Full Transcript for 84. The Mattering Instinct with Rebecca Goldstein

00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:33.280 I love to read them and I very much enjoy writing them. 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:43.840 And in my very first novel, which was called The Mind-Body Problem, and that's of course a classic problem in philosophy of mind, now call it the heart problem of consciousness. 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:54.159 I had this character, and the editor who had acquired it had asked me in our first conversation, I don't understand your main character. 00:03:54.159 --> 00:03:57.680 She's very attractive, she's very sexually desirable. 00:03:57.680 --> 00:03:59.360 That gets a lot of the pluck going. 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:03.439 She's she's very bright, she's very funny, she's so unhappy. 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:07.599 She's always teetering on the cusp of despair. 00:04:07.599 --> 00:04:08.560 Why? 00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:11.200 And it's true, I felt that about her. 00:04:11.200 --> 00:04:17.599 Her very the very first line she spoke to me out of the blue was, I'm often asked what it's like to be married to a genius. 00:04:17.599 --> 00:04:22.800 And I knew this was a character, then and I wrote the novel to find out who this was. 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:26.959 But that was a very discontented voice. 00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:33.439 And I thought about it for weeks on end, and then I decided, oh, she doesn't feel like she matters. 00:04:33.439 --> 00:04:34.879 Yes, she's very attractive. 00:04:34.879 --> 00:04:36.800 Yes, she's very bright. 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:41.039 And yes, that could be happening in my house at any moment. 00:04:41.039 --> 00:04:50.159 Yes, she is um, you know, funny and all that, but that's not what most matters to her, you know, what most matters to her is something else. 00:04:50.159 --> 00:04:58.079 And so it sort of glommed onto her in her life in the strange way you are when you write a novel. 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:01.519 You're not quite yourself, you're half this character. 00:05:01.519 --> 00:05:11.279 We sort of collaborated and she came up with this idea of the mattering map, that there are different ways that we try to prove to ourselves that we matter. 00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:23.359 And had she inhabited a location where being very seductive and having any man you want mattered to her, most mattered to her, she'd be content. 00:05:23.359 --> 00:05:25.599 But that's not where she resided. 00:05:25.599 --> 00:05:40.159 And that just seemed interesting to me, but I put it away, published the novel, put it away, got back to my real work, and other academics, other writers started to take up this notion of the mattering map. 00:05:40.159 --> 00:05:50.000 A behavioral economist wrote an essay, an article published in Harvard Business Review, quoting my main character about this matter. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.919 And some feminists and some cultural critics took this up. 00:05:53.919 --> 00:06:03.120 And then I thought, oh, well, maybe this has broader applications than just explaining this character to me. 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:10.719 And so I began to think about it very seriously and to have to do lots and lots of interviews with people all over the place. 00:06:10.719 --> 00:06:13.359 Just I didn't think I would write a book about it. 00:06:13.359 --> 00:06:17.359 It seemed too broad, too mushy to tackle. 00:06:17.359 --> 00:06:22.719 And just I saw its implications everywhere, and that made me shy away from it. 00:06:22.719 --> 00:06:27.919 It was during COVID that I thought our society is really coming apart at the seams. 00:06:27.919 --> 00:06:31.279 We are fighting with each other over everything. 00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:40.719 Does this mattering instinct have something to do with this, this great existential need to prove to ourselves that we objectively matter? 00:06:41.359 --> 00:06:46.000 During COVID, you sat down to decide to write it, particularly about how society is coming apart at the scenes. 00:06:47.839 --> 00:06:54.479 That we are just finding more and more ways of getting all worked up and angry and hostile. 00:06:54.479 --> 00:06:56.079 What is going on? 00:06:56.079 --> 00:07:05.120 And I do think that the closeness of death, this uncontrollable at this point virus was sweeping through us. 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:10.560 We didn't know how to how to fight it, and it made us feel so vulnerable. 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:18.639 And clinging all the more to whatever we felt convinced us that yes, our lives have mattered. 00:07:18.639 --> 00:07:20.399 This was not for waste. 00:07:20.399 --> 00:07:24.399 This was not for nothing, this life that might be stuffed out at any moment. 00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:26.879 I think it intensifies that. 00:07:51.679 --> 00:07:51.919 Yes. 00:07:51.919 --> 00:07:55.359 And it's it, as you say, it's soft and mushy, so it's the opposite of physical matter. 00:07:55.359 --> 00:07:58.000 We're talking this is the other side of matter. 00:07:58.560 --> 00:07:58.959 Yes. 00:07:58.959 --> 00:08:08.799 That word matter in English is so rich, it's so amazing, that I can sum up what I think our species is. 00:08:08.799 --> 00:08:12.639 We are creatures of matter who long to matter. 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:19.679 And one of the strongest manifestations of this is people who deny that we are matter. 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:20.159 Yeah. 00:08:20.399 --> 00:08:24.639 Like, because how could we truly matter if all we are is matter? 00:08:24.639 --> 00:08:28.319 So I mean you can express this in English quite nicely. 00:08:28.959 --> 00:08:29.839 Yes, yeah, yeah. 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:33.279 It's a nice coincidence that you have the the word has that dual meaning for sure. 00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:44.639 And I think you mentioned early on that it's it is one of the, if not the core differentiators of us with the rest of the animal kingdom, this longing to matter. 00:08:44.639 --> 00:08:50.480 So what do you see are the roots of this need for humans? 00:08:51.120 --> 00:08:51.600 Yes. 00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:55.440 So

should I go all the way back to entropy? 00:08:56.480 --> 00:09:00.080 Please start with entropy, because I I that chapter was yeah, was fascinating. 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:05.519 So so yes, entropy is and I you don't have to believe me about this. 00:09:05.519 --> 00:09:09.360 You can believe people like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:12.960 It is the supreme law of physics. 00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:14.960 It is the law of physics. 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:20.240 We know that no matter what we go on to discover, we'll never be falsified. 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:22.559 That is only true of this law. 00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:25.439 And I try to somewhat explain this. 00:09:25.439 --> 00:09:30.559 It so much depends on the just the mathematics of probability, entropy. 00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:36.720 But entropy is, you know, that things go toward chaos, toward disorder. 00:09:36.720 --> 00:09:46.799 If you leave your house for several months, you come back, there's dust all over. 00:09:46.799 --> 00:09:48.079 There is disorder. 00:09:48.079 --> 00:09:54.319 That is the natural tendency of things that go towards this disorder. 00:09:54.319 --> 00:09:59.919 And all the laws of biology really are derivable from this. 00:09:59.919 --> 00:10:02.159 It's resistance to entropy. 00:10:02.159 --> 00:10:04.399 Life demands order. 00:10:04.399 --> 00:10:18.399 And so all biological systems have to take in great amount of energy to resist entropy, and they they create entropy, it's dissipated into the environment. 00:10:18.399 --> 00:10:33.039 So I like to tell my students, life makes a mess, some lives more than others, and we make a great deal of mess, our our species, and some among us make more mess than others. 00:10:33.039 --> 00:10:35.600 Anyway, so this is true of all life. 00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:48.879 The resistance to entropy, which demands for those creatures who have attention, a tremendous amount of attention focused on the self, you know, on one's own well-being and flourishing. 00:10:48.879 --> 00:11:16.720 We are the creatures because of these amazing objects that we carry around in these craniums, this most sophisticated object that has yet been discovered in the universe, this brain, comes with a capacity for self-reflection, that we can step outside of ourselves and regard ourselves with some degree of objectivity and ask, am I truly deserving of all this attention? 00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:22.000 Which I absolutely have to, by the laws of nature, it just comes automatically by default. 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:27.120 I have to lavish on myself incessant attention. 00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:31.919 Who am I to devote so much of my attention to myself? 00:11:31.919 --> 00:11:43.679 If the measurement of how much one thinks something matters, which I tend to think means deserving of attention, that's the measure of how much I think something matters is how much attention I devote to it. 00:11:43.679 --> 00:11:47.039 It would follow

that I think I matter more than anything else in the universe. 00:11:47.039 --> 00:11:50.000 And short of lunacy, none of us think that, right? 00:11:50.000 --> 00:12:03.439 This is that extra self-reflective, justificatory aspect that comes into being a human that supplies us with this existential dimension. 00:12:03.439 --> 00:12:07.279 So this is pretty great that we humans have this. 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:14.319 We want not only to automatically feel that we are of value, we want somehow to prove it to ourselves. 00:12:14.319 --> 00:12:31.039 And I would go so far as to say, since I don't believe in any kind of transcendent being who gives us value, that we're bringing, just by this question, by being human, by this self-justificatory question, we're bringing values into the universe. 00:12:31.039 --> 00:12:32.399 That's pretty damn good. 00:12:32.399 --> 00:12:35.039 Hooray for us, hooray for the human species. 00:12:35.039 --> 00:12:36.959 They could be very bad values. 00:12:36.959 --> 00:12:37.840 Yes. 00:12:37.840 --> 00:12:41.840 But nevertheless, they're something estimable. 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:45.840 And we'll come back to that, I think, when we dive into the mattering map for sure. 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:46.720 Exactly. 00:12:47.039 --> 00:13:00.399 But I really liked this framing in the book of mattering as resistance to entropy and our sort of knowledge of that and our own it becomes from our self-awareness and our our desires. 00:13:00.399 --> 00:13:12.079 But I'm interested, you mentioned COVID earlier, and I think one of the other reasons why we saw this kind of breakdown in society for a lot of people was the realization that no one was in control. 00:13:12.079 --> 00:13:14.959 And I think that's very closely tied again to entropy. 00:13:14.959 --> 00:13:22.159 This was a a natural phenomenon which we tried to, and eventually, of course, we did manage to get a grip on as a society. 00:13:22.159 --> 00:13:33.279 But again, this is why we had a lot of conspiracy theories, you had a lot of anti-science coming out, you had a lot of, and you say there was this tearing apart of society because people wanted to associate blame and they were scared. 00:13:33.279 --> 00:13:34.799 And it really came from that lack of control. 00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:42.959 Do you see a connection between mattering and a the desire for mattering and a desire to have some level of control over our lives? 00:13:44.319 --> 00:13:45.360 Yeah, absolutely. 00:13:45.360 --> 00:13:45.759 Yeah. 00:13:45.759 --> 00:13:47.199 Yes, no, absolutely. 00:13:47.199 --> 00:13:50.319 It's very they're very tied up with each other. 00:13:50.319 --> 00:13:58.879 This whole self-reflective step that we can take, it is we have a conception of ourselves. 00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:01.840 We have a conception of ourselves as agents. 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:08.079 And that is so important for our sense of mattering, that we are the agents of our actions. 00:14:08.079 --> 00:14:12.079 We are yeah, so very, very much tied together. 00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:19.279 And I was pleased to see uh very prominent atheist Spinoza plays quite a large role in the book as well. 00:14:19.279 --> 00:14:22.799 What can Spinoza teach us about mattering? 00:14:23.840 --> 00:14:26.480 Yeah, so two ways, I think. 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:28.959 So I taught Spinoza for many years. 00:14:28.959 --> 00:14:35.759 It is my favorite thing to he certainly my favorite historical philosopher to teach. 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:51.759 And it's a voyage with the class to bring them through what seems an impenetrable and totally impersonal work, the ethics, his magnum opus, and to see what happens when they start to make their way into it and how it changes them. 00:14:51.759 --> 00:14:53.199 It's interesting. 00:14:53.199 --> 00:15:04.399 He, of course, wanted to put ethics on a purely secular grounding, and we called his magnum opus the ethics, right? 00:15:04.399 --> 00:15:08.639 And so this was the great work that ceded the Enlightenment. 00:15:08.639 --> 00:15:13.519 And you know, it took 100 years, but he became a major figure during the Enlightenment. 00:15:13.519 --> 00:15:23.840 So but the grounding of ethics on something objective, not on different people's views about what this supernatural deity wants from us. 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:39.759 But he also, in the course of trying to derive his ethics, and it is, of course, ambitiously claims to be a deductive work, to start with certain premises and then to deduce a la Euclid theorems ending with ethics. 00:15:39.759 --> 00:15:44.000 So a very strong claim that you can deduce aught from is. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:16:00.079 But he introduces this concept of conitas, which is this striving to persist in a thing's own being and to flourish, a striving to persist and to thrive. 00:16:00.079 --> 00:16:02.319 To survive and to thrive, to actually. 00:16:02.319 --> 00:16:20.959 And it's almost as if he implicitly knew that there was a force, which we now know how to name, entropy, against which we must constantly be striving, and that requires so much attention and energy. 00:16:20.959 --> 00:16:33.360 And so that was very, very important to me, and it plays a very important role in his derivation, this conitas, that there's a striving, and that's what the emotions are all about. 00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:38.000 Trying to assess how well this striving is going in our lives. 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:43.199 When I hate something, it's because it's militating against my survival and flourishing. 00:16:43.199 --> 00:16:46.000 When I love something, it's it's it's encouraging my stuff. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.079 This conitas is very important. 00:16:48.079 --> 00:16:49.840 So that was interesting to me. 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:51.360 He almost had the concept. 00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:55.600 Lurking behind this is something against which we must struggle. 00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:58.240 And we now know how to name

that entropy. 00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:17.200 So there's that, and there's also that his great conviction that we can find a way of grounding ethics that we can all agree on because it's going to be something objective, something in the universe, not some something that we speculate about. 00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:32.799 And yeah, so those were, I think, the the two ways that, and I don't know if I hadn't spent all those years, you know, in the Spinoza mindset, whether I would have come to think see entropy in exactly this light. 00:17:32.799 --> 00:17:36.000 Oh, this is the thing lurking in the background. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:38.319 This explains so much about us. 00:17:38.880 --> 00:18:31.559 Yeah, and that focus on striving is so interesting, again, from a humanist point of view, because the Amsterdam Declaration, which again, you know, written in Spinoza's home country, where humanism is defined as as best it can be, continually returns to this point of striving, is that humans strive humanists strive to be rational. 00:18:31.559 --> 00:18:34.120 We strive to find meaning. 00:18:34.120 --> 00:18:49.720 And I think it's such an important word, and but I think the way you've laid it out there really explains why it's such a humanist ethic to strive, and as you say, striving against entropy, but also not claim that to ever have got there, but for it to to be a constant struggle against the natural forces. 00:18:50.279 --> 00:18:50.680 Yeah. 00:18:50.680 --> 00:19:03.480 But and so we have to do this, and it's really can be derived, you know, we're biological creatures, and biology is really living creatures' answer to entropy. 00:19:03.480 --> 00:19:05.720 Of course, we're gonna lose the struggle. 00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:06.519 All things will. 00:19:06.519 --> 00:19:09.559 The universe itself will lose, right? 00:19:09.559 --> 00:19:13.799 The universe itself will end in a state of maximum entropy. 00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:20.120 But meanwhile, we struggle, and sometimes the struggle is good and sometimes it's not so good. 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:31.640 Aaron Ross Powell And on the universe, I was also intrigued to hear a physicist, I believe, or certainly a a scientist in Boltzmann being again quite a big part of the story. 00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:39.880 So um, yeah, could you explain how Boltzmann has contributed to the our concept of mattering? 00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:43.000 Well, I mean, Boltzmidge is a tragic thing. 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:44.440 I love tragic figures. 00:19:44.440 --> 00:19:46.519 That's a novel, probably. 00:19:46.519 --> 00:19:54.360 But people who it Spinoza is one and Boltzmann is another, who presented their ideas too soon. 00:19:54.360 --> 00:20:01.000 It took their peers, the rest of humanity, a long time to catch up. 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:04.519 Um Spinoza, yeah, took a really long time to catch up. 00:20:04.519 --> 00:20:11.080 I think we're still trying to catch up with Spinoza, and we humanists are we are the descendants of Spinoza. 00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:12.120 Baltzman. 00:20:12.120 --> 00:20:14.200 Baltzman explained entropy. 00:20:14.200 --> 00:20:18.840 He really explained what is going on here. 00:20:18.840 --> 00:20:26.680 Why is there this tendency toward chaos to unraveling, towards destruction? 00:20:26.680 --> 00:20:37.640 And how can evolution, which is um we evolved in greater and greater complexity, how can this be explained in the face of entropy? 00:20:37.640 --> 00:20:39.480 What is entropy all about? 00:20:39.480 --> 00:20:49.880 And there's this great, I don't know how how deeply you want me to quantify, but there's a great entropy means that processes are irreversible, right? 00:20:49.880 --> 00:21:01.000 So that if I crack an egg and scramble it up and make an omelet, if I were to film that and run it backwards, that would be ridiculous, right? 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:03.320 Everybody would know this is but run backwards. 00:21:03.320 --> 00:21:05.320 This can only go in one direction. 00:21:05.320 --> 00:21:09.799 And beating up an egg is creating more entropy of the egg. 00:21:09.799 --> 00:21:12.440 It's less order. 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:20.360 But on the microscopic level, if you just look at the molecules moving around, it's reversible. 00:21:20.360 --> 00:21:21.880 It's completely reversible. 00:21:21.880 --> 00:21:27.240 If you film it and you run it backwards, nobody could detect that it was run backwards. 00:21:27.240 --> 00:21:31.400 But the macroscopic is just composed of the microscopic. 00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:41.320 So how can irreversibility have come out of reversibility of the microscopic laws that are completely reversible? 00:21:41.320 --> 00:21:42.920 And he answered that. 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:45.799 But it wasn't understood in his time. 00:21:45.799 --> 00:21:51.720 And he So here's another way, he felt like he didn't matter. 00:21:51.720 --> 00:22:10.039 He didn't get, you know, he knew he had solved a really important problem, but he felt like he didn't matter, that nobody would ever accept it, that he was not going to contribute to scientific knowledge, and that to his that his life had been a waste. 00:22:10.039 --> 00:22:12.759 And he ended up committing suicide. 00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:16.920 It there were two ways in which the Boltzmann story. 00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:20.279 He's really a very, I love Boltzmann very much. 00:22:20.279 --> 00:22:27.799 He's a very poignant figure, and he did this magnificent work, and he had told us that this is what he wanted to do. 00:22:27.799 --> 00:22:41.160 Some people feel like they matter because they have power and they have money, and that all he wanted was to contribute to the growth of scientific knowledge, and nobody recognized that he had. 00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:46.759 And yeah, it's not that he wanted status, he wanted to be a contributor. 00:22:46.759 --> 00:22:51.559 But to be a contributor, others must recognize your contribution. 00:22:51.559 -->

00:22:55.240 So it wasn't like the status, it wasn't the fame, it wasn't all that. 00:22:55.240 --> 00:22:57.240 It was to be a contributor. 00:22:57.799 --> 00:23:09.240 And that sets us up nicely, as you say, because it really is as much about where the individual is looking for mattering as to how their life actually unfolds. 00:23:09.240 --> 00:23:20.200 And it for Boltzmann, he was just wasn't getting that recognition, that affiliation, the accreditation that he probably knew his work deserved, and the satisfaction of the work alone wasn't sufficient for him. 00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:24.440 And so I think that sets up nicely to introduce the mattering map. 00:23:24.440 --> 00:23:31.400 So could you talk us through the different ways in which humans find and rate mattering? 00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:32.200 Yeah. 00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:38.360 So, you know, as I say, the germ of this went back to this fictional creature and uh character. 00:23:38.360 --> 00:23:48.759 And I was, you know, impressed by the fact that different people, that we all share this need to somehow prove to ourselves, right? 00:23:48.759 --> 00:24:02.039 It's really about ourselves, to be able to live in an easy relationship with ourselves, that we have to somehow be able to justify ourselves that we're living a meaningful life. 00:24:02.039 --> 00:24:09.559 And I think this is true even of the people who are living the most preposterously preposterous lives or evil lives. 00:24:09.559 --> 00:24:11.640 That yes, they too share this. 00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:13.720 To be human is to have this aspect. 00:24:13.720 --> 00:24:15.720 But we do it in such very different ways. 00:24:15.720 --> 00:24:18.120 And so, you know, I was just observing it. 00:24:18.120 --> 00:24:20.279 It's very, very interesting to me. 00:24:20.279 --> 00:24:28.680 Example, I was once sitting in a hotel lobby in Manhattan waiting for a friend who is habitually late. 00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:35.000 And a guy comes up to me this many years ago, comes up to me, he's pestering me, blah, blah, blah. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:36.279 This, all this stuff. 00:24:36.279 --> 00:24:37.640 You know, he's trying to pick me up. 00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:42.360 And so I started to talk to him about his life. 00:24:42.360 --> 00:24:45.240 What gives him the impetus to go on? 00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:46.920 What does he think his life is all about? 00:24:46.920 --> 00:24:52.920 It turned out he was, and it was the first time I had heard the this phrase, he was a pickup artist. 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:54.519 This was what his life was about. 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:55.640 He picked up women. 00:24:55.640 --> 00:24:58.120 He had his stats, he had his heroes. 00:24:58.120 --> 00:25:01.080 There were books on this, how to do it effectively. 00:25:01.080 --> 00:25:04.039 So this was where he was on the mattering map. 00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:06.360 This was what I called, you know, this was his mattering project. 00:25:06.360 --> 00:25:07.480 It

was fascinating to me. 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:09.559 So I just I talked to people about this. 00:25:09.559 --> 00:25:11.320 It's really interesting. 00:25:11.320 --> 00:25:17.480 And then I started to think during COVID when uh I was thinking, are there patterns here? 00:25:17.480 --> 00:25:26.360 So here's this pickup artist, here's Boltzmann, here's Spinoza, here's me, here's my my friends, novelists, thinkers, all sorts of people. 00:25:26.360 --> 00:25:31.880 The grandma who devotes herself to her children, bringing up her children, so whatever. 00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:33.240 Yeah, there are patterns. 00:25:33.240 --> 00:25:45.480 And I just, you know, I think this is again, it's an empirical hypothesis based on my over 40 years of talking to people about this, it's open to falsification. 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:47.640 But so far, people have thrown things at me. 00:25:47.640 --> 00:25:49.799 I don't think I have found it falsified yet. 00:25:49.799 --> 00:25:53.720 So there are these four general strategies, I think. 00:25:53.720 --> 00:26:00.519 And I call them the transcenders, the heroic strivers, the socializers, and the competitors. 00:26:00.519 --> 00:26:22.360 And what I have found that when I bring up this mattering thing, whether I'm in a faculty meeting, you know, at Harvard, which has happened, or I'm talking to somebody who's trying to pick me up, how a person understands these questions tell me a lot about whether they're a transcender, a heroic striver, a competitor, or a socializer. 00:26:22.360 --> 00:26:56.200 I'll start with the transcenders, because I think for most of most of our history, at least since the axial age, when we had the leisure to think about this kind, these sort of questions, what is, you know, that life was stable enough that we could think about what are we living for, which happened beginning about 800 BCE to about 200 BCE, when all of the religious frameworks and Western philosophy were generated, that from ever since that most people have been transcenders. 00:26:56.200 --> 00:27:16.279 And that is what we humanists do not believe in, that there is some transcendent being, something metaphysical outside of space, time, and the laws of nature that created those laws of nature, created everything, created the physical order without and the moral order within. 00:27:16.279 --> 00:27:24.120 And that and created us purposefully and intentionally, and we have a role to play or we wouldn't be here. 00:27:24.120 --> 00:27:26.279 And that's what our lives are about. 00:27:26.279 --> 00:27:28.360 And those are transcenders. 00:27:28.360 --> 00:27:38.039 And I must say that the transcenders with whom I've spoken, and I know what it feels like to be a transcender because I was born into a very religious household, Orthodox Jewish. 00:27:38.039 --> 00:27:47.400 And so for the first 13 years of my life, this is the way I thought about my life, that transcenders have a very robust sense of mattering, right? 00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:55.880 You know, they matter to that whose mattering can't be doubted if it were to exist, that which created everything from nothing. 00:27:55.880 --> 00:28:03.000 So, short of lunacy, there is no greater sense of mattering than to be a transcender. 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:06.120 And it's not surprising that so many people are. 00:28:06.120 --> 00:28:12.440 And transcenders with whom I have had long discussions, they said to me, I just don't understand what gets you out of bed in the morning. 00:28:12.440 --> 00:28:15.480 How can how can you feel like your life has any meaning? 00:28:15.480 --> 00:28:16.600 So that's interesting. 00:28:16.600 --> 00:28:18.840 And that's really interesting to me, right? 00:28:18.840 --> 00:28:23.000 It shows what we're not up against, but it explains. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:31.880 It explains some very deep difference between us non-believers and believers, and why it's yes, so emotionally fraught. 00:28:32.360 --> 00:28:34.440 And why often we talk past each other as well. 00:28:34.440 --> 00:28:39.400 When you see a lot of these debates, there really is a disconnect, I think. 00:28:39.400 --> 00:28:47.559 And that's been put down to lots of things, but I think the mattering, viewing it through the let the lens of the uh what oh how people matter. 00:28:47.559 --> 00:28:49.480 Sorry, I think it paused there. 00:28:49.480 --> 00:28:50.279 Are you okay? 00:28:50.279 --> 00:28:51.320 Can you hear me? 00:28:51.320 --> 00:28:51.960 Okay. 00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:53.799 Yeah, sorry, just pause for a second there. 00:28:53.799 --> 00:28:54.519 Beg pardon. 00:28:54.519 --> 00:29:10.360 Yeah, so yeah, when you watch debates on this, it it really is people talking past each other and it and viewing it through this sense of what matters or what where they think that sense of mattering comes from, you suddenly realize why there is this disconnect between, as you say, transcenders. 00:29:11.240 --> 00:29:16.519 And I think it could make us so much more effective if we understood this. 00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:18.600 This was also a great motivation. 00:29:18.600 --> 00:29:25.400 It's don't come at people with you these abstract arguments and that it's make them feel stupid that we're so much. 00:29:25.400 --> 00:29:30.680 But that nothing will get the defenses up more than that. 00:29:30.680 --> 00:29:36.759 But come to them if our come to all of us, our shared humanity. 00:29:36.759 --> 00:29:43.160 That this longing that we all have to prove to ourselves is shared. 00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:52.759 And and yes, so that was to me so important because I've been in debates, I've been, we knock against each other, it's horrible. 00:29:53.240 --> 00:29:57.559 Is it a s purely a sense of service or is there more to it? 00:29:57.559 --> 00:30:00.680 Like service to the greater good, greater power? 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:12.519 I couldn't possibly be here unless I have a role to play in the narrative of eternity,

right? 00:30:12.519 --> 00:30:14.440 And that's crazy from my point. 00:30:14.440 --> 00:30:17.080 That's but what a sense of mattering. 00:30:17.080 --> 00:30:27.559 And so it's no wonder that you know, that transgenders will say to me, I just I just don't understand how you pursue your life. 00:30:27.559 --> 00:30:30.519 What gives you what keeps you going? 00:30:30.519 --> 00:30:35.720 And I think it's just really important to to get in touch with that. 00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:41.799 I I'm happy that I was born into the family that I was born into, because I really know what that feels like. 00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:46.120 And I know what it felt like when I decided I could no longer believe in this. 00:30:46.120 --> 00:30:49.720 But it was like, okay, so what do I do with my life now? 00:30:50.120 --> 00:30:57.240 If you don't mind me asking then, looking back, do you think there was an immediate replacement sense of mattering that you could step into? 00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:10.360 Or was that then a sense of searching for where, but even though you probably you you hadn't come up with the theory yet, but do you think you did go through a process, the go through the process of thinking, okay, where am I finding meaning and mattering in life? 00:31:12.200 --> 00:31:15.320 Yeah, no, I think I didn't have the language, of course. 00:31:15.320 --> 00:31:18.440 I was 13 or 12, something like that. 00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:20.600 I didn't have the language for it. 00:31:20.600 --> 00:31:29.960 But but yeah, there was a sense that the universe was less than I thought it was, and that I was less therefore also than I thought I was. 00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:35.799 But the universe seemed drained for me for quite some time. 00:31:35.799 --> 00:31:41.000 I felt like it was less than I had thought, and less beautiful even. 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:43.240 I came to think entirely differently. 00:31:43.240 --> 00:31:48.840 It's all the more beautiful because it is explained by the laws of nature. 00:31:48.840 --> 00:31:50.840 How beautiful is that. 00:31:50.840 --> 00:31:51.960 That that is. 00:31:51.960 --> 00:32:02.759 But but yeah, there was that almost almost depression, almost, I don't know, or hopelessness or something. 00:32:03.240 --> 00:32:06.279 Are they not are they non non-religious transcendent mattress? 00:32:07.160 --> 00:32:09.160 Spiritual, but not religious, right. 00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:11.320 That there's actually an acronym for it now. 00:32:11.320 --> 00:32:15.559 But that the the mannering is out there in the universe. 00:32:15.559 --> 00:32:18.600 It's some kind of metaphysics. 00:32:18.600 --> 00:32:33.000 And so I'm careful to distinguish it from yes, we can experience this sense of transcendence, a starring height, or art can do it, this sense of being in touch with something greater than one selves. 00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:40.440 But for transcenders, because I'm very interested in how people go about just justifying their own life, their

sense of meaning. 00:32:40.440 --> 00:32:48.200 The transcenders I reserve for those who have some sort of metaphysical transempirical belief. 00:32:48.200 --> 00:32:49.880 It's ontological. 00:32:49.880 --> 00:32:58.440 Mattering is ontological, it's out there, it's not just the psychological experience of feeling in touch with something greater. 00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:09.080 I get that when I read a beautiful mathematical proof or something that's like, oh, transcendence, utter beauty, or Boltzmann's explanation of entropy. 00:33:09.080 --> 00:33:16.920 There's, I feel like transcendence, but not in that ontological metaphysical sense, which we humanists are. 00:33:16.920 --> 00:33:18.360 We reject that. 00:33:18.360 --> 00:33:20.840 So we humanists are not transcenters. 00:33:21.400 --> 00:33:27.960 So with the other the the other three broad categories of tra of matter matterers, would we call them? 00:33:28.360 --> 00:33:30.440 Well, matterers are humans, really. 00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:37.320 Socializers are most people understand mattering is mattering to others. 00:33:37.320 --> 00:33:46.360 When I ask that question, they will often by default supply that that prepositional phrase to others. 00:33:46.360 --> 00:33:48.920 And it is we are social creatures. 00:33:48.920 --> 00:33:53.160 We are gregarious creatures, evolved from gregarious creatures. 00:33:53.160 --> 00:33:58.840 And yeah, we need to have people in our lives to whom we matter, whether we deserve it or not. 00:33:58.840 --> 00:34:00.519 That's what my family is. 00:34:00.519 --> 00:34:01.799 That's what my friends are. 00:34:01.799 --> 00:34:03.400 They're not j judging me. 00:34:03.400 --> 00:34:05.000 Will they pay attention to me? 00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:06.519 Do I deserve it? 00:34:06.519 --> 00:34:07.960 They will give me attention. 00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:12.440 They are my intimates, they are in my life, colleagues sometimes, this sort of thing. 00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:24.360 But and so in that sense, we're all socializers, but just by by being gregarious creatures and helpless graves, we suffer a very long period of helplessness. 00:34:24.360 --> 00:34:29.080 A giraffe is born, it's immediately struggling to stand up. 00:34:29.080 --> 00:34:32.680 It's we take six months to figure out how to roll over. 00:34:32.680 --> 00:34:36.920 So we are very, we're what's called altrucial. 00:34:36.920 --> 00:34:42.599 It's a long period of dependency on others. 00:34:42.599 --> 00:34:45.400 And that's also due to our great big brains. 00:34:45.400 --> 00:35:07.960 Um if it's hard enough to get these brains out of the birth canal, they so they come out very early, with only a third of them, their normal capacity formed, and it takes until the upper 20s or the lower 20s for the last bit, the adult bit, to finally come at taking responsibility for one's own actions. 00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:19.159 But I reserve the term socializers for those who go about this existential dimension that

we have by their relationships with others. 00:35:19.159 --> 00:35:25.559 So to have this relationship with yourself, you need a certain these certain relationships with others. 00:35:25.559 --> 00:35:27.639 The two things are collapsed. 00:35:27.639 --> 00:35:31.159 And there are two, there are so many distinct distinctions. 00:35:31.159 --> 00:35:39.559 It can be relationships with the people who are already in your life, but it could be with total strangers. 00:35:39.559 --> 00:35:47.480 And I've spoken to a lot of people, especially millennials, who really see what mattering is as being famous. 00:35:47.480 --> 00:35:51.480 They want to be paid attention to by a bunch of strangers. 00:35:51.480 --> 00:35:53.639 That's what it is to be a celebrity. 00:35:53.639 --> 00:35:59.400 And that is what they feel will answer this existential need. 00:35:59.400 --> 00:36:06.039 If a lot of strangers are paying attention to them, then clearly they deserve their own attention. 00:36:06.039 --> 00:36:17.159 This also comes in many different shapes and flavors that that socializers maybe we could just pause there on that as well, just to draw that out. 00:36:17.240 --> 00:36:20.440 Because I I wanted to come to this later, but I think it's perfect time to raise it. 00:36:20.440 --> 00:36:26.599 And you mentioned earlier, obviously, about we we started talking about the period during COVID when everybody became kind of hyper online. 00:36:26.599 --> 00:36:30.200 Social media was around before, but it seems like it's taken off in a long way. 00:36:30.200 --> 00:36:39.880 And as you say, a lot of now mattering is attached to, as you say, these parasocial relationships and the numbers and quantities rather than the quality of relationships. 00:36:39.880 --> 00:36:47.079 But I feel like a lot of that is now geared, particularly to news media, but also social media, is telling people they don't matter. 00:36:47.079 --> 00:36:52.200 If you are not one of these, if you are not in the top 1%, then you don't matter. 00:36:52.200 --> 00:36:56.280 Do you feel like is that a new development or through social media? 00:36:56.760 --> 00:36:58.679 It certainly has exacerbated it, right? 00:36:58.679 --> 00:37:01.960 It has something to do with capitalism. 00:37:01.960 --> 00:37:17.480 But that there is a a mattering scheme of that there are some people who matter more than others, the the very wealthy, the very powerful, the very famous, often wrapped up into one and the same people. 00:37:17.480 --> 00:37:19.159 Elon Musk or something. 00:37:19.159 --> 00:37:25.240 And so this is and this we all, no matter who we are, we belong to matter. 00:37:25.240 --> 00:37:37.720 And for this to be out there, that mannering belongs to the very few, and that most of us can't can't even we can't get there. 00:37:37.720 --> 00:37:39.240 We we're not going to be very rich. 00:37:39.240 --> 00:37:49.800 We're not going to be we c maybe famous by for a few minutes on Twitter or something like that, but it's it causes tremendous dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction. 00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:59.159 Delilo had this beautiful line, the novelist DeLillo done Delilo in one of his books, that longing on a large scale is what makes history. 00:37:59.159 --> 00:38:03.079 And I think this is especially true for the longing to matter. 00:38:03.079 --> 00:38:05.240 Longing to matter on a large scale. 00:38:05.240 --> 00:38:14.840 When you have people longing to matter and they can't possibly they can't possibly matter given what's put out there, it makes history. 00:38:14.840 --> 00:38:17.800 I think it's made history very much in the United States. 00:38:17.800 --> 00:38:19.960 It's ripe for demagogues. 00:38:19.960 --> 00:38:23.000 Yeah, I am yours, I am your vengeance. 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:27.559 For people who have been made to feel that they can't even aspire to matter. 00:38:27.559 --> 00:38:29.720 But also explains a lot about cults. 00:38:29.720 --> 00:38:37.639 And they cults can be religious, they can be political, they can be a terrible combination of both political and religious. 00:38:37.639 --> 00:38:41.480 I the the cult leader matters more than everybody else. 00:38:41.480 --> 00:38:45.000 And to the sense that you're his follower, you matter. 00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:46.920 There's two trickle-down mattering. 00:38:46.920 --> 00:38:51.079 So it can explain so much about what goes wrong when our society. 00:38:51.079 --> 00:38:51.880 Yeah. 00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:55.400 So yeah, totally 100% agree with you. 00:38:56.360 --> 00:39:03.000 You've been very generous with us with your time, but I'd love to get the quick explanation of the final two mattering categories. 00:39:04.519 --> 00:39:05.000 Yeah. 00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:06.519 Heroic strivers. 00:39:06.519 --> 00:39:09.400 It was not mattering to God, it's not mattering to other people. 00:39:09.400 --> 00:39:28.920 Certain standards of excellence, Boltzmann was a great example, a standard of excellence that you want to maybe not satisfy, but to approach, to asymptotically get closer and closer to could be these standards may be intellectual, they may be artistic, they may be athletic, they may be moral. 00:39:28.920 --> 00:39:35.159 Some of the people that I that I profile are atheists who are in some, they're secular sites. 00:39:35.159 --> 00:39:40.280 They try to do is they strive to be better and better moral people. 00:39:40.280 --> 00:39:44.360 But the the this is what it is to be a heroic striver. 00:39:44.360 --> 00:39:56.440 It doesn't have to be, you don't have to break records or a it has to be a striving for you, perfecting yourself because you have something that you think matters, knowledge, beauty, prog justice. 00:39:56.440 --> 00:40:04.760 And that's and you are trying to fulfill this in order to be able to live in an easy relationship with yourself. 00:40:04.760 --> 00:40:08.119 And that's briefly what I mean by a heroic striver. 00:40:08.119 -->

00:40:11.720 And competitors are those who understand mannering. 00:40:11.720 --> 00:40:12.599 It's really interesting. 00:40:12.599 --> 00:40:20.519 They are the people who think that mannering is zero sum. 00:40:20.519 --> 00:40:24.760 To the extent that some matter, they matter less. 00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:26.200 They must matter more. 00:40:26.200 --> 00:40:26.840 They understand. 00:40:26.840 --> 00:40:33.480 They were the people who always became a little uncomfortable when I broached the subject because they hear it as mattering more than. 00:40:33.480 --> 00:40:42.360 And yeah, uh once again, we have certain political leaders who are clear competitors, right? 00:40:42.360 --> 00:40:45.639 They must matter more than in everything. 00:40:45.639 --> 00:40:50.840 One of them can't even accept that he ever lost an election because then he'd be a loser. 00:40:50.840 --> 00:40:52.519 Somebody would matter more than him. 00:40:52.519 --> 00:40:56.679 So it's like it's so out there with certain people. 00:40:56.679 --> 00:41:03.880 One very brief story, even competitors who can be a pain to work with, but they can make great contributions. 00:41:03.880 --> 00:41:05.400 And there is this guy I know. 00:41:05.400 --> 00:41:12.760 I had he's an acquaintance, he's a scientist, he's a very he stood, he's a very good scientist, he won a Nobel Prize. 00:41:12.760 --> 00:41:23.720 Another friend of who who knows him better than I said to me, I'll call him X, X was happy for all of 15 years in his 15 minutes in his whole life. 00:41:23.720 --> 00:41:25.559 There were 15 minutes when he was happy. 00:41:25.559 --> 00:41:26.280 When? 00:41:26.280 --> 00:41:30.360 When he got that call from Stockholm, why was it only 15 minutes? 00:41:30.360 --> 00:41:33.559 Because then he realized other people had also gotten the Nobel Prize. 00:41:33.559 --> 00:41:40.679 So he still had to Yes, it's an exaggeration, but it really captures what a competitor is. 00:41:40.679 --> 00:41:41.960 It's hard to be a competitor. 00:41:42.440 --> 00:41:46.840 And how much of this do you feel, because it seems to be slightly that there's obviously different motivations behind them. 00:41:46.840 --> 00:41:53.880 How much do you think where we fall on the mattering map is in our nature and innate versus nurture? 00:41:53.880 --> 00:42:00.039 Because for competitors, that sounds like a deep probably linked to the dark triad personality trait. 00:42:00.039 --> 00:42:05.320 But for the others, perhaps I wonder if it's more to do with our surroundings and the people that we respect growing up? 00:42:08.039 --> 00:42:16.760 Yeah, but I think also with our our talents, our passions, our temperament, I'm the only one. 00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:17.880 It's been very good. 00:42:18.840 --> 00:42:22.679 Um I love it. 00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:25.559 Yeah, I'm the only one in my family who's not a transcender. 00:42:25.559 --> 00:42:27.880 I was brought up to be a transcender. 00:42:27.880 --> 00:42:34.920 All the people I most loved as I was growing up, and I revered my father, were transcenders. 00:42:34.920 --> 00:42:36.599 And I why I couldn't. 00:42:36.599 --> 00:42:38.679 I couldn't continue to believe in that. 00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:41.159 It's like a mind I was born with with whatever. 00:42:41.159 --> 00:42:44.760 So it's tricky, but it's real, it's so individual. 00:42:44.760 --> 00:42:46.840 It is how we go about this. 00:42:46.840 --> 00:42:49.480 And of course we can change it in the course of our lives. 00:42:49.480 --> 00:42:54.280 It's a hard thing to change, it's an extremely hard thing to change, but sometimes it's not working for us. 00:42:54.280 --> 00:42:57.559 We do not it's not contributing to our flourishing. 00:42:57.559 --> 00:43:12.760 And sometimes it's we realize it's not contributing to the flourishing of others that might matter to us, one hopes it would, or that we that we could be of more value to the world if we changed our location on the mattering map. 00:43:12.760 --> 00:43:14.280 So it's hard to be, you know. 00:43:14.280 --> 00:43:19.400 The friend of mine said he was going to get me a bunch of t-shirts to give out that says it's hard to be human. 00:43:19.400 --> 00:43:23.800 And I think that is also something for us humanists to really bear in mind. 00:43:23.800 --> 00:43:24.920 It's hard. 00:43:24.920 --> 00:43:25.480 Yeah. 00:43:26.200 --> 00:43:35.480 And with that, do you what do you think is the relationship between mattering and happiness or fulfillment in life? 00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:37.720 Yeah, and happiness. 00:43:37.720 --> 00:43:53.400 Yeah, I I prefer the sort of uh notion of eudaimonia from the ancient Greeks, this this notion of flourishing, of well, that I think it's very tied with our dealing with our mattering instinct in a good way, at least for us. 00:43:53.400 --> 00:44:05.800 And and and that could, depending on how you go about it, require a great deal of frustration, of disappointment, of a sense of failure. 00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:13.480 Heroic strivers, right, can often go through tremendous sense of disappointment, of frustration. 00:44:13.480 --> 00:44:25.880 Parents of young children, for example, their episodic happiness, that feeling of that buoyant feeling when the endorphins are flowing, it that might really go down. 00:44:25.880 --> 00:44:35.320 But when you ask them, would you trade your life for a life without children, the oh the majority, even though their happiness has gone down, will say no. 00:44:35.320 --> 00:44:37.800 There are studies that show this to be true. 00:44:37.800 --> 00:44:47.320 So that that's because they feel that what they're doing matters, that this the raising these children to be flourishing individuals matter. 00:44:47.320 --> 00:44:53.960 And they would not do away with this, even though, oh my God, if you hear that shark song one more time, you're gonna commit suicide. 00:44:53.960 --> 00:44:57.000 It's just, oh, you may not have that shark song in England. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:03.639 A lot of Winds Mattering Project may require boredom, all sorts of unpleasant experiences. 00:45:03.639 --> 00:45:09.559 So not so much happiness, but that sense of meaningfulness, flourishing, eudaimonia. 00:45:09.960 --> 00:45:16.200 And yeah, I think for that reason this book is essential reading for all humanists, if not all humans. 00:45:16.200 --> 00:45:21.559 So again, it's the mattering instinct, how our deepest longing drives us and divides us. 00:45:21.559 --> 00:45:25.639 Thank you once again, not just for this, Rebecca, but for your all of your contributions. 00:45:25.639 --> 00:45:28.200 It's been a real honor to speak with you. 00:45:28.200 --> 00:45:36.920 And before we go, we have our standard closing question, which is what's something which you've changed your mind on recently and what prompted that change? 00:45:39.559 --> 00:45:48.840 Yeah, I actually this work, uh one of the things I I most changed my mind about is was if it's transcenders. 00:45:48.840 --> 00:46:29.079 That I have more uh sympathy uh f for them, and I think if society offered more ways that there would be enough mattering to go around, which would be a a big change, that that perhaps there won't be as many uh transcenders, but uh the way in which we ought to talk to religious believers, and I've really I would never ever commit to a public debate again, this kind of tug of war. 00:46:29.079 --> 00:46:32.200 That's a big change for me. 00:46:32.200 --> 00:46:43.079 And it's to understand it's not just it's not that they're not getting it, and how can they be convinced by these weak arguments? 00:46:43.079 --> 00:46:46.679 It's not really about arguments, it's really about mattering. 00:46:46.679 --> 00:46:49.400 So I I could I've really changed my mind about that. 00:46:49.800 --> 00:46:52.920 Rebecca Goldstein, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now. 00:46:53.639 --> 00:46:54.280 Thank you. 00:46:54.280 --> 00:46:55.559 It's been a pleasure. 00:46:55.960 --> 00:46:58.360 Thanks for listening to this episode of Humanism Now. 00:46:58.360 --> 00:47:01.400 If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a rating and review. 00:47:01.400 --> 00:47:03.159 And why not share this episode with a friend? 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