The award-winning philosopher & writer Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived lived life and in doing so simplifies some of the most complex ideas in modern philosophy.
Ms Goldstein’s central idea is that “We all want to feel connected to others and know that we matter. The ways we go about making our lives matter shape who we are, the meaning we find, and the mark we leave on the world.”
She then breaks this big idea into two parts. Firstly, we need to feel we matter “in the way that most matters to us” eg. if what’s most important to me is that I matter to my daughter, then recognition of my skills as a writer are irrelevant in that regards. Secondly, we have deep, inbuilt desire to feel connected to others. In Ms Goldstein’s words “Connectedness is our need to feel that there are certain others who will pay us special attention, whether we deserve it or not.”
These two concepts are obviously related to each other and this interplay determines how fulfilled we feel with our lives. From this basic construct Ms Goldstein teases out all sorts of powerful takeaways. Here are four takeaways that we found particularly useful.
First up, our desire to matter makes us fundamentally “questing creatures”: “It consists of our longing to prove to ourselves that we are deserving of our own attention—the monumental attention we have to give ourselves in pursuing our life. And unlike connectedness, which is a trait that humans share with other gregarious species, the mattering instinct characterizes us humans alone. It comes to us by way of our evolved capacity for self-reflection, and it provides us with our existential dimension. The mattering instinct forces us into the sphere of values without equipping us to see our way through. We are social beings, yes, but we are also, because of the mattering instinct, existentially questing creatures.”
Secondly, many of us are happy to live difficult, uncomfortable – even painful – lives if is in consonance with our ‘mattering instinct’. As John Kagg writes, “To illustrate this, Ms Goldstein turns to the example of Ludwig Wittgenstein who experienced constant mental anguish yet who exclaimed on his deathbed, “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.”…Goldstein contends…His life, for all its misery, had been ferociously engaged in a mattering project: He developed what was arguably the most rigorous philosophical system of the 20th century, the goal of which was to understand the limits of language and thought…”
Thirdly, for many of us mattering comes from holding things together in a world where ‘entropy’ is forcing things to fall apart. The second law of thermodynamics focuses on the principle of entropy which focuses on the inexorable tendency of any closed system to slide from order to chaos. Eg. a closed house, left to itself, will start crumbling. Ms Goldstein writes: “Life itself is a counter-entropic struggle, and the best of our mattering projects are, like life itself, counter-entropic. Everything worth living for—life, love, health, knowledge, peace, compassion, creativity, beauty, flourishing—are highly ordered states that must be hard-won local reprieves from the law of entropy. A life well- lived is a life that, while pursuing mattering in a way that best accords with a person’s individuality, allies itself with life’s own counter-entropic struggle.”
Fourthly, Ms Goldstein says that there are broadly 4 different mental models that us humans follow when it comes to mattering and connectedness. She calls these 4 different ‘Mattering Maps’:
“Transcenders seek their mattering in religious or spiritual terms, striving to matter to the transempirical spiritual presence which, according to their belief, exists and which they may or may not call God, but which they believe has purposefully created them. They look to their mattering from On High…
Socializers seek their mattering from other humans. They essentially collapse the two cornerstones of our humanness into one. To matter existentially, for a socializer, is to matter to those who are in their lives.
Heroic strivers aren’t seeking their mattering from others—neither from humans nor from On High. Rather their sense of mattering comes from seeking to satisfy their own standards of excellence. These standards may be intellectual, artistic, athletic, or ethical.
Competitors conceive of mattering, either their own or their group’s, in zero-sum terms. To the extent that they matter, others must matter less.”
We enjoyed asking ourselves which of these 4 mattering maps are relevant to us. Maybe, you too can have fun on a Sunday morning choosing your Mattering Map.
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