Why Our Longing to Matter Drives and Divides Us

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Bianna. And Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, welcome to the show.

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: It’s a pleasure to be here.

ISAACSON: About 40 years ago, you wrote a very famous novel, “The Mind-Body Problem.” Tell me how this book, “The Mattering Instinct,” came outta that novel.

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yes. So that was a surprise because I was a young untenured professor of philosophy of science, philosophy of math. I certainly wasn’t expected to write a novel. But it came to me. And it was very exciting to hear this other voice speaking in my head. And the editor who acquired it, in our first meeting — he was as young as I, Jonathan <inaudible>. He since has become a very famous editor. And he asked me a very, a very precise, acute question, which was this: Your main protagonist is very good looking, sexually desirable, very bright, very funny. And she’s so miserable. Why is she so miserable? And I thought about that. And then, you know, I heard her answering me. And it was, in terms of this concept of mattering. What she had to tell me was she didn’t feel that she mattered in the way that most mattered to her. And that’s what first got me started on this deep need that people have to feel as if they matter. And then the great diversity of ways in which people respond to this shared need to feel that they matter. 

So it was by way of this novel, which was considered by my colleagues to be such a frivolous thing for me to be doing. And in fact, it gave me what has been — in fact, my mattering project to try to understand this mattering instinct and, and the way that it operates in our species.

ISAACSON: You call it the mattering instinct. Explain to me why it’s an instinct.

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: It’s not exactly an instinct, as I explained in the book. It’s the result of two other instincts. In fact, one of the instincts is deeper than an instinct. And that is that all living things, in some sense, matter to themselves. They’re going to be first and foremost striving for their own survival and flourishing. And that’s kind of an organizing, organizing principle of all the instincts. And in us, we also have this capacity ’cause we have these enormous brains that we’ve evolved for other purposes. But this brain has the capacity for self-reflection. So we can sort of step outside of ourselves and interrogate ourselves and think, am I really worth all of this attention that I am determined by biology to give myself? And that’s what results in this mattering instinct — to try to prove to ourselves that we’re really deserving of all the attention that we give ourselves in order to pursue our lives.

ISAACSON: Is it evolutionarily caused?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, it is. I can tell, in fact, I even start further back than evolution. I start with physics, with the second law of thermodynamics — most, the supreme law of physics that entropy increases, which means that all living things are constantly fighting against entropy. And so they have to be giving their own persistence and thriving…top priority to strive to defy the law locally of entropy. So, and from that, we get the laws of biology. 

And that can take us all the way — as I try to show — to this longing to matter. But then we’re left on our own. If free will exists any place, it’s here. How we decide to respond to this longing to matter, to prove to ourselves that our existing, our existence is worth all the attention we give it.

ISAACSON: And does it relate to empathy?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: I think trying to understand how the mattering instinct operates in others is, is part of what it is to empathize, to try to get a sense of what their subjectivity is like, what it is like to live that life. We all know people live very, very different lives. And, part of this narrative of how they’re living their life is shaped by how they’re trying to respond to this need to prove to themselves that they matter. For some people, it really is their social connections. It really is, you know, their family. It’s just, you know, the need for connectedness and the mattering instinct are collapsed into one thing. But for others, it’s their, it could be the relationship with God or something spiritual. And that’s what really gives them the sense that they, that they matter in the universe. (10:57): In fact, that’s a very brand, a very full notion of mattering in the universe, that you were intentionally created by that which created the starry heavens above and the moral order within, in Kant’s language. 

For others, it’s who I call heroic strivers. It’s certain standards of excellence that they need to fulfill in order to reconcile themselves with themselves. It could be intellectual, it could be artistic, it could be athletic, it could be entrepreneurial, it could be military, it could be ethical. Steve Jobs — who’s inner life, you know, better than maybe he knew himself — had had this statement, you know, Try to live to make a dent in the universe. This is the expression of a heroic striver. And then there are people who really think about mattering in competitive terms. It really means mattering more than others. They really see mattering in zero sum terms. The more others matter, the less they matter. So these very competitive approach to mattering. I’ve been spending the last 40 years just talking to people about it because it’s, I’ve found that the best conversations I can have with people, people just open up, and the stories they tell about their how they try to prove that they’re not nothing, that their existence is something just — the diversity is extraordinary.

ISAACSON: Will this instinct to matter in this cosmos in which we find ourselves, is that always a good and healthy thing? 

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: No. 

ISAACSON: Or can it be a problem?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: It is. I would say, in fact, our greatest achievements as a species and our greatest atrocities come from this mattering instinct. And — which is not so surprising, ’cause I think it really gets to what it is to be human. What makes this species so different from even our closest primate relatives. It’s, and so — and we are capable of incredible achievements, incredible, you know, compassion and achievements and knowledge and, and art and athleticism, all sorts of things. And, but also we are capable of extraordinary atrocities. 

ISAACSON: How does this arise out of your philosophy of mathematics and science?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. Well, I tried to be very precise about it. I was trained in analytic philosophy. And in analytic philosophy, rigor is very, very important, defining your terms. And one of the things about analytic philosophy as opposed to what’s often called sort of a continental philosophy — or, I mean, these are outdated terms, but — is that it takes science very, very seriously. And so to me science doesn’t…it doesn’t destroy these questions of meaning and mattering and values and what it is to live a good life. It doesn’t undermine them. In fact, we can use science, use the second law of thermodynamics, use theory of natural selection to try to gain insight into why we have this need. And then how we could best, how we can best appease it.

It’s a longing. We never really know for sure. There’s a lot of doubt in living a human life. And people who don’t recognize this, who are so certain of their way of doing it, and think everybody ought to do it, or they are nothing, they don’t matter. They often cause a lot of trouble in the world.

ISAACSON: Well, you talk about a lot of stories in the book, some leading down a bit of a dark path. Tell me about, I think Frank Meeink was one of them.

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, yeah. So he might be the most amazing person I ever spoke to. He came from a very, very poor background, a dysfunctional family. His mother was a drug addict. His stepfather was a brute who would beat him up, beat Frank up. And he had a real sense of not mattering. And he came in contact with some neo-Nazi skinheads, and they told him, and they used the language of mattering, you know, Look in the mirror, you will see that, of course, you matter. He was 13 at this time. He already dropped out of school. You are a white male, heterosexual American. You matter by your racial identity, and these other people are stealing it from you. These are, this was a notion of, you know, zero sum mattering. (19:38): And so that, you know, to the extent — but it was group mattering. And he said, you belong to a certain group. You matter more than these other groups. And as they’re rising in mattering, they’re taking away what is rightfully yours. 

And so he became a full-blooded full-time neo-Nazi skinhead, activist arrested as a felon at 17, put away, met some Black guys in jail that he really bonded with. And he began to see through this ideology that had made him feel that he mattered. And he still is terrifically antisemitic. And he said, in fact, he held onto that with even more vengeance because it was the one thing that tied him to his sense of mattering, you know, that somehow the Jews were behind everything. And then he met a very nice Jewish man who employed him when nobody else would, even though he had a great big swastika tattoo on the side of his neck. And his knuckles spelled out skinhead, so that when he beat people up, they wouldn’t know why they were being beaten up. He completely reversed himself. He has, I would say he became what I call an ethical heroic striver. He has devoted himself to trying to fight ideology. So he’s just, you know, people can change what I call their mattering project.

ISAACSON: We have somebody on, more the other side. I think it’s Lou Xiaoying. Can you tell me her story about being a scavenger, but helping kids?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. You know, we tend to think of heroic strivers, you know, those who have some standard of excellence that they need to achieve. And that’s what makes them feel worthwhile, whether others know about this or not. It can be very, very private, not public. And, and she, to me is, you know, it really exemplifies this kind of ethical achievement. She was a Chinese woman. She’s now dead. I spoke to her her daughter Juju. And this…she grew up extremely impoverished. She lost her parents when she was three years old. It was during the Chinese Civil War. She, I don’t even know how she survived, but she did. And she became a scavenger, picking up, you know, garbage going through the dumpsters for recyclables and bringing them to be recycled and earning her very meager living from this.

Well, it was during the period of One Child Policy in China. And what she was finding in these dumpsters and public toilets and on the side of the road were babies, little girl babies, who had been put out to trash. Because if you can only have one baby, well, then, for various cultural reasons, families preferred it to be a boy. And so they left the girls out…and with a blank piece of paper pinned to them. And she, this impoverished woman, took these babies home and took care of them. She had, she brought up at least 30 little babies, and she rescued many more and found homes for them. And it was a, you know, so this was an extraordinary story, and it’s the last story I tell. So, you know what, we often don’t pay attention to this kind of heroic striving. 

ISAACSON: Our society has been hit — we discuss it every week on this show–  by populism, tribalism, authoritarianism. To what extent does that reflect in your mind, a crisis of mattering?

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, that’s exactly how I see it: as a crisis of mattering. That our, you know, we have not paid enough attention to the fact that everybody has this longing. Everybody, wherever there is human life, there is a longing to matter, to not be nothing, to not be treated as nothing. And we’ve created a society in which there doesn’t seem to be enough mattering to go around. And which, you know, there’s, we, we talk so much about economic inequality, and that’s a fact. But since we also judge how much people matter — more and more by how much money they have — this has made people feel as if they don’t matter. Maybe only the famous, the powerful, the rich matter. And this causes great resentment. The needs of mattering are being are being ignored.

And if a leader can appeal to that, especially a leader who seems to be on a higher plane of mattering — very powerful, very rich, very famous — and, and say, I feel you, I’m one with you. You matter as much — especially if that leader himself may feel a dearth of mattering, being constantly needing to prove to himself how much he matters. So it’s very, very authentic, this anger. But it’s a shared anger, and it, you can — given the privation that many people are feeling as to their own mannering. It can create a very strong movement. I think we’re seeing that.

ISAACSON: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, thank you so much for joining us.

NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: It’s been a pleasure.