For decades, award-winning author and philosopher Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein has often wondered why humans have this will to matter. And as the author of eleven books, that idea permeated through a number of her previous works, including the novel, The Mind-Body Problem.
Now, she’s released a new book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us And Divides Us, examining this longing to matter that humans have had for ages. She spoke with Susan J. Demas all about it on First Draft — and how this relates to Donald Trump’s presidency and the MAGA movement’s cult-like behavior.
In this fascinating conversation, Demas asks Dr. Newberger Goldstein about her incredible career in philosophy, drawing from math and science disciplines. She explains the influences that led her to write about the theory of “mattering,” of people wanting to matter to their friends and community. At the core of it is that we all deserve to matter and she examines how we justify to ourselves that we do, in fact, matter.
There are a number of people and stories that Dr. Newberger Goldstein reflects on, highlighting how the quest to matter can be positive and negative. She gives an example of one such story, telling us about a Neo-Nazi who had lived his life thinking people had taken away his mattering and spewing hate and acting violently were the only way he could exist. But he was able to turn his life around after being shown ways that mattering can be a force for good.
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And with technological advances like AI threatening our sense of mattering, Dr. Newberger Goldstein offers a message of encouragement, suggesting that we all find a way to enhance others around us with their own “mattering projects” and determine the large and small ways in which the way they matters makes a positive impact in their own lives and others.
