go around. I
think that's one of the big messages of the Book
of ways that we could try to change things so
that people would feel that there is enough mattering to
go around, that the extent that any of us matter,
we all matter to that same extent. I think that's
the basics of ethics. He's an example of, yeah, trying
(28:00):
to realize this deep motivation, how very wrong things can go,
and he fortunately found much more creative, life fulfilling ways
of meeting his instinct, which is why he was willing
to talk to me.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So, how do you see distorted or threatened mattering playing
out in our politics or culture currently?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
The ways that we choose to try to realize our
mattering instinct with it's religiously spiritually achievement, competition, socializing. It's
so fraught for us, it's so fraught with our emotions.
We're staking our lives lives on this.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Uh, this is the way that we try to prove
to ourselves that we are worth all the attention, but
we have to give ourselves just to lead our lives.
The mere fact that people are living their lives so
differently can feel like an affront, you know, I experienced
this very much when I was born into a very
(29:23):
religious family, and I think I know very well what
it feels like to be a religious person. I was
very religious, extremely religious, until the age of twelve or thirteen,
and then I know more. But I know that when
(29:43):
people like me, i am an atheist, talk to religious people,
we often kind of talk down down to them, and they,
you know, we as if if only they would be rational,
they would realize that their life is based on something unsubstantiated. Uh.
(30:04):
And And for their part, you know, religious people often
will talk down to people like me, like, how can
we positively have any purpose in our life? How can
we be moral if we don't think that the big
guy up there is watching us? The reason when they
were all over the Mannering map there there is this
(30:25):
kind of adversarial uh, positioning of of people against those
who who who are who are staking them mattering on
something else. The scientists will talk down to the people
in the humanities, the people of humanities ontown the people
And besides, you know, I've experienced all these in my life,
(30:48):
and and you know, so there is a a deep
tendency across the Mannering map to universalize one's own way
of going about realizing that because it means so much
to us, and we're always uncertain, we don't know, we
don't know if we're going about it the right way.
(31:08):
That's a really important part of it. Why it's so
for us, this uncertainty, and that makes us very defensive,
which can make us very intolerant. And we certainly see
this in the politics.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
If we're taking the mattering instincts seriously, how would this
change the way that we think about our schools, our institutions,
our politics. What can we do there?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
So I think really the first thing to do is
to understand this matter, and it's how it comes about,
why we have it, And I think it's rather a
beautiful thing about us. We recognize because we have this
great capacity for self reflection, that we can step outside
of our lives and interrogate ourselves.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Turn our theory of mind that.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Developed in order to understand others, we can turn it
on ourselves and discover things about ourselves.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
And one thing that is glaringly obvious it is.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That we pay so much attention to ourselves constantly. We
have to.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
We're biologically determined to be.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
It seem would seem that we think that we're the
most important thing in the whole universe, and short of luacy,
we know that we're not. I mean, we're all across
the mannering map. There are different views of the values.
What makes life valuable? What are the things we need
to do that are valuable in order for ourselves to
be valuable? You know, it makes us value seeking creature.
(32:42):
And it's so easy nowadays to get really appalled by
various things. But I always try to see it in
terms of this framework, to try to understand the what's
going wrong, but that it's stemming from something that I
find uh moving about about all you it's the matter
(33:09):
in the state, And so I think just to see
ourselves and to see others in terms of what it
is we share, it gives, you know, a deep understanding
to understand is not to to accept all the bad
things that it can lead to, but at least it
(33:29):
is to understand one another and not see each other
as monsters.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
And you have a nice quote from Spinoza on this, right, Yes,
I think.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
The quote that you're talking about is he says, so
you know, my my aim is not to laugh at others,
not to be uh, not.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
To to cry them.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
My aim is to understand, and I find that extremely
inspiring and helpful. But also if we.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Want to reach people who are reachable.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
My my ex Nazi friend calls them the wobbleys. If
you want to treat them as if they matter, that's
what got through to him. Don't curse them, but speak
to them as if they matter. Our brains, I don't
have to tell you are the most complicated thing that
has been found yet in this universe.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
They are extremely complicated.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
They demand a tremendous amount of water, and so of
course we pay ourselves a tremendous amount of attention. You're
thinking about yourself, you're fantasizing your daydreaming about yourself, you're
remembering with nostalgia. It's we are self centered and we
have to be. It's biologically determined. But as I said,
(34:43):
we have this capacity for self reflection, we can step
outside of it, and that's when we become these justificatory creatures.
I say, instead of being called holo sapiens, we should
be called Homo eustafagants, the justifying creatures. That what's really
different about us, you know, and it's not our gregariousness.
(35:05):
Other animals are also gregarious. Other animals need deep connections
because everything's more complicated in us. Not even bonobos, those
wonderful cousins of ours. They don't step outside of themselves
and have to justify the their way of life, say
why am I worth all of this? We evolve this
capacity for self reflection. That's what brings us up into
(35:27):
this other sphere, the sphere of the sphere of values.
It's not enough to just survive and flourish like the
other creatures on or if we have to justify to
ourselves our right to survive and flourish.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
So, Rebecca, if a listener felt that his or her
life didn't really matter to themselves or to other people,
what would you say to them after having written this book?
Speaker 4 (35:52):
We really do all matter.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I think that's what we're talking about when we talk
about the intrinsic dignity of the human So people really
do need some kind of mattering project. Whether they collapse
it into their need for connectedness, or if they have
such a temperament that they need other things. I think
that they should first of all, you know, really think
(36:16):
about what it is that would make them feel that
they matter.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Is it closer connections with others might be? Is it
some sort of creative outlet might be. Maybe it's a spirituality.
It's hard to be human.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
That was my interview with Rebecca Goldstein. I want to
return to the idea at the center of today's conversation
that every one of us is running a mattering project
to be seen, to be needed, to be effective, to
weigh something in the world. Rebecca argues that this is
the deep engine that lies below our decisions, below our identities,
(36:58):
our conflicts, our cooperation. So we just talked about how
this mattering instinct draws a kind of inner cartography that
tells you what counts and what doesn't. And we saw
through a few stories from her book how different these
maps can be. For Scott Joplin, his map placed a
huge red circle around an opera that the world generally ignored.
(37:22):
For William James, mattering was intertwined with mental survival, clawing
his way out of despair, deciding that his choices could
make a difference, that his life could be something other
than a footnote. For the former skinhead, mattering initially meant
inflicting harm to feel stronger, and then later redrawing his
(37:44):
map to realize that significance doesn't have to be stolen
from other people. Those very different lives, but they're all
shaped by the common question of what has to be.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
True for me to feel that eye matter.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Eral science point of view, this is a question about circuitry,
how our systems of reward and fear and social belonging
get trained over time. From Rebecca's philosophical point of view,
it's about value and meaning, what we treat as real,
as precious, as worth sacrifice. And the hope is that
(38:21):
when we put those views together we can get more
traction on understanding ourselves and our current moment. So I
want to return to that line from the philosopher Borus Spinoza,
the line that Rebecca loves.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
What Spinoza wrote is quote, I.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail,
not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. What
he's saying here is that instead of reacting with laughter
or tears or hate, one can undertake a calm, rational
inquiry to grasp the cause is behind human behaviors and events,
(39:03):
viewing them as natural consequences. Spinoza was making a call
for intellectual clarity and emotional detachment to comprehend the world,
and that was a hallmark of his rationalist philosophy. So
the key call for us here is to try to
understand how different people run different mattering projects. This gives
(39:28):
us a different starting point than we usually take. Instead
of asking how can anybody believe that, we can ask
what does this person believe they need in order to matter?
And here's a small experiment that you might try after
this episode. Notice your own mattering map. When you get
defensive in an argument, or when you feel invisible at work,
(39:51):
or when you're strangely proud of something tiny, ask what
part of my mattering is being threatened or affirmed right now? Well,
so do this also with someone that you maybe find infuriating,
Ask what mattering project is their behavior serving? You might
not love the answer, but it can shift you out
(40:12):
of scorn into a stance closer to understanding. The point
is to recognize that beneath all the surface differences, political
and cultural and personal, there's a universally shared architecture a
brain that needs to register to count, to feel that
this brief candle leaves some kind of trace.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
If we can see that if we can.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Talk about mattering as much as we talk about stress,
or diet or sleep, we might be able to redesign
our interactions in ways that take this into account and
to each of us, the invitation from this conversation is
to participate in that process a bit more consciously, to ask,
(40:57):
how do I want to matter and to whom? Go
to eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and
to find further reading. Join the weekly discussions on my
substack and check out Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube
for videos of each episode and to leave comments until
(41:18):
next time. I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos
What does it mean for your life to matter?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Is the drive to matter sometimes stronger than the drive
to survive? We humans talk a lot about happiness and
pleasure and meaning, but what if the real engine underneath
all of it is the need to feel that we count?
Is it possible that depression and extremism and ambition all
stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization
(00:34):
less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Today we're
going to speak with philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, who
has written a new book on what matters to people
and why and why it's not the same for everyone,
and why mattering is a fundamental instinct that underlies all
(00:54):
the others. Welcome to intercouse most with me, David Eagleman.
I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these
episodes we sailed deeply into our three pound universe to
understand how we experienced.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The world.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
When I was younger.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
One of the great mentors I got to work with
was Francis Crick, who had won the Nobel Prize for
discovering the structure of DNA. As you may know, in
the second half of Krick's career, he turned from studying
genetics to studying the brain, and specifically the question of
how the physical stuff of the brain gives rise to consciousness. Now,
(01:52):
Krick had a chalkboard that was full of ideas and equations,
but the most striking thing to me was that that
right in the middle of the board, outlined in a big,
thick rectangle, was a single word. And this word represented
to him one of the central mysteries of biology.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The word was meaning.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
In other words, he had a better understanding than most
people on the planet of the vast and intricate biology
that makes up the human brain. But he recognized that
one of the key questions was why does anything matter
to your brain? You can look at the visual system
and you can come to understand how photons hit the
(02:36):
retina and the signals move to the visual cortex in
the back of the brain, and you can get a
sense of how the sigles move around and get processed,
and get a reasonable understanding of how this all works
from single cells to feedback at the global level. That
equates to expectations. And you can do the same thing
with hearing and touch and so on. But no amount
of that very important kind of science gives you insight
(03:00):
into why anything matters. Why is there any meaning at all?
In other words, why don't we just run like computers,
where we process signals and have inputs and outputs. Why
do we instead care so much about our lives and
accomplishments and whether people like us, and whether events have
(03:20):
meaning to us? Why do we ask whether we are
doing something significant with our time? Now, there's a sense
in which neuroscience speaks to this. We talk about reward
circuitry and prediction errors and salience networks, and psychology gives
us language about attention and bias and motivation.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But behind the.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Circuitry and the jargon, there's still a deep question. You
might be objectively safe and fed and housed, and yet
you need to feel that your life registers, that you're
somehow making a dent somewhere. It's the difference between surviving
and signifying from a neuroscience point of view that remains
(04:05):
difficult territory to access. Evolution can explain why we care
about food and shelter and reproduction, but we humans also
care fiercely about other things, about whether our work is respected,
whether our team wins, whether our group identity is affirmed,
whether a text message gets answered, whether a stranger on
(04:29):
the internet agrees with us, whether our absence would be noticed,
whether someone is proud of us, whether we feel replaceable,
whether our existence registers at all beyond the.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Private theater of our own minds.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And there's a related question, why is one person willing
to sacrifice everything for an artistic project that no one
else understands? And another person finds fulfillment through family and
another through God, another through achievement, another through domination, same species,
(05:07):
same brain architecture. But people can have very different maps
of significance. So the question that's kept nagging at me
ever since I saw that chalkboard in Francis Krik's office
is this, what is the brain's code for meaning? What
does it mean psychologically and neurologically for something to feel
(05:29):
like it matters? Now, this question about mattering and the
brain is a big interdisciplinary question. It lives at the
intersection of neuroscience and psychology and philosophy. So I called
my colleague, the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, because she's been
thinking about the issue of mattering for decades.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
How does this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Longing to matter shape our identity, our relationships, our cultures,
and the political world that we're all trying to share.
Goldstein has just written a new book on this, called
The Mattering Instinct, which is about this deep human drive
not just to survive, but to matter to ourselves and others.
(06:13):
Rebecca Goldstein is a MacArthur Genius Fellow, a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she was
warded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. So today
we're going to explore her idea that each of us
carries around a kind of inner mattering map that tells
us who and what is significant. Here's my interview with
(06:36):
Rebecca Goldstein. So, Rebecca, to get us oriented, what do
you mean by the mattering instinct? And how do you
explain that to people at dinner parties.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think we are programmed to act on a very
deep motivation that often goes hid in. But it is
a long matter.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What do you mean by matter?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, we use this word matter all over the
place of the verb to matter. We talk about what matters,
and we talk about who matters. And I think its
core meaning, deep down is to be deserving of attention,
So it has that notion of deserving this built into
(07:24):
it what philosophers call a normative concept, something that has
to do with with our values. So that term mattering
already gets us into this domain of values. We want
to know what's a value, We want to know who's
(07:45):
a value, And our mattering instinct is that we desperately
want ourselves to be among those who matter, who are
deserving of attention, interestingly, our own attention.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And you argue that this longing to matter is the
crux of human motivation. What makes you feel that this
longing to matter is more important than the pursuit of
pleasure or truth or survival?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, I mean many of us pursue are mattering by
ketenistic pursuit of pleasure, of truth, the knowledge of beauty,
of creativity, of power, of fame. But beneath all of
these things is this more basic, uh, motivation to to
(08:41):
prove that we are deserving of all of the attention
that we have to give ourselves in order to live
a coherently human life. Uh. And we that that is
what I think the longing to matter is all about.
And all these other motivations that give us the arc
(09:03):
of the narrative of our life, our ways of trying
to respond to to realize this deep longing. It's even more.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Powerful than the longing to live to survive.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
People will sacrifice their lives if they think that that's
what's required in order to realize their mattering instinct, or
in the very very tragic cases where they think they can't,
which is clinically known as as depression, whose most characteristic
(09:42):
expression is I don't matter. Others do, but I don't,
I can't, I never will. They will, in fact often
and their life or or contemplate empty their lives. So
it's belief deeper even matter instinct.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For survi, how do you distinguish wanting to matter from
the desire to be admired or loved? Are these different flavors?
Are they trying to get it the same thing?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Freud had said that the two cornerstones of our humanness.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Are love and work, and I would amend pride.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
And volubility to say that are the two cornerstones of
our humanness? Are longing for connectedness, which is also involves mattering,
but distinct from that as a separate motivation. This longing
(10:44):
to matter so connectedness, I think has something to do
with having people in our lives who will give us
special attention, whether we deserve it or not. It's kind
of unconditional. That's what we needed as the helpless creatures.
(11:05):
We're born into a helplessness unmatched in the animal kingdom.
You know, it takes to our early adulthood for the
last bits of our brain, when we're all the mature
stuff takes place to fall into place. So we're extremely
dependent on other people, and we are like that for
the rest of our lives. That there must be certain
(11:27):
people that I count as those people who are in
my life, my families, my friends, my you know, romantic partner,
my colleagues, my neighbors, perhaps the members of my community
whose attention I feel is coming to me. And just
as we felt as children led the attention of our
(11:48):
family members were coming to us.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
And that's always in place.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
We are gregarious creatures, evolved from gregarious creatures, born into
a great helplessness. It takes a very long long time
for us to outgrow that is connectedness, and connectedness has
to do with our relationship with others. The mannering instinct
has to do with our relationship with ourselves, and as
(12:13):
I say, if it's not realized, we feel.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Disgusted with ourselves.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I've known some people close to me who have gone
into the deepest of depressions and there's this kind of
just self clothing. They can't stand to be in the
presence of themselves anymore. That shows that there is something that.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
We all need.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
It in their privation of this need, it's it shows up,
but what a good life, of life of flourishing requires.
And in the book, I define different strategies for satisfying
the mannering instinct. And although I would say that we're
all alive in sharing this deep motivation, in fact, what
(12:59):
I think I think the most elegant expression for what
our species is creatures of manner too long to matter.
And for some people it really is the connectedness that
we all need.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
That doesn't I call them socializers?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
You know that to have the people in their lives
paying the attention to them that they require it does
it for them? That is how their mannering instinct is satisfied.
And I think that's probably true for most people. I've
been talking to people about this for over four decades now,
just because I find it really interesting. I find the
(13:39):
diversity of the way that people try to realize this
common motivation fascinating. But there are other.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Ways of doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
It's still needing that connectedness. I think that's always a
given in almost everybody's life. I know a few mathematicians
who don't seem to connectedness at all. But there are
these other ways of doing it. The people I call
transcenders who seek their mattering in some sort of metaphysical
(14:12):
belief about the nature of the universe, that there is
some transcendent presence, whether they call it God or something else,
who purposefully created them and whose purpose gives them their purpose,
gives them what I call mattering project Uh, that's what
makes them feel as if they matter.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
So there are these transcenders religious the spiritual.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Uh, there are people I call heroics drivers, and they're
not trying to really matter to others, not to other mortals,
and not to you know, some transcendent being that they
may believe exists. It's there. There's it's really a matter
of some standards of excellence that they've said for themselves
(14:56):
to be intellectual, artistic, athletic, ethical, and maybe some combination
of those and that's that's what gives the purpose to
their life. And then there are the competitors who understand
this question of mattering in zero some terms. To matter
(15:16):
to them means to matter more than others. So it's
interesting when I talk to people about mattering, people hear
that question, how do you go about your mattery? According to.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Their strategy A central idea and your framework is the
mattering map.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
What is the mattering map?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And how does that differ from values or identity or
personal narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yeah, sort of contains all of those things, I think.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
But what I've noticed in this pretty long life at
this point is that it's hard to live a human life.
People need to feel like some purpose, something that gives
some coherence to their life, and a life that's meaningful
in their own eyes.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
But the projects that are taken.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
On within these four strategies are so diverse, so many,
I mean pick up artists and just reading today in
the Washington Post about a man whose project was to
walk the whole planet. He's almost done with it now,
(16:28):
but that's his project, or you know, I don't know.
You saw that movie Julia and Julie about this young
woman who liked to cook but she was in the doldrums.
I think she was a would be writer and it
wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And her project was to.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Make every true perfection, every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook
in the Heart of French Cooking a tattoo. Artists, so
train spots, analytic philosophers, mathematicians of the Saints. So there
are many, many, many regions on the mattering math. And
(17:08):
I think of these four strategies as the kind of
continents of the mattering math. There are transcendors, many ways
of being a transcender. Christianity itself has forty four thousand
worldwide detominations. Words have been shed, I needn't say over
the disagreements among those who are very close on the
(17:29):
mattery map. But you know the way one defines this,
and it does have to do very much with our
identity and what we think we're about, what we're supposed
to do here. As I say, what makes our lives
keeps us engaged in our lives. And it's when it
dies you're in bad shape and we don't know how
(17:50):
to go forward.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
So in your book, you bring this idea to life
through several stories. Scott Joplin, William James, a woman rescuing infants,
a former neo Nazi skinhead. Tell us about those people
and how they matter to the story and what they
represent about mattering theorious theory.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
But to really bring these ideas alive, you have to
look at people's lives stories. I could just start with
William James. Actually William James, who was a great favorite
of mine, both a psychologist and a philosopher. Multi talented.
He got a medical degree first. He wanted to be
(18:50):
an artist. He did have great artistic talent. His father
was a kind of a religious thinker, Sweden Bornian, very
supportive family, very supportive community. Multi talent, but he didn't
know where to put his his talents. He was what
(19:13):
I call the heroic driver, or somebody who was mattering.
Instinct demands excellence in some or more areas that they're
very high standards of excellence, and he wasn't fulfilling those.
He went from art to medicine and he fell into
(19:35):
a really deep depression. He was prostate on his bed.
He you know, he couldn't get any energy. He is
such an example I think of what happens to a
person who's got all of the connectedness, the beautiful, wonderful relationships.
(19:56):
But that's something else that by temperament, by talent, whatever
it is, uh, demands of his mannering instinct, something aside
from connectiviusy Is was a heroic striver. And until he
found his niche in psychology and philosophy, lending them together
(20:17):
in a way that I re there, he couldn't go
forward and uh, and then he was known as a
person of tremendous energy. He was just always going. And
so this to me, I mean he I should say
that he had a sister. She was the youngest of
those five children, and she had she was also born
(20:37):
to be a heroic striver. She had the same kind
of temperament as her search to older brothers Henry and William.
Being a Victorian woman, she had no place to put that,
and she turned it into She was a mattering project
was an invalidist. She was an invalid. She was a
lifelong invalid. When she finally developed cancer at age I
(21:02):
think was forty two, died at forty four, she was grateful,
but at least she had a diagnosable illness.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I mean, you know, she was suffering from severe depression.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And so to me, this family, the James family, it's
almost like an experiment and to see what happens when
a person, given their temperament isn't, for whatever reason, isn't
given the means to.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Realize what.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
They're mattering instinct demands of.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
It's very hard to be a heroics driver, but it's so.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Much harder to be going to be a heroics driver,
not allowed to be one for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So this illuminates the connection between mattering and mental health.
Let's move to Scott Joplin. What does that story tell us, Yes, it's.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Not Joplin, who was known as King Ragtime, and I
don't know if you know his music, ly wonderful he
has it became he was forgotten for a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And then this was in the seventies with what was that.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Movie That's Staying Right and that that's that music is
played and he was buried in a pauper's grave, and
after that, you know, he was dug up and he
was I think he was given a posthumous polar surprise
for not for his Ragti music.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
He didn't take that so very seriously. He wanted to
be a classical musician.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
And he did compose classical pieces.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
He composed two operas, one of which was lost and
the other Tree Minitia, which has been in some sense
found not with the full orchestration that he had provided,
but musicians have provided the orchestration. I think marvelous. He
(23:01):
tried to do something extraordinity. His mattering project was to
bring the Black American experience.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Into music and to try to create the.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Highest forms of music from the African American experience.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And it was in Congress it was considered ridiculous. He
got He poured.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Everything into this mattering project, kept perfecting it, could not
get anybody to perform it. The idea of opera using
the grand forms of opera from classical music, to speak
of the African American experience in the United States post
(23:45):
Civil War during reconstruction was just considered preposterous. Poured everything
into it. As I said, died of pauper. He could
have just kept creating his ragtime pieces, could have tried
to create more popular forms of music, but to show
(24:06):
the African American experience in its most glorious setting. This
was his mattering project.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So tell us about the mattering project of your of
the neo Nazi skinhead that you met.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So, yeah, I'm very interested in where the mannering instinct
is really not being realized and many people are driven
to quite horrible ideological extremes. This is very rich pickings
for ideologies to go amongst those who are wanting to
(24:44):
feel that they don't matter. And I really wanted.
Speaker 8 (24:48):
To talk to an inceel involuntary selibates, and I spent
a lot of time online reading their message boards.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
And the extreme things they say, and the resentment is
just boiling up because they feel that they don't matter,
They're not getting what they feel they need, and they
blame it on those from whom they want this young women.
And I was also reading about neo Nazis and I
(25:25):
really really wanted to get to know one. Most of
them didn't answer me when I wrote to them, but
there was this one who answered me. He is an
ex Nazi skinhead. He grew up under terrible circumstances and
the really mean streets of Philadelphia, horrific family life.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
His mother was a drug addict, his stepfather was a
brutal ex Navy man who would eat this young man,
and much so that sometimes on the way home from school,
he would try to get hit by a car.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
And during one summer he met some neo Nazi skinheads
and they were very impressed with him because he actually
he actually knew that the enemy had gone to school
with black kids and as they had into you know,
he was a street warrior in Philadelphia. And then they
(26:30):
told him because he really felt like he didn't matter,
they really puffed him out, they flattered him, and they
told him, look in the mirror, you are a white male,
heterosexual American. You matter more than all these others. They
(26:51):
are stealing You're mattering. And this is very typical of
certain spheres of the mattering man to think of mannering
as zero sum to the extent that others matter, they're
taking away pieces of the pie from you. That is
how he was telling his story in terms of the mattering,
(27:13):
of feeling that he mattered, feeling that he was powerful,
feeling that he had to make to punish those who
were stealing mattering from him. It is very typical of
certain areas problematic, troubling and troubled areas of the mattering
that that people feel that others are stealing mattering from
(27:36):
them and there's not enough mattering to go around. I
think that's one of the big messages of the Book
of ways that we could try to change things so
that people would feel that there is enough mattering to
go around, that the extent that any of us matter,
we all matter to that same extent. I think that's
the basics of ethics. He's an example of, yeah, trying
(28:00):
to realize this deep motivation, how very wrong things can go,
and he fortunately found much more creative, life fulfilling ways
of meeting his instinct, which is why he was willing
to talk to me.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So, how do you see distorted or threatened mattering playing
out in our politics or culture currently?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
The ways that we choose to try to realize our
mattering instinct with it's religiously spiritually achievement, competition, socializing. It's
so fraught for us, it's so fraught with our emotions.
We're staking our lives lives on this.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Uh, this is the way that we try to prove
to ourselves that we are worth all the attention, but
we have to give ourselves just to lead our lives.
The mere fact that people are living their lives so
differently can feel like an affront, you know, I experienced
this very much when I was born into a very
(29:23):
religious family, and I think I know very well what
it feels like to be a religious person. I was
very religious, extremely religious, until the age of twelve or thirteen,
and then I know more. But I know that when
(29:43):
people like me, i am an atheist, talk to religious people,
we often kind of talk down down to them, and they,
you know, we as if if only they would be rational,
they would realize that their life is based on something unsubstantiated. Uh.
(30:04):
And And for their part, you know, religious people often
will talk down to people like me, like, how can
we positively have any purpose in our life? How can
we be moral if we don't think that the big
guy up there is watching us? The reason when they
were all over the Mannering map there there is this
(30:25):
kind of adversarial uh, positioning of of people against those
who who who are who are staking them mattering on
something else. The scientists will talk down to the people
in the humanities, the people of humanities ontown the people
And besides, you know, I've experienced all these in my life,
(30:48):
and and you know, so there is a a deep
tendency across the Mannering map to universalize one's own way
of going about realizing that because it means so much
to us, and we're always uncertain, we don't know, we
don't know if we're going about it the right way.
(31:08):
That's a really important part of it. Why it's so
for us, this uncertainty, and that makes us very defensive,
which can make us very intolerant. And we certainly see
this in the politics.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
If we're taking the mattering instincts seriously, how would this
change the way that we think about our schools, our institutions,
our politics. What can we do there?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
So I think really the first thing to do is
to understand this matter, and it's how it comes about,
why we have it, And I think it's rather a
beautiful thing about us. We recognize because we have this
great capacity for self reflection, that we can step outside
of our lives and interrogate ourselves.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Turn our theory of mind that.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Developed in order to understand others, we can turn it
on ourselves and discover things about ourselves.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
And one thing that is glaringly obvious it is.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That we pay so much attention to ourselves constantly. We
have to.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
We're biologically determined to be.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
It seem would seem that we think that we're the
most important thing in the whole universe, and short of luacy,
we know that we're not. I mean, we're all across
the mannering map. There are different views of the values.
What makes life valuable? What are the things we need
to do that are valuable in order for ourselves to
be valuable? You know, it makes us value seeking creature.
(32:42):
And it's so easy nowadays to get really appalled by
various things. But I always try to see it in
terms of this framework, to try to understand the what's
going wrong, but that it's stemming from something that I
find uh moving about about all you it's the matter
(33:09):
in the state, And so I think just to see
ourselves and to see others in terms of what it
is we share, it gives, you know, a deep understanding
to understand is not to to accept all the bad
things that it can lead to, but at least it
(33:29):
is to understand one another and not see each other
as monsters.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
And you have a nice quote from Spinoza on this, right, Yes,
I think.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
The quote that you're talking about is he says, so
you know, my my aim is not to laugh at others,
not to be uh, not.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
To to cry them.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
My aim is to understand, and I find that extremely
inspiring and helpful. But also if we.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Want to reach people who are reachable.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
My my ex Nazi friend calls them the wobbleys. If
you want to treat them as if they matter, that's
what got through to him. Don't curse them, but speak
to them as if they matter. Our brains, I don't
have to tell you are the most complicated thing that
has been found yet in this universe.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
They are extremely complicated.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
They demand a tremendous amount of water, and so of
course we pay ourselves a tremendous amount of attention. You're
thinking about yourself, you're fantasizing your daydreaming about yourself, you're
remembering with nostalgia. It's we are self centered and we
have to be. It's biologically determined. But as I said,
(34:43):
we have this capacity for self reflection, we can step
outside of it, and that's when we become these justificatory creatures.
I say, instead of being called holo sapiens, we should
be called Homo eustafagants, the justifying creatures. That what's really
different about us, you know, and it's not our gregariousness.
(35:05):
Other animals are also gregarious. Other animals need deep connections
because everything's more complicated in us. Not even bonobos, those
wonderful cousins of ours. They don't step outside of themselves
and have to justify the their way of life, say
why am I worth all of this? We evolve this
capacity for self reflection. That's what brings us up into
(35:27):
this other sphere, the sphere of the sphere of values.
It's not enough to just survive and flourish like the
other creatures on or if we have to justify to
ourselves our right to survive and flourish.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
So, Rebecca, if a listener felt that his or her
life didn't really matter to themselves or to other people,
what would you say to them after having written this book?
Speaker 4 (35:52):
We really do all matter.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I think that's what we're talking about when we talk
about the intrinsic dignity of the human So people really
do need some kind of mattering project. Whether they collapse
it into their need for connectedness, or if they have
such a temperament that they need other things. I think
that they should first of all, you know, really think
(36:16):
about what it is that would make them feel that
they matter.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Is it closer connections with others might be? Is it
some sort of creative outlet might be. Maybe it's a spirituality.
It's hard to be human.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
That was my interview with Rebecca Goldstein. I want to
return to the idea at the center of today's conversation
that every one of us is running a mattering project
to be seen, to be needed, to be effective, to
weigh something in the world. Rebecca argues that this is
the deep engine that lies below our decisions, below our identities,
(36:58):
our conflicts, our cooperation. So we just talked about how
this mattering instinct draws a kind of inner cartography that
tells you what counts and what doesn't. And we saw
through a few stories from her book how different these
maps can be. For Scott Joplin, his map placed a
huge red circle around an opera that the world generally ignored.
(37:22):
For William James, mattering was intertwined with mental survival, clawing
his way out of despair, deciding that his choices could
make a difference, that his life could be something other
than a footnote. For the former skinhead, mattering initially meant
inflicting harm to feel stronger, and then later redrawing his
(37:44):
map to realize that significance doesn't have to be stolen
from other people. Those very different lives, but they're all
shaped by the common question of what has to be.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
True for me to feel that eye matter.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Eral science point of view, this is a question about circuitry,
how our systems of reward and fear and social belonging
get trained over time. From Rebecca's philosophical point of view,
it's about value and meaning, what we treat as real,
as precious, as worth sacrifice. And the hope is that
(38:21):
when we put those views together we can get more
traction on understanding ourselves and our current moment. So I
want to return to that line from the philosopher Borus Spinoza,
the line that Rebecca loves.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
What Spinoza wrote is quote, I.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail,
not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. What
he's saying here is that instead of reacting with laughter
or tears or hate, one can undertake a calm, rational
inquiry to grasp the cause is behind human behaviors and events,
(39:03):
viewing them as natural consequences. Spinoza was making a call
for intellectual clarity and emotional detachment to comprehend the world,
and that was a hallmark of his rationalist philosophy. So
the key call for us here is to try to
understand how different people run different mattering projects. This gives
(39:28):
us a different starting point than we usually take. Instead
of asking how can anybody believe that, we can ask
what does this person believe they need in order to matter?
And here's a small experiment that you might try after
this episode. Notice your own mattering map. When you get
defensive in an argument, or when you feel invisible at work,
(39:51):
or when you're strangely proud of something tiny, ask what
part of my mattering is being threatened or affirmed right now? Well,
so do this also with someone that you maybe find infuriating,
Ask what mattering project is their behavior serving? You might
not love the answer, but it can shift you out
(40:12):
of scorn into a stance closer to understanding. The point
is to recognize that beneath all the surface differences, political
and cultural and personal, there's a universally shared architecture a
brain that needs to register to count, to feel that
this brief candle leaves some kind of trace.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
If we can see that if we can.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Talk about mattering as much as we talk about stress,
or diet or sleep, we might be able to redesign
our interactions in ways that take this into account and
to each of us, the invitation from this conversation is
to participate in that process a bit more consciously, to ask,
(40:57):
how do I want to matter and to whom? Go
to eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and
to find further reading. Join the weekly discussions on my
substack and check out Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube
for videos of each episode and to leave comments until
(41:18):
next time. I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos
Host
David Eagleman
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