The Mattering Instinct - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Join us for a discussion of The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
🗓️ Date: October 17th
🕐 Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
📍Location: Level 4 North Meeting Room, Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, 350 Georgia St W, Vancouver

The synopsis and some tentative discussion questions are below. If as you read, you encounter some thought-provoking lines and/or find yourself wrestling with some burning questions, please note them down and bring them to the discussion!
Whether you've read the whole book or just want to explore some of its central ideas, you're welcome to join; and if you need help accessing the text, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Synopsis:
In The Mattering Instinct, philosopher Goldstein posits a "mattering instinct," or a desire to be deserving of attention, that arises in childhood and matures into a habit of organizing one's life around "mattering projects" that encapsulate one's "reason to live." The argument starts from biology: on the first page she writes that every living thing is driven by a mandate to prioritize its own surviving and thriving, and in humans this becomes a need to justify that self-concern. She describes four ways people seek significance, through transcendence, social connection, excellence, or competition, and argues that the unmet need to matter lies behind loneliness, extremism, and polarization. The book develops these ideas through case studies including Scott Joplin and his neglected opera Treemonisha, William James's recovery from youthful depression, an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns, and a former neo-Nazi who came to see that mattering is not zero-sum. The project draws on Spinoza's attempt in the Ethics to ground an objective ethics on secular foundations. Goldstein's central claim is that the same drive that produces human achievement also produces much of human conflict, and that recognizing mattering as non-scarce could reduce the latter.

Discussion Questions (subject to revision):

1. Goldstein defines the mattering instinct as the need to prove to ourselves that we deserve the enormous attention we give ourselves. How does this definition compare with how you would describe the desire to matter?
2. She distinguishes connectedness (mattering to the people in our lives) from mattering (being worthy in our own eyes). How do these two needs show up differently in a life, and where do they overlap?
3. She argues that what we most want is not happiness but a life that feels worthwhile, and that we will accept a great deal of unhappiness to get it. What does this suggest about how we make major life choices?
4. Goldstein calls the things we organize our lives around “mattering projects”: work, family, faith, a cause, even a hobby like fly-tying. What makes something capable of serving as a reason to live?
5. Her mattering map describes four broad strategies: transcenders, socializers, heroic strivers, and competitors. Where do you see these strategies in people you know, or in yourself?
6. She traces both humanity’s greatest achievements and its worst atrocities to the same instinct, including the story of a young man who joined a neo-Nazi group because it made him feel he mattered. What does this account add to our understanding of how people are drawn into extremism?
7. Goldstein proposes that good mattering projects resemble life itself by building and sustaining order against entropy, the universe’s drift toward disorder. What would it look like to apply this standard to your own life or to a society?
8. Goldstein treats mattering as an instinct rooted in our capacity for self-reflection. How much of what people need in order to feel they matter is universal, and how much is shaped by culture?
9. Most of us use more than one of the four strategies at different times. What determines which one takes the lead in a person’s life?
10. One of her observations is that we often cannot know whether our mattering project actually mattered. How do people live with that uncertainty?
11. If the measure of good mattering is creating order, how should we think about the kinds of order that come at the expense of freedom?
12. Some people find mattering by merging with something larger than themselves, others by doing right by the people life has placed around them. What draws a person toward one path or the other?
13. Goldstein observes that a machine that made us feel we mattered would be even less appealing than one that simply gave us pleasure. Why might that be?
14. How might a widespread sense of not mattering shape politics and public life?
15. The book holds that mattering is not zero-sum, yet attention and recognition often feel scarce. How do these two ideas fit together in everyday experience?
16. In societies held together by shared religion or tradition, the question of whether one matters may have felt less urgent. How has the shift toward secular, individualist life changed it?
17. A local comedian, singer, or craftsperson once only needed to be good within their community, but now everyone competes on a global stage, and increasingly with AI. What does this mean for people trying to matter through being good at something?
18. Goldstein closes by arguing that our shared vulnerability to the world is a reason to see one another more mercifully. How might understanding someone’s mattering project change the way we respond to choices we don’t share?