Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Why Mattering Matters With Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:04] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 555 of Live Happy Now. All of us want to feel like we matter, but this week’s guest is here to explain why it’s not just a want, it’s a need. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and today, I’m joined by philosophy professor and author, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, whose latest book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Desire Drives Us and Divides Us. She’s here to talk about how our need to feel that our lives matter can open the door to more empathy and compassion, but also fuel some of the deep social conflicts we’re experiencing right now. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:40] PF: Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on the show with me today.
[0:00:43] RNG: It’s such a pleasure.
[0:00:45] PF: This is such a wonderful topic, and it’s one that you say has been on your mind for quite a few years. To give our readers some context, tell us about that.
[0:00:54] RNG: Yeah. Quite a few years, so I –
[0:00:57] PF: A couple of decades.
[0:00:58] RNG: Yeah, decades. Yes. I am trained as a philosopher and I – professor of philosophy. But I did what actually my colleagues have thought was a goofing off thing is I – when I’m still very young and I’m still untenured, I wrote a novel, and it was a philosophical novel. It was called The Mind Body Problem. I sold it to an editor, and then the editor said to me at one point, “I don’t understand your protagonist. She’s pretty smart. She’s a very good looking, sexually desirable, which made it a very sexy novel, but she’s so unhappy. What does she have to be unhappy about?” I thought about that for a while. Then I heard her telling me, because that’s one of the really cool things about writing novels. You actually hear your characters talking to you.
[0:01:47] PF: You interact with them.
[0:01:48] RNG: Then you think, oh, either I’m going psychotic, or this is the artistic process. She said, “Because I don’t matter in the way that most matters to me.” Yes, she was sexually desirable and very smart, and all these good things going for her. What she wanted, the thing that most mattered to her wasn’t being fulfilled. She was miserable. That was over four decades ago. That was eleven books ago.
Ever since then, I have been so interested in this question of the mattering, what I call the mattering instinct, why we have it, and I think all human beings do, and how differently it manifests in us, and that that gives rise to some of the deepest and most irresolvable controversies between us. I’ve just been talking to people off the record. If you sit next to me on a bus, or a train, or a plane and you want to chat, that’s what we’re going to end up chatting about. Your mattering project, how do you go about it? What are the things that could make you feel like you’re getting your life all wrong?
[0:03:01] PF: I found that so interesting, that one, that a product of your own creation that came from your own mind, that character that was living in you somehow inspired this deep journey and investigation, and that it stayed with you so profoundly through all these years. I found that so fascinating. I wondered what then made you realize, okay, this is a time to dig into it as a book, and why was this the right time?
[0:03:30] RNG: The way these ideas grew in me, and over the many decades of talking to so many people, a theory began to develop, a really original theory. But it seemed to me, for all those years, okay, this is the way I’m making sense of the world, and I shared it with a lot of people, and they found it clarifying as well, but it seemed too big. I was ready to tackle it. I’m in general suspicious of big theories, especially my own. Oh, philosopher, we are taught to be very questioning, very skeptical, including of our own ideas, and that’s one of the reasons that I spoke about it.
I gave a lot of talks about it. I wanted push back. I wanted objections. I wanted to test it, and especially among other philosophers, all of whom were very hugely holistic. We’re very used to bringing counter examples and objections. I wanted to air it. But then, given this political climate, and when we’re all so much against each other, not seeing the commonality between us, how we’re all going after, in some sense, the same thing, we were trying to justify our own lives. We’re trying to live lives that we can regard as meaningful in our own eyes. Our own eyes, which is a noble and dignified thing to try to do, but we’re so opposed to each other, and there doesn’t seem to be enough mattering to go around, so we’re squabbling like children under a piñata. We’re trying to grab as much mattering as we can.
I thought, this is the right moment. I’m just going to risk it. I’m going to try to write a really clear book, and here’s a new framework for trying to see what we have in common, how we’re different, how our deep diversity is manifested in these different ways we go about it, but to see each other as fellow humans. It’s hard to be human. That is one of the things that – the takeaways that I come away with this book. It’s hard. And we should see each other with the maximum amount of mercy, of which we’re capable.
[0:05:38] PF: That is absolutely beautiful. What’s so interesting is that mattering is something that all people are striving for, but we don’t frame it as mattering. It’s like, “I want to be heard.” We have these other phrases for it, and your book really breaks that down as like, okay, this is this instinct, and this is – I want to ask about that. It’s really interesting and important to note that you refer to the mattering instinct as a longing and not a need.
[0:06:04] RNG: Exactly.
[0:06:05] PF: Let’s talk about that. Why is that? What does that mean for us?
[0:06:08] RNG: Exactly. Yeah, I love that word, longing. I mean,and it’s long term. I mean, the word long is already in there. Maybe I should first say what I mean by mattering, and we talk about what matters, and who matters, and that question of who matters, really matters to us, because we all want to be among those who matter, or not wasting our lives, our short time here on earth. What we mean in all of these examples is being deserving of attention, and ultimately, the attention of which we want to be deserving is our own. We have to live with ourselves 24/7. It’s a long-term process. We’re able to step outside of ourselves and see that we give ourselves so much attention.
I mean, each of us are the thing to which we pay the most attention. We have to. That’s a biological need, to pay attention to ourselves. We’re trying to strive and to flourish. That takes a tremendous amount of energy and attention. But we are able to say, am I truly deserving of this? I think that that is wonderful that we ask this question of ourselves. We want to be deserving of all the attention that we actually have to give ourselves. We ask the question, what do I have to do to be deserving? We come up with these very different answers, but it is what philosophers call a normative question. It involves norms of justification. We use different styles of justification. Some of us try to answer it in terms of religious, or spiritual ways that I matter to the creator, who intentionally created me. I have some role to play in the narrative eternity.
Some of us try to answer it in terms of our relationships. Some of us try to answer it in terms of our achievements. Some of us try to answer it competitively. I’ve noticed over the years that some people become a little self-conscious when I ask them about their means of mattering, because they understand it is mattering more than others. They see it as a zero – We got these very different ways of going about it. The longing comes from, in order to get on with our lives, we have to decide how we’re going to do this. We go about what I call mattering projects, these long-term projects.
None of us know really what the right way is. Even the religious answer, it requires a leap of faith. One person’s religion may tell them to behave this way. I know the person’s religion can tell them to behave another way. There is a longing, because there’s always doubt, whether we’re actually succeeding in living a life that matters. There’s no, we have to get on with this in order to live, but we never really know if we’re doing it right. That makes being a human very, very difficult. Again, we should have maximum mercy and charity and tolerance for each other.
[0:09:11] PF: We’re not taught about mattering. We are taught what matters to you, like what matters to me, like causes with animals, being good to people, things like that. But we’re not taught so much of the inward focus of how do I make myself matter?
[0:09:29] RNG: Yes. That’s going to vary among us. We’re going to have to recognize this, to acknowledge this. There’s never going to be complete agreement on how to go about mattering. That doesn’t mean that there are no objective criteria to judge. Some ways are not so very good. They’re not good for the person themselves. They’re not morally good. They’re right. If the way that I have to achieve mattering is at the cost of other people feeling that they matter less, this is not a good way to go about mattering.
[0:10:08] PF: We see a lot of that in our society. Especially right now, we see that going on. How do we, as bystanders in this realm that we’re living in, how do we play a role in changing that?
[0:10:24] RNG: I mean, the first thing is to take care of yourself in the sense of get your own mattering project, right? I come up with a general way of trying to assess, what’s a good way for yourself, but for other creatures, for the planet itself? These considerations have to come into your life as well. In general, the more well-being we are making in terms of our mattering project. Well-being for ourselves, yes, we have to take care of ourselves. But in general, the well-being of other humans, of sentient creatures. I’m a very strong animal lover, which I determine. I’m just a very strong animal lover. And the planet at large.
If I decide that my mattering, in order for me to feel that I have to matter, I have to invade Poland, not good, not good. I must be stopped. In general, all the good things in life demand more order than disorder. There’s a certain principle in science, a very deep principle. It’s called the love entropy. Entropy is disorder. All living systems, including us, but all living systems, from the bacteria to us, have to push back against entropy. Entropy is the force towards disorder. It’s unraveling its destructiveness. It’s death. That is what every living system, including us, is fighting against. Viva la resistance, I always say that. That’s what life is, resistance against this.
If we want to look for some general criteria, criterion for distinguishing between good ways and bad ways, that everybody can agree on religious people, as well as secularists, Republicans, as well as Democrats. Wherever you are, I want to I call the mattering map. Let’s look at what life itself has to contend with, what all of us are contending with. Going for order, as opposed to disorder. Order in our own lives, and other lives and the life of the planet. That’s what we’re battling. To me, if you want to look for the meaning of life, that’s the meaning of life. Some things are better than others. Happiness is better than suffering. Beauty is better than ugliness. Flourishing is better than not flourishing. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Clarity is better than confusion. All of these things that we recognize, some things are better than others. All of them, the thing that it’s better requires are battling against disorder, are battling against entropy.
My way of assessing this thing is, is my life, or the lives of others, is it counter-entropic? Are we working with entropy, towards destruction, towards suffering, towards not flourishing, towards death, not only our own, but at large, or not?
[0:13:40] PF: I like that, because it does give us a framework, kind of a checks and balance, and makes sure that our approach to mattering is not too selfish. I love the fact that it embraces what is good for others, while also helping support our own well-being.
[BREAK]
[0:13:56] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.
[0:14:04] PF: Now, let’s hear more from Rebecca Goldstein.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:14:09] PF: One point that you drive home, and I love this, you say that the need to matter drives us even more than the need to be happy. To me, that was such a powerful observation. Can you explain what you mean by that and why that is?
[0:14:24] RNG: Well, so many of us take on mattering projects. The things that really give us a reason to live, to get up in the morning, to push on with the difficult thing of being a human being. I just can’t stress that enough. It is hard to be human. Because we’re in this business of justifying ourselves. That makes it so much harder. We take on mattering projects that are frustrating, that lead to disappointment. I mean, I’m a philosopher, right? That is my mattering project. I’m also a mother, I’m also a grandmother, mothering young children. A lot of it is very unhappy, and that they’ve done – psychologists have done studies on this, that people who have young children, their amount and degree of happiness actually goes down. There’s a lot of worry, there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of frustration, there is a lot of boredom. I mean, how many times can you listen to that shark song?
[0:15:22] PF: No more.
[0:15:24] RNG: Yes. Or being a philosopher, my god. All of the frustration, all of the very, very difficult work. Yet, I wouldn’t trade those projects for anything in the world. They make my life fulfilling. They make it meaningful. Yes, if I spent all my life on the ski slopes, I actually would be much happier. Yes, I love skiing. Yes. But this is what I need personally, in order to feel like I’m leading a meaningful life. I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. That’s the thing. Deep in our own selves, I want answers to our temperament, to our talents, to our interests, and form our mattering projects accordingly, but also take into account always, always the moral dimension. Am I fighting against entropy, or am I on the side of entropy? You want to fight entropy at large, not just in your own life.
[0:16:23] PF: Absolutely. We do, as adults, we get on this treadmill, we have things we have to do, we start forgetting what matters to us. Because we have so many other – we have priorities, we have obligations, and those things, especially women end up pushing those aside. How does someone reconnect? You talk about mattering projects. How does someone rediscover what lights them up and what makes them matter?
[0:16:49] RNG: Yeah, think about that feeling of expansiveness that you had when you were going about certain activities. That feeling of life’s potential. Oh, this is what I was made to do. Try to connect with that. I think all of us, all of us know what that feels like. It could be tending your garden. It doesn’t have to be something big. So many times when I start talking about mattering, people assume that I’m talking about making a difference in the world, like Steve Jobs had said, “Live so that you make a dent in the future of the world.” Certainly, that’s not what we’re meant to do, to make a dent in the future of the world.
The most important thing you can do is to live your – It’s two things. Live for yourself of a feeling and expansive, in your own way, a creative life. There’s nothing more life fulfilling than feeling some creativity and nurturing that and cultivating that. It can be, in raising, flourishing children, that is creative. Creative means working against entropy is what it means. It’s very, very broad.
[0:18:09] PF: Very individual. Can you tell me how – it seems to walk hand in hand down the path with purpose, but how does it differ? How does a sense of mattering differ from a sense of purpose?
[0:18:19] RNG: Yes. I think the mattering is the deep psychological, that there are two, as I said, two fundamental needs that every human has. One is for deep connections with others. All of us, no matter, I mean, even if you are what I call a heroic striver in your mattering. You need to fulfill some standard of excellence. But nevertheless, all of us, we are gregarious creatures and we are evolved from gregarious creatures. Some deep connections with others is necessary for all of us. But then, there is also this mattering thing. That is truly different for, we share it, but we go about realizing it in entirely different ways. One of the things is, I think that this leads to some of the deepest sources of intolerance.
We stake our lives on the answer that we give to this longing. It’s a longing, because we never know for sure. My work as a philosopher may come to nothing. Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I can’t know for sure. We stake our lives on it. Therefore, when we see other people living according to their other values, this is what makes us values-seeking creatures, when we see other people living according to other norms of justification. We feel it almost in a front. Wait a minute, if mine is right, then yours must be wrong. This can lead to tremendous altercations, and some of the deepest controversies between us. I think that it’s good to always keep in mind that none of us are really certain here. The thing we want to cultivate is tolerance for one another and deep sympathy for the struggle that we’re all going through.
[0:20:06] PF: I love that. Especially right now, we’re living in a time when entire populations are being discounted and written off.
[0:20:14] RNG: Yes.
[0:20:16] PF: What happens when a population, when a group of people starts to feel like their lives don’t matter, or it’s not just an individual thing, but we see entire segments, being told they don’t –
[0:20:27] RNG: That they don’t matter. Yes. What happens is a great sense of anger, aggrievement, resentment, and if they join together politically, which is what tends to happen, we have societal and political turmoil. Every human being has to feel that they matter. It is just a fundamental instinct in us. If you make someone feel that they don’t, they can be very, very depressed. I do a tremendous number of interviews with people, just because it’s the most interesting thing for me to talk about with people. People love it. Because when I question people about their own mattering, they feel like they matter. Here I am, right?
[0:21:12] PF: Absolutely. You’re asking questions about themselves.
[0:21:15] RNG: Exactly. This is the key to wonderful conversations is to question people about this. It’s also just a key to treating each other correctly. If you have a whole group of people who are targeted, feeling that they don’t matter, and if they get together, they are going to make trouble. One of the people that I spoke to, and my book is filled with stories, because the theory is one thing, but the important thing are stories, right? How does this actually play out in real lives? One of the stories is somebody who – he was a neo-Nazi, skinhead.
[0:21:51] PF: I love this story.
[0:21:52] RNG: Yeah. A committed, you know, I am a Jewish person. My Hungarian family was, in fact, killed off, if you know, before I was born, by Nazis. We are natural enemies. We are close friends now, he and I. But he was made to feel as if he didn’t matter at all. He came from terrible family circumstances. Just terrible. he was a depressed young man. Then he came into contact with some neo-Nazis. They told him, you matter. Look into the mirror. You are a white male, heterosexual American. These other people are stealing. You’re mattering for you. These, the way they refer to people of color, were mud people. These mud people are stealing what rightfully belongs to you and you know who’s behind it. Don’t you lose.
This was like throwing a life raft to a drowning person. He was drowning. He’s a very smart guy. He’s a funny guy. He’s a good-looking and charming guy. He became a real leader in the neo-Nazi movement. Then he changed. The story of his change is a story of tremendous hope. And what we have to do when whole groups of people who are feeling left out. So many people are feeling left out, because there’s a sense that there’s just not enough mattering to go around. The elites are grabbing it all. It’s not just that they have all the money, but they have all the mattering.
[0:23:26] PF: That is the message that we’re getting.
[0:23:28] RNG: Exactly. This is a crisis of mattering. This is something that we, as a species, will not tolerate. Social and political upsets arise from this kind of inequality, inequality of mattering.
[0:23:45] PF: What advice do you have for people who are listening, who are starting to feel marginalized, who started to feel like they don’t matter? Maybe it’s not because they’re part of a particular group. Maybe it’s a mother who has been doing nothing but picking up toys and scraping cereal off of the bottom of a tray for three years. What do you say to people? How do they find their sense of mattering?
[0:24:08] RNG: It’s interesting, because I can give as a philosopher, I can give an abstract argument for why all of us matter, that the very longing to matter makes us matter. There is an intrinsic human dignity in this longing itself. But that general theoretical answer is not going to do it. You want to know of you, your life. You pay so much attention to yourself. You have to. Are you deserving of all this attention? Well, what’s so special about you? They pay so much attention to yourself, right? We’re all ourselves. You’re feeling that way.
It’s really, really important for you to pay attention to that and to address it and to find what would be the change in your life? What could you build on that would make you feel like you are contributing something of value? It can often be, and I’ve found this with a lot of people, just reframing your life, not looking about it in terms of the day-to-day scraping the crumbs off of the couch cushions and trying to get your kid to go to sleep. But with the amount of what you’re doing for this life, what you’re giving for this life, so that this person can flourish. So often, it’s to look at your own life in more generous terms.
Think about what would you love to change about your life and what would build on the most creative, expansive, joyful feelings that you’ve had and try to cultivate that more. As I say, it’s often a matter of reframing it.
[0:25:51] PF: Your book does give a lot of insights. I love that it’s so packed with stories and gives us such inspiration. What is it that you most hope that this book accomplishes with readers?
[0:26:04] RNG: That is very easy for me to answer. More charity. More kindness towards one another. To understand is not necessarily to forgive. A lot of people really do go about trying to matter at the expense of other people. That is wrong. That is wrong. We all have the right to feel like we matter. It’s so important to all of us. We all do matter. Of this I know, this I know for sure. Understanding is the first step. To be able to look at each other with as much sympathy, empathy as possible. Even when we’re appalled and believe me, I am very appalled by what I see going on, both on the historical, political scale, but also more locally in my own life. There’s a lot to appall on. But to understand what’s going on, it changes the emotions. I find that it’s a way of overcoming my most negative emotions, anger hatred.
It’s almost like a Zen exercise that I go through as I read the morning paper and my – why is this person acting this way? How is this way of going about? I see why it’s wrong. But try to see the deeper reason. That is really what I would hope that we would come to a deeper understanding and with understanding, more sympathy, more tolerance, more kindness. There have to be changes made. People have to feel that there is enough mattering to go around, because we will not stand. People will not stand for this. Everybody takes their life seriously. They have a right to take their life seriously. Nobody should be made to feel as if they don’t count.
[0:27:55] PF: I love that. That is a fantastic way to wrap this up. Rebecca, we are going to tell our listeners how they can find you, how they can find your book, how they – there’s a lot of you to find. We’re going to lead them there. I thank you for sitting down with me, taking this time. This is a beautiful book. It’s unlike anything that we have seen here on Live Happy. It’s a topic we haven’t even broached before. I appreciate you for bringing that to us and just for being on the show with me today.
[0:28:22] RNG: Well, thank you so much, Paula. I can say that what you are doing is counter-entropic. Yes, to you. Yes, to your work.
[0:28:33] PF: Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate that.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:28:40] PF: That was Rebecca Goldstein talking about how our need to matter shapes our lives and can help us navigate the world with more kindness and empathy. If you’d like to learn more about Rebecca, follow her on social media, or check out her latest book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Desire Drives Us and Divides Us, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.
That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.
[END]
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why the need to matter often drives us more powerfully than the need to be happy.
- How different “mattering projects” shape our behavior and our relationships.
- What we can do — individually and collectively — to create a world where everyone feels they count.
Visit Rebecca’s website.
Discover her new book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Desire Drives Us and Divides Us.
Follow Rebecca on Social Media:
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