THE MATTERING INSTINCT: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
MATTERING: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
What do you call it when people living in the wealthiest, most powerful country on the planet report feeling worn down, burned out and on edge?
Any number of explanations have been offered for this predicament, including political breakdown, economic inequality and an “epidemic of loneliness.” But two new books suggest that underlying these troubles is a “crisis of mattering.” According to “Mattering,” by the journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace, and “The Mattering Instinct,” by the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, feeling valued — which is to say, deserving of attention — is a core need that has grave consequences when it isn’t met.
Goldstein’s approach, unsurprisingly, is adamantly heady and philosophical. “The mattering instinct,” Goldstein writes, “is the most peculiar and the most human thing about us.” For nonhuman animals, the Darwinian mechanism of gene propagation is paramount. They don’t write poetry, paint paintings or compose symphonies. Humans, though, do all sorts of strange, glorious and sometimes destructive things that are utterly superfluous (or even counter) to brute survival.
These actions, Goldstein argues, flow from our longing to matter, a byproduct of our big brains, which in turn are constantly preoccupied with devising ways to resist the second law of thermodynamics. In a closed system, order will tend toward entropy, or chaos. In pursuing what she calls our “mattering projects,” we try to resist entropy — whether we know it or not.
“The Mattering Instinct” synthesizes ideas that have preoccupied Goldstein for decades. In her first book, the novel “The Mind-Body Problem” (1983), her protagonist (a philosophy grad student) devises a “mattering map” to make sense of how she ended up in an unhappy marriage. Even if the mattering instinct is something we all share, our mattering projects differ. “Socializers” want to matter to others; “competitors” want to matter more than others; “transcenders” want to matter to God (or the universe); and “heroic strivers” want to do something (whether artistic, athletic or intellectual) that matters to them.
The book contains examples of people who populate all the quadrants of Goldstein’s mattering map. The “former brilliant student” of hers who fell in love with a professor, dropped out of grad school and happily dedicated her life to being a stay-at-home mother (socializer); the athlete whose idea of winning is completely crushing his opponent (competitor); the French polymath Blaise Pascal, who renounced his scholarly pursuits for an extreme form of Catholicism (transcender). But it’s the “heroic strivers” who dominate the book, and seem to fascinate Goldstein most: the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the psychologist William James, the poet John Berryman.
Our mattering projects bring us a sense of purpose, but Goldstein adds that the longing to matter can also lead us astray. There’s the mother of two who dedicated herself to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen because Donald Trump made her feel “recognized and even important.” There’s the former skinhead whose mattering instinct was so damaged from a childhood of abuse and neglect that he sought recognition and fellowship in hatred.
Goldstein is such an engaging and enthusiastic storyteller that only intermittently did I wonder if the concept of mattering had been stretched to the point of meaninglessness. She lists book titles like “Why Beauty Matters” and “Why Money Matters” as evidence of “our preoccupation with what matters.” It’s a conspicuously circular argument: We are preoccupied with what matters because what matters will preoccupy us. Another title for this book could have been “Why Mattering Matters.”
But even if the philosophical dimension seems a little soft, the notion of mattering is still resonant. Wallace, for her part, calls mattering a “meta-need” that “encompasses familiar concepts — feelings of connection, belonging and purpose.” Unlike Goldstein, Wallace doesn’t enlist laws of physics to make her case. Nor does Wallace dedicate much of her book to the heroically striving geniuses that figure so prominently in “The Mattering Instinct.”
Wallace’s book is mostly populated by ordinary people searching for meaning and connection in their lives. Citing the work of Gordon Flett, a psychologist who specializes in mattering, she points out that the demoralizing feeling of “anti-mattering” can have social consequences. The person who feels unseen and undervalued can lash out in belligerent demands for attention: I’ll show you.
Both authors take care to distinguish mattering from happiness, with each referring to Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, or “the flourishing life.” But only Wallace quotes Oprah (“We all want to know that what we do, what we say and who we are matters”). The purpose of Wallace’s book is clearly self-help. She recommends that readers “keep an impact file” of thank-you notes from clients and friends as a reminder of “the positive ways we make a difference.”
Goldstein’s ambitions are grander — and she suggests that ours should be, too. She ends her book with the extraordinary story of an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned babies from public toilets and garbage heaps during the years of China’s one-child policy. One of those babies, now in her 40s, movingly remembers how her mother, by treating every baby as worthy of attention, made them feel loved: “This is what she leaves behind in the world.”
The coincidence of two books on the subject of mattering being published at the same time is clearly a reflection of something larger. There is a lack, or a void, that has been ascendant in the last several years — the nihilism of “lol nothing matters” and “I really don’t care. Do U?” There is also the growing problem of our collapsing attention spans. All of these issues are connected.
I finished the books on mattering feeling a bit restless; it’s hard to find the sweet spot between the second law of thermodynamics and self-help. But they both provide something rather than nothing. In dark times, that’s a start.
THE MATTERING INSTINCT: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us | By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | Liveright | 329 pp. | $29.99
MATTERING: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose | By Jennifer Breheny Wallace | Portfolio | 272 pp. | $30
Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times.
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