The Mattering Instinct (with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein)

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Today is December 3rd, 2025, and my guest is philosopher and author Rebecca Neuberger-Goldstein. Her latest book and the subject of today's episode is The Mattering Instinct.

how our deepest longing drives us and divides us. Rebecca, welcome to EconTalk. Pleasure to be here. So what is the mattering instinct? What does that mean? Yes. So it is just longing to matter. It is a longing that I think makes our... It characterizes our species. I've been talking to people about mattering for decades now. And there's a story as to how...

It struck me many, many years ago as so essential to what we are. I would define us, our species, as creatures of matter who long to matter. And that's what I'm examining here by the mattering instinct. I tried to explain how it arose in us, my first... area of study as an undergraduate was physics and from the very beginning I was struck by the second law of thermodynamics, the law that says that entropy increases and it takes a lot of energy to resist.

entropy. And that's what living systems are meant to do. Entropy always triumphs at the end. But until then, you're resisting. And I, you know, I was taught the physics of it, but I always thought there's something revelatory about what it is to be a human being. that somehow was speaking out of the physics to me. This was as an undergraduate. And yeah, it's been something I've thought about. for a very, very long time and slowly a kind of theory grew up about us, our species.

all centering on this longing to matter. And I also, I haven't written a book about it, but I'm very... I've become increasingly intrigued by this aspect of our humanity over the years. Certainly, it's something that economists neglect. In particular, I like the example of...

If you give me $100,000 a year out of – for whatever motive, kindness, a government program, and – Alternatively, I do something that is deeply meaningful to me and I earn $100,000 a year in the narrowest measure of well-being that economists use. You'd be indifferent because in both cases, you'd be able to consume $100,000 worth of goods and services. But I argue, and I think it's correct.

That in the first case, you wouldn't matter much, and your sense of self would be diminished. And in the second case, which is possible, and we'll talk about the different ways people matter, for many people, work is how they matter, what they do for money.

to make a living, support their family themselves. And so the other place I think about it a lot is the tragedies that feel like they increasingly... fill our lives, serial killers, mass murderers, gun violence, where it's always a lonely man with a gun. It's almost always a man. It's almost always somebody who's lonely, meaning they don't have the human connections that sustain a life that you talk about flourishing, that I think is a crucial part of being a human being.

I think we should pay more attention to it. I don't think it's a small thing. So we're on the same page that way. Good. Yeah. And that's an important page, it seems to me. I've never yet spoken to a person who I couldn't reach by talking this language of mattering. And, you know, in the book, I talk about specific... You know, one of whom you would think would be my natural enemy. He had been a neo-Nazi. He committed in his life terrible things.

He was a felon at the age of 17, and sworn to hate people exactly like me. I was brought up on these stories because my family in Europe was decimated by the Nazis. We reached such a deep understanding of each other. When I was able to reach down into that longing to matter that was going so unappeased. A terrible family life. He grew up in the mean streets of Philly. It was all gangs. And he just beaten up by his stepfather or his mother, a drug addict. Terrible.

terrible situation. And then he happened to run into some neo-Nazis and they told him, look in the mirror. And you will see why you matter so much. You are a white, male, heterosexual American. And these people, you know, are... taking your mattering away from you you know this notion of mannering is being zero sum that many people have to the extent that others matter i matter less

And, you know, that was just the life boys, you know, thrown out to him. And he grabbed it with all the force of his... longing to matter. And, you know, to get him to tell his story in the language of mattering, you know, was such a deep connection. Yeah, so it's really something, you know, it comes up all over in different places. I have to say that, you know, as this theory started to develop in my mind, starting...

with physics and ending with ethics. And as I slowly built it up in my mind, I was very suspicious of it because I'm very... suspicious of big theories that seem to explain everything. I don't like them either. Yeah, I don't like them. You know, my... the training in philosophy is as an analytic philosopher we take a little small problems and try to analyze them and we have none of this grand metaphysical you know uh the theories and so i've yeah i mean so

I've been very reluctant to even take it on, just because it seemed to explain so much to me. That in itself was a reason against it. But just the more I see things... happening in this world and the factionalism and the you know just the the being driven apart I think so much of our longing to matter. It drives us, but it also divides us. Yeah, that's the subtitle of the book. I just felt, okay, before I leave this earth, I want to get this theory.

out and because I think it's helpful. I can't read the newspaper without seeing this framework. I'm filtering what I'm reading through this framework. I think it's a very useful, you can debate how central it is to all of human existence. I think it's quite important. We might differ on the percentage, but... Once you start to think about it, it's very useful in thinking about your interpersonal relations, the things that you notice frustrate or traumatize others.

make them angry. And as I say, it's not a small thing. I just want to say you didn't finish the story about the neo-Nazi. I encourage people to read the book. It has a happier ending, but we can put that down. But I want you to start, and we'll come back also to this question of why it divides us, because in theory, there is plenty to go around.

And we're different. And part of your book is explaining the different ways that we pursue this desire. And there are many, many, and you highlight many famous and not so famous people who have pursued different paths.

But I want to go back to entropy because I think I've read the book, but those who are listening at home or walking your dog or wherever you are commuting. exercising, you might be thinking, entropy, what does physics have to do? I mean, okay, people do care about whether they matter or not. What's physics have to do with this? Yeah. I want to say that...

Again, you know, I'm a philosopher, and the philosopher who has meant most to me is somebody actually with a grand theory, and that's the philosopher Spinoza. My brain has been marinating in Spinoza for many, many years at this point. And this is, in some sense, I think of as, well... If Spinoza knew all the science that we know, he was a 17th century philosopher, science was really just beginning in the 17th century, feeling its way.

towards its methodology this immensely useful merit marrying of uh empirical observation prediction and uh and theory often put forth in the language of mathematics you know so just sort of feeling its way towards uh towards science uh But he sort of began with what he thought was the fundamental, which was his notion of God. And he ends up with ethics. His magnum opus is called The Ethics.

When I would teach it to students, it takes a long time to get the ethics. It starts with what he thinks of as the groundwork, which is his very abstract notion of God, which is... very different from the concept of God in the conventional religion, so much so that he was not only exiled or put into what's called the harem in Hebrew, he was a Jewish philosopher.

That is, he wasn't a Jewish philosopher. He was excommunicated. The Jewish equivalent of excommunication. Exactly, exactly. And damned by greater Christian Europe. So, but in any case. He began with that metaphysics. I think we're at the stage where we can begin with physics. And with the supreme, what is called the supreme law of physics. law of physics that physicists have promised us, starting with Einstein and going forth, talking.

All the big physicists will never be overthrown. You know, all physical laws are subject to revision. The world may turn out to give us counter evidence. but not the law, the second law of thermodynamics that says in a closed system. That is one that doesn't have any recourse for outside energy entropy. increases. What is entropy? The shortest answer is it's disorder. A system is an ordered thing. In order to function as a system, it must be highly ordered.

And every system eventually goes towards disorder, which means it's destroyed. It collapses. Entropy is the collapse of the system. quantified how much entropy is in the system and how much disorder there is in the system. And this is the supreme law. of physics that entropy tends to increase and the entropy of the universe is increasing. And, you know, the story of our universe has a kind of sad ending.

it will end in what's called thermal equilibrium uh it will be there there will be no change that can possibly happen it will be cold it will be still it will be dead it will be uh matter will have dissipated everything you know the stars everything will have dissipated um and that's the story of all physical systems and we are one we are a physical system the laws of biology are the answers, biologies, the laws of living systems, answer to entropy.

To put it very, very simply, to be a living system is to be in resistance to entropy. We are not closed systems, no problem. the smallest bacteria to us, to these complicated physical systems that we are, we are not closed systems. We require a lot of input of energy. sunlight, food, that is put to work to resist, leave a lot of resistance. That's the law of life, the resistance against entropy.

And that means that we have to pay a lot of attention to ourselves. The more complicated the system, the easier it is for it to... And all living systems are in this resistance to entropy. Attention evolved as a way of being able to fight. better, to resist better against entropy so we can pay attention to our environment. Here's the food, there's the predator, and be able to react to it.

What this means is a creature like us, with our highly developed sense of attention, we are paying a lot of attention to ourselves all the time. Our attention is very much... Fixed on us. Something in neuroscience called the default mode network. What's going on in our consciousness when we're not... paying attention to things outside. And we're thinking about ourselves. We're thinking about our past. We're fantasizing about our future. It's, we...

pay a tremendous, we matter to ourselves. That's the short, you know, and because of the way entropy plays out in the... biological system and why attention evolved in the first place. Yeah, we are very fixated on ourselves. And I like to say... We're self-interested, not selfish. You should say something similar in the book. And of course, listeners, I'm sure will have at some point already thought about my favorite quote from Adam Smith.

Man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. And Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when he wrote that, meant by loved, he didn't mean just romantic love. He mainly meant we want to matter. We want to be admired, respected, honored. And when he says naturally, he means it's hardwired, which is consistent with your story.

And by lovely, he meant worthy of respect, admiration, and being paid attention to. And so I think this is a very deep thing. But you take it, and so I'm a big fan of this, but you take it in a slightly, I'd say.

It's unusual direction, and here's a quote from the book that I think gets – you say it a number of times, and it goes like this. Quote. What the mattering instinct is about is trying to prove to ourselves that we are deserving of all the attention that we can't help paying ourselves, end of quote. Meaning that...

We have this self-interestedness driven by our desire to resist, not driven, hardwired. It's part of our evolutionary heritage to resist entropy. But that's not enough. You also suggest... in that quote and elsewhere in the book, that we feel uneasy with our self-awareness, our overly attentive, paying attention to ourselves.

And we want to feel that it is justified. What is that ad? Why do you do that? Why don't you just say, we want to matter. It's important. We care what people think of us. It's all, it matters. But you say something. much stronger and a little bit different, which is our life in some sense is a quest to validate our inherent self-centeredness. Yeah. So talk about that. Okay. And yeah, and that is one of the big moves I make in the book in trying to get eventually.

And that is that I think that this capacity we have for self-reflection. very complicated operation function that our big cranes come equipped with. It is a capacity to step out. outside ourselves and interrogate ourselves the way we do others. You know, why are you like this? Why are you doing this? What's making you... What's making you click? We pay attention to ourselves. And if we were, I define, by the way, this word.

mattering, you know, to mean deserving of attention. So that word, you know, deserving, worthy, is built into the notion of mattering. to matter, to long to matter, is to long to be deserving of attention, which I say, ultimately... The attention we long to be worthy of, deserving of, is our own. Because to step outside of ourselves and to see how much attention. We pay to ourselves, our fixation on ourselves, even though it's baked into our identity.

What am I? I am the person who naturally pays very close attention, special attention to one Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein. And there is no... further fact that I need to produce in order to explain why I do pay so much attention to that particular thing and all the universe other than that's who I am.

builds into us and yet when you step outside yourself and you think of how much attention you're paying to yourself and if the amount of attention that you pay to a certain thing is a measure of how much you think it matters. We each would seem to think that we matter more than anything else in the whole universe, and short of lunacy, we know that isn't true. And that is what causes the kind of unease, which I think...

you know, comes on us in late childhood, in adolescence, in young adulthood. And in some of us, we erupt. over and over again, that there is that sense of, do I really matter? Am I really worthy of all this attention that I pay to myself?

And unfortunately, I know through several friends what it is like to be severely depressed. I mean, clinically depressed in the sense of having to... withdraw from life completely and what they say and oh you know some of them are the most talented brilliant people I know with good family lives with loving friends I don't matter. And there is such self-loathing in this. They can barely tolerate their own.

presence you know we are constantly ourselves 24 7. um and this is it is it is always the sense of of this undeservingness of their of their own self-fixation. So I think there is, I often look to extreme cases to try to see what normally goes unnoticed in those of us who are more or less functioning okay. in this world. And from being in close proximity to people who have suffered from severe clinical depression, that these are the words, I don't matter. And it's not because of lack of

relationships in their case. It's not loneliness. It is this other unappeased cornerstone of our humanness. The mattering instinct, the longing to matter, to do something to justify. And that's so interesting to me, because this means that we are, in some sense, you know what a philosopher called.

normative, that we are thinking about justification, about values. This is what makes us value-seeking creatures. So, I think about... So, that's my move. I don't think you quote him, but on this, we... Steve Jobs talked about wanting to put a dent in the universe, and that it's a very high standard, a very high level, a high bar to justify one's own existence. He certainly put many dents.

in the universe. So he definitely mattered, still does. But I just want to put a little footnote here. I'm sorry. I just was going to say, I wish I had that quote. Okay. Yeah, it's a good quote. So, but I just want to put a footnote here about consciousness and I don't. I don't want to digress into this other than just to mention it, which is that this idea of self-obsession, to put it in the extreme version.

But we all have it. It's not extreme, actually. It's all we think about most of the time. Did I embarrass myself? Am I going to do a good job later? Is this presentation going to go well? Am I going to get the raise? Am I going to get the... person I long for romantically. We think about this all the time, and we presume, and this is hard to know, but we presume that most other creatures don't worry about these things.

But we do. And your point, which I think is easily overlooked, it's not just, you know, we're different from animals. We can imagine, say, a dog. We can imagine moving to Brazil or Israel or wherever. And yet, I think we underestimate, because it's maybe for a bunch of reasons, but we underestimate how dominant and constant that mode is for consciousness. And it doesn't...

Does it exactly make sense? I talk about this a lot on the program. It's just that why can't we just have a good time? Animals, you know, they're cold, they go inside, they're happy. It's easy. They're hungry, they get food, they're happy. They don't have guilt. They don't have shame. Well, they have a little bit sometimes. We can see it, it seems. It may be anthropomorphizing. But my point is that I think it feels that way. But you've put your finger on something that is…

A deep part of what it is to be human. Before we go any further, talk about the different kinds of ways that people matter. Because one of the other interesting parts of the book is that you create what you call a mattering map. a taxonomy of mattering and it's sort it's helpful and it's sort of interesting to think about the different ways because if you're in the broadest sense if you think about well people pay attention to me so i matter

But that's you go way beyond that. So talk about the four different kinds of ways that people find mattering appeased. Gosh, the first book I ever wrote, which happened to have been. a novel um uh and uh what's called the mind-body problem very philosophical novel and i had the uh my main character come up with this notion of a of the Manory map. It's been simmering for a very, very, that book was published in 1983. Yeah, so this has been simmering to me for such a long time.

It has many, many different domains. I mean, over my long, long life, I've met people who I've been... pickup artists you know who this is their mattering project you know to seduce and and abandon as many women as they possibly can on its side of this Ex-neo-Nazi and religious people and many, many sorts, conventional religion, the spiritual but not religious people, you know, just so many different.

regions of this mattery map but digging and digging and reading some psychologists about theories of personality also but just digging and digging in these conversations I was having with people. And not because I was planning to ever write about it, but just because I found it the most interesting conversations to have with people. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is it that makes you want to pursue your life, you know, to just gives you the impetus, the energy to get on with it?

so many different ways of mattering. I go into some of the kinkier ways or more eccentric ways in the book. But beneath it all, I've found, and this is open... to empirical falsification but so far what I found is there are generally four different strategies and I'll just first name the ones the ones that I call transcendent mattering, and social mattering, competitive mattering, and heroic striving.

So describe each of those. Always, I find, describe each of those. Transcendent is mattering. To the universe at large, it's got a cosmic mattery. To the universe, because transcenders believe that the universe has a kind of personal... attitude towards oneself. This is religious or spiritual. It's this kind of attitude. It is the view that transcenders believe that Each of us was created purposefully, intentionally by whether they call it God or something bigger.

Something like that, something God-like, who created the universe, the laws of nature, and ultimately us for a reason. This is the highest... This delivers the highest form of a sense of mattering that you really, you know, that there is a, that you. have a role to play in the narrative of eternity, that that which created the universe is had a purpose for you. And I don't think...

I should say that I started out as a very religious person. I come from a very religious house, old Orthodox Jewish, extremely Orthodox. I am no longer, and I'm not a believer. But I know what it feels like to think of the universe in this way. And the sense of mattering, when I became, at quite a young age, no longer a believer. The universe was so diminished for me. I was diminished. I had to think about what do I do now? And the script was laid out for me.

especially as a female, was laid out for me what I was meant to do in this world. And now it was my responsibility, which was thrilling and terrifying, you know. And so... Okay, those are transcenders, and I think that's fascinating. I think that this way of ultimately dealing with mattering and the sense that it gives you of mattering.

But we ought to understand this, and those of us who are not believers should understand what it is to be a believer and what it does to one's sense of matter. Okay, I'm going to go to...

Next to socializers. And from my conversation, socializers think that what they feel is how they... try to justify themselves to themselves is by mannering to others, which is sometimes in beneficial ways. but can also be in very non-beneficial ways, you know, dominating power over and all of this. And fame, fame, you know, to matter to many strangers is such an important motive in our time.

because it's become ever easier to become famous. You know, you can bob your head and lip sync on YouTube and have a million followers. And so, you know, these are the socializers. and it from my conversations it seems to me this is has not been empirically tested it seems to me that's how many many people maybe the bulk of us think about what it is to matter in healthy ways and unhealthy ways, I would say. And that's true for all of these strategies. And then there are heroic striders.

And they are not striving to matter to others, neither to other mortals, nor, you know, to a transcendent present in the universe. They are trying to realize certain standards of excellence that they feel they are born to realize. And it could be intellectual, artistic. Athletic and ethical. One of the interesting people that I portray in the book is, Mandy's no longer with us, Baba Amti.

who was completely irreligious, but was a saint. He devoted himself to wiping out leprosy in his native India and went to tremendous lengths to do so. And he was driven by... He was a heroic striver. He always claimed not to be a saint at all, but he had to perfect his own... His own sense of doing what he considered the right thing. He gave himself. So, yes, these are heroic strivers. I was going to say he gave himself a mission. And I think all heroic strivers.

see that they have a mission. It may not come from the divine or the universe or the transcendent source. It could just be a passion, a hobby. You have some wonderful examples in the book. of people who pursue their passions. One example you give is fly tying, which is the idea of fly fishing and making beautiful flies that are tied with extraordinary.

artistry and materials. It's a small niche, but for many people, a small niche is all they need. And they are going to get better and better at it. So it's a very beautiful idea. And then the last group is competitive matters. So who are they? A lot of people, sometimes people will become very abashed when I say, you know, do you matter? Tell me how you think that you matter. They become rather abashed.

And it usually turns out that these are people who understand my question to mean, do I matter more than others? That they really think of mattering in zero sum. that to the extent, you know, that others matter, they're taking something away from me, that it's always a striving to matter more. And, you know, some of the most prominent people, and again, as I read the newspaper and I read about some of the really bizarre behavior of various powerful people.

I realized that, oh, these are competitive, mattering people, that they really... They really are striving to matter more, to always be the person in the room who matters the most. And, you know, I've met them in my gym. We meet them on the world stage. We really see them on the world stage. So those are the four types.

It's true. You know, I was born into a family that wanted me to be a transcender. I couldn't be for whatever reasons, the way my mind works, whatever it was, everybody else, all my siblings. They are transcenders. I am not. Why? I don't know. I am a heroic striver, right? Yes, my mattering project is, well, you're hearing it. This is my mattering project. Do you understand mattering?

Yeah, it's a cognitive, it's an intellectual thing, or an artistic thing, and sometimes an ethical thing, but definitely a heroic striver. What, you know, it's temperament, it's culture, it's... personal experiences you know where we end up on the on the mattery map what continent we end up on um i'm not you know this is something i would love to have people who

I'm better equipped to understand these things, explain. I found some explanations in psychology of personality that I go into in the book. But in any case, I think that's where we are. This is a description of everybody I've met so far. So on the competitive... They're somewhere or other. On the competitive thing, I think about...

Corey Vidal, who said, every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. You encourage us to do the opposite, which I loved. And I think... The ability – you call it kvelling, which is a Yiddish word meaning to take pride in. I think it's very interesting. There is a lot of jealousy in the human art, and that's what – Vidal is semi-ironically referencing, although I think he probably meant it. I suspect he may have meant it, although it's kind of a joke, but there are no jokes. But...

But I do think this idea of felling for others is a really deep idea, which is part of our humanity. And I see it the way I see it when you see a magnificent artistic performance. An extraordinary musician, a great athlete. And, you know, athletes get intellectuals often look down on athletes as is just physical. But I think many of us fell for others and we root for athletes to succeed and win their nth championship, say, which is a weird thing to care about.

But we feel – and I think Adam Smith wrote about this too. Real Smith scholars can remind me what page this is on. But we love this idea that these other people are doing these beautiful, heroic things. They're heroic strivers that we're experiencing. vicariously and we want them to off it of course sometimes we want them to be torn down we want them to fail a horrible human urge but the other human urge we have is to for them to even further embellish

their reputation and their success and to take our own pleasure in it, even though we don't really have anything to do with it. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. It's beautiful. It really is. And it is, you know, in some sense, I think there. i don't know they're redeeming us they're you know to see that potential and to know the discipline and the hard work that goes into it but you just to see the

beauty of which humans are capable and their athletic feats and their intellectual, their artistic and their ethical feats. You know, there is something that we can take pride in. And I think that this should be... cultivated. Oh, for sure. And I feel if we've had more of a sense that there's enough mattering to go around. And that it needn't be thought of in zero-sum terms. Yes, enough mattering for all of us that perhaps... That is a way of encouraging the more generous and happy, expansive.

feelings rather than the, give me, give me, give me. They're taking, they're taking, they're taking. You know, it's a little bit like, you know, like those of us who have raised children. important thing you can possibly do if you take on that project. You know, when If you have more than one, it is terribly important that each child feels there is enough mattering to go around, you know, and that is, and if not.

You know, there's jealousy of a fierce sort. You can see it with such young children. And it's really, you know, so this really also, excuse me a moment, this has implications for how we raise. we raise our children as well, that each child should feel that they matter as much as anybody else in the family, because I think that first pattern, that first model.

of where one stands in the world, vis-a-vis one's own mattering, which matters so much throughout one's life, that first modeling comes from the family. And so this is... You know, something to be aware of in raising children. Very important. Yeah, just one story. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. This one story is... A mother had told me once, she had three young sons at the time, and she told me that her middle son, who I thought was an amazing child,

had said to her, you don't love me as much as you love my two brothers. And she said, well, how do you say this? And he said, well, you know, when you're washing the dishes at the kitchen sink at night, if my older brother asks...

a question or my younger brother has a question you turn off the water but when i ask a question you don't and then she realized she told me that that is true and he had particular kind of mind that she just she thought he was like a little pedant um he wasn't constantly parsing words and saying what she described to me as things that are absolutely obvious, like a double negative means a positive. The kid grew up to be a professor of mathematical logic.

That was the kind of questions he was asking, the observations he was making that she found quite boring. But then he noticed that tiny little piece of evidence that she didn't turn off the water. and said, you don't love me as much. So it's very, very important for parents to be aware that they are calculating, they are taking this in because, yeah.

What matters more than their own mattering to their mother? Nothing matters more. I just want to mention, I've mentioned it a number of times on the program. I think it came up recently. The video, which is a little bit hard to find these days, but I've seen it, many people have seen it, of Andrew Wiles, the mathematician, talking about...

salvaging his proof of Fermat's last theorem. And when he tells the story of how it came to be, which is quite extraordinary, he chokes up. And we, the viewer, also become... Most many of us become emotional at the idea that he might not have been able to salvage it. which in some sense is not a big deal. Somebody else would have found it, maybe or maybe not. But why do we find that so powerful? And I think your book gives us a way of thinking about it. He's a heroics driver.

He wants to prove this theorem, and he almost does. Well, he thinks he does. The world thinks he does. It's even worse. He gets all this honor, all this glory, which is also a competitor part. And he gets some socializing pleasantness too. And there's something transcendent because it's math and it's ethereal. And so – and then it turns out he's wrong. He didn't prove it.

And we're rooting for most of us, I hope. Maybe not a few of his colleagues. We'll put them to the side. But we're all rooting for him desperately because we want to see his project come to fruition. We want him to matter in the way that he does. I just think your book helps us understand both our own emotions and some of those around us. But I want to talk about...

The urge to what I would call the urge to proselytize. And you talk about it in the sense that mattering projects can divide us. So let's say you care about I'll take the fly fisher. The person who collects exotic feathers to the point of theft. It's a great story. You can read about it in the book. But here's a person who cares about fly fishing, and he wants to tie the most beautiful, best feathers.

One might inevitably say that that's kind of a small project, that its significance for the world is small, and judge that person for choosing that as their mattering. The way they satisfied this desire. And, you know, that's an obvious way that human beings sometimes react. I might try to convince you to go back to your religious roots. You might try to convince me to give up mine because obviously I'm irrational for believing in God and living a religious life. Similarly, I might tell you.

You're competing for this prize and look what you're doing to yourself and to others. So we lecture and judge not just ourselves. But we tend to think, and this is also, I think, a very helpful psychological insight from the book. We tend to think that our mattering project is, of course, sublime and glorious. And yours is kind of pitiful and trivial and small. And if you knew the way things should be, you'd pick a different one. And I think one of your themes in the book is to be tolerant.

of what we all have to deal with in choosing our project. And in some dimension, I have trouble being this tolerant, Rebecca, I'll confess. But in some dimension, we should live and let live. Not entirely. You know, and I do think I see that following the footsteps of Spinoza, you know, where he started with his day. His weird view of God, which is one with nature. It ends with ethics. I start with physics.

I want to end with ethics. That is, not all ways of pursuing are mattering, are okay, I think. A whole bunch of them are, right? So, first of all, did you call it the urge to proselytize? Yes, right? And I call it the urge to universalize. That whatever way I am finding, you know, to, yes, everybody should be a philosopher. The unexamined life is not worth living. yeah they added pretty pretty hard yes and i have a bunch of quotes you know um yeah

Pretty harsh, yes. And it was said by Socrates after he was voted. guilty of corrupting the youth in ancient Athens, of all places, that became a crime. when he was supposed to be trying to negotiate a penalty short of death. And he so offended people by saying that. Basically implying that they were living lives not worth living. There was nothing worse you can tell somebody. More people voted for his death than had voted for his guilt. Kind of irrational there.

That's what it does. I mean, that's such a good example. Socrates' trial there and what Plato says, he said, and how that so infuriated his audience that Moore voted for his death. But, you know, religious people, transcenders, you know, are often accused of being, you know, the most intolerant. You know, if you're, it's my God or it's hell, you know, you follow my way or it's hell.

for those religions that believe in hell. But I think actually this universalizing, this urge to proselytize, to universalize, to say it's my way, or you're wasting your life, takes place all over. the mattering map. You know, an examined life is not worth living or lots and lots of quotes. I have a quote from former editor Diana Freeland, I think her name is, of a Vogue magazine saying, you know, you have to be well-dressed. That's what gets you down the steps in the morning.

Without it, you're nothing. Nothing. I mean, so from all different corners of the mattering map, you get these universalizing statements, do it my way, or... you're just getting life wrong you might as well not have lived at all you might as well not have shown up for your existence at all for all the mattering that you have um what is that urge and it is the urge to try to found our life

are mattering on something objective you know that that this really does matter and if it is objective uh if it's not just a figment of my own temperament and personality and just the contingencies of who I am, then it's really something real. It's objective. And if it's objective, then everybody.

ought to recognize it. It's this kind of logic, I think, that lies behind some of our impulses to proselytize our way. And I've heard physicists uh is saying you know i mean why doesn't everybody just study the laws of nature uh that you know that they're grand they're they're they're transcendent uh they're something larger than us they give our life meaning

Why doesn't everybody just do this? Well, that's not where everybody's talent lies. So there is this contingency of what our talents are, our passions, our culture. that go into our identity. And the truth of the matter is, I think that we have to ground the notion that we each matter. In something else, we need these mannering projects. We do. And I think it's something beautiful about us that we want to justify our self-obsession.

Even though it sometimes leads us to some very dark and destructive places. There are bad places on the Mannery map, clearly. But nevertheless, there is, I think, the truth that we each do matter. In fact, our longing to matter is itself indication. something that matters. It's something estimable in us. I admire our species. For taking on this burden of justifying, each of us justifying ourselves. It's very poignant. And in that sense, there's something estimable about the...

Our desire to resist entropy, death, and... There's something heroic about it, even for the non-heroic strivers, is the way I would think about it. And of course, when you talk about the dark side of this urge, the people who matter the most. In the everyday sense of that word are, of course, monsters. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, King Leopold, you know, take your pick. It's not.

That urge to make a difference, which we inculcate in our children sometimes as a desirable thing to make the world a better place, say, can have very dark. dark parts to that journey. I want to close with a I want to close with a I think an empirical statement that

Brings me back to what I said at the beginning about economists, which is that in the West, particularly the United States, the standard of living, there's always debates about it, but there is no doubt. that the 300 plus million people who live in the United States are some of the wealthiest and materially comfortable people in the history of humanity.

You can pick other countries. I just picked the United States because I used to live there and I know it better than many other places. And so they're in the top 1% historically, maybe five, but I think it's probably in the top 1% of all the people who've ever lived. If you ranked them by material comfort, almost everyone in the United States would be way, way, way to the right-hand tail as material well-being. And yet there is a feeling of malaise.

And you call it a crisis of mattering. And I think it's pitiful, actually. Somewhat pitiful is a little strong, but... It's weird that people find this puzzling. In a way, you have to be an economist to find it puzzling. Economists would say, well, we're so wealthy. Why aren't we happy? Well, because money is not what makes people happy.

What makes people happy in the deep sense of the word, the Smithian sense, the Thomas Jefferson sense, is mattering and what you call and philosophers call flourishing. And if most people are not flourishing, it doesn't matter how many – what version of the iPhone they have or whether they –

Never get cold or hungry. And our biggest problem is obesity, not poverty, not starvation in the United States. Well, we have a different problem. And, you know, people it's kind of obvious. And, you know, I think. We ignore this at our peril in the West and in democracies, because when people don't think they matter, they will do things.

to fix that. And many of them are dark. So the only thing I would add before I let you respond, but I think the other piece of this, which you only talk about indirectly, is family. Through much of human history, there are only two ways that most people matter. Unless you're the king, put the king aside, small sample, the number of monarchs in the world, the rest of average, the mass of human beings get.

satisfaction and matter because they're loved or love their family or have those social interactions, or they make a living and feel that that gives them a sense of importance. And as we become more leisurely and as we struggle, as we do in many places in the most wealthy nations, to create family and to create human connection, forget family.

To have friends, to have a social interaction with other people, it's not going to turn out well. And, you know, I'm a classical liberal. I don't think we should be. telling people what to do. And I don't think we should force them to take social media off their phones or whatever crazy ideas people might have about making this better. But we can't ignore it.

It's not going to go well. That's my take. Love to hear your thoughts. I just say also, it's not going well. I'm not just saying it's not going to go well. It's not going well.

Yeah. Longing on a large scale, unappeased longing on a large scale is what makes history. Yeah. And it's often the kinds of events that get written in the history books. They're not good events. They are events that can lead to great destruction. to wars and all sorts of terrible constraints on freedom, all sorts of, yeah, the events that make for interesting history books. Yes, and longing, there is no longing of which this is truer.

than the longing to matter. This is the essence. We are, what a human being is a creature of matter who longs to matter. It is, I'm so obsessed with both of those notions. the noun matter and the verb that we derive in English from it, you know, to matter. Both of which come from the word, the Latin word mater, mother, which is interesting, actually.

But it is, we can't ignore this. We can't ignore this. I think, you know, Freud had said that the two cornerstones of humanness are love and work. And I would amend that. Slightly. I talk about in the book that for love, I would substitute connectedness, the feeling that there are people in our lives who will pay us attention whether we deserve it or not.

They are in our lives, these paradigmatically, our family, you know, our friends, perhaps our colleagues, but these are people, and you may not love them, but you, they are in your life. We all need this at the pain of tremendous loneliness, which is anti-flourishing. You cannot be a lonely person and be flourishing. But the other piece, and for a lot, as I said, the socializers.

This is not another beast. They collapse it. But for a lot of us, there is this other, you know, for all of us, there's the mammary instinct. And it may take the... form of being a socializer we may be transgenders we may be competitors we may be heroic strivers there's nothing you know you have the temperament that you do and you try to make the best of it without causing destruction or misery to others. And that is, of course, the ethical constraint there.

And without that, without people's feeling that they are living lives that have purpose, coherence, that are meaningful in their own eyes, there is... It's not loneliness that occurs, but it is a feeling of waste and in its worst extremes of self-loathing or resentment, you know. It can be turned outward to the world. Why are you making me feel this way? Why are there other people who matter so much more than I? All of us, it's just as strong from...

from Putin and Trump to the beggar you see on the street. I mean, really, this is what it is to be human. We have to create... ways of being in our companies, in our family life, in our social relationships. They give everybody the sense that there's enough mattering. to go around. We don't have to be grabbing for it like a bunch of kids under a pinata trying to gather up as much of it as possible. Not if you understand human nature.

As you've reminded me, Adam Smith understood how human nature, not to understand human nature is to understand the desperation and the urgency of. ministering to every individual's longing to matter. My guest today has been Rebecca Goldstein. Her book is The Mattering Instinct. Rebecca, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Oh, thank you so much. What a pleasure it was to speak with you.

This is EconTalk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. For more EconTalk, go to econtalk.org, where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. The sound engineer for EconTalk is Rich Goyette. I'm your host Russ Roberts. Thanks for listening. Talk to you on Monday.