Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on The Mattering Instinct: Why We Need to Matter

The Core Concept of Mattering

• 💡 Mattering is defined as deserving of attention, a concept that combines normative judgment with justification.
• 🧠 Humans are creatures of matter who long to matter, a fundamental drive that influences personal well-being, political divisions, morality, and meaningfulness.
• 🚀 The universe may not be inherently meaningful (as Stephen Weinberg suggested), but humans bring meaning and values into existence through their striving.

Belonging vs. Self-Mattering

• 🤝 Belonging is a fundamental need for connectedness and belonging to others, providing a sense of mattering to people in one's life.
• 👤 Self-mattering is an existential dimension unique to humans, involving the deep psychological need to justify one's own existence and feel worthy of one's own attention.
• ⚠️ Depression can arise from an inability to live with oneself, stemming from feeling unworthy of the attention one must pay to oneself.

The Etymology of 'Matter'

• 🏛️ The word 'matter' originates from Aristotle's concept of pure potentiality, translated into Latin using the metaphor of 'motherhood' due to the perceived passive role of women.
• 🔗 This etymological link reveals an ancient, ongoing view that men matter more than women, embedded within the very word for the stuff of the universe.

Four Strategies for Mattering

• 🌌 Transcendent/Cosmic Mattering: Belief in a higher power or purpose that imbues life with meaning and significance.
• 🫂 Social Mattering: Seeking to matter to others, divided into intimate socializers (mattering to one's close circle) and non-intimate socializers (mattering to strangers, e.g., fame seekers).
• 🏆 Heroic Striving: Pursuing excellence in intellectual, artistic, ethical, or athletic domains, driven by internal standards rather than external validation.
• ⚔️ Competitive Mattering: Viewing mattering as a zero-sum game where one's own significance is achieved at the expense of others.

The Mattering Map and Its Implications

• 🗺️ The Mattering Map is a conceptual tool illustrating the diverse regions where individuals find meaning and purpose, with 'continents' like transcendent, heroic, competitive, and social mattering.
• ⚖️ While there are many right ways to matter, there are also objectively wrong ways, such as pursuing power through aggression or causing harm to others.
• 🌱 Life itself is a counterentropic process; good mattering projects align with this force by creating order, knowledge, justice, beauty, or fairness.