Sometimes, it seems all we do on the Internet and social media is argue about whose activities are most superior and most important. We all want to “matter,” but we can develop elaborate defensive arguments about who gets there the best. Many times, our own need to matter gets in the way of recognizing what matters to other people. And yet needing to matter at something is one of the deepest human longings. We need to feel like we have a beneficial place in the universe. In this book, public intellectual Rebecca Newberger Goldstein analyzes the mattering instinct, how it moves us, and how it can divide or unite us.
She calls each person’s drive to matter, their “mattering project.” The ability – and the education – to find a good mattering project that benefits other people is a social privilege that borders on or even extends to being a right. When people embrace mattering projects that oppress other people, they end up being counterproductive. Good mattering projects counter the decay (entropy) inherent in the universe. In this sense, her naturalist analysis sounds kind of like Christian takes about the so-called fall, philosophically present centuries before we knew about entropy.
Different people have different “continents” of mattering projects, and just like cross-continental communications today, different continents have trouble understanding each other. One person’s mattering might center around accomplishment while another’s centers around doing for others. Another’s might center around competition. Still another’s, finding transcendence or God. Many of today’s social conflicts can be explained by one person’s mattering project fighting against another’s mattering project.
This book offers a very deep analysis of what humans do to matter. It offers new language that might be used psychologically to understand human behavior, whether in the counseling office or dealing with the public. Importantly, it addresses what happens when people feel like they don’t matter: A charismatic figure often takes advantage of them. This book posits an understanding that I hope becomes incorporated into our wider social vocabulary in the future.
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Narrated by Rebecca Kaser
Text copyright (c) 2026
Liveright
Audio copyright (c) 2026
Tantor Media
ASIN B0FVBDXZ4D
Length: 9:15
Genre: Philosophy
www.amazon.com