THE MATTERING INSTINCT

Searching for meaning.

Do we make a difference? Do other people care? Novelist and philosopher Goldstein argues that the positive answers to those questions make us human. She argues for an essential human need to be a part of others’ lives, to shape the world in which we live and leave a legacy. We long to matter, and longing is central to Goldstein’s view of human motivation. The writing aspires to prose poetry. “All things can be wounded and wasted by what they meet with in the world. Our longing to matter puts us all the more at the mercy of the world—a reason in itself to see one another more mercifully.” Part anthropological meditation, part popular psychology, part self-help manifesto, the book skips like a flat stone across the surface waters of knowledge. There is a touch of physics, a dip into existentialism, and a splash of ethics. A list reveals the ambitions of this book: “Some mattering regions teem with billions, as, for example, those demarcated by major religions; others are mid-sized, such as the one inhabited by those pursuing fame for fame’s sake; and some are tiny—the Monacos, the Maltas, the Seychelles of the mattering map—such as the regions inhabited by Victorian salmon fly-tyers, trainspotters, Civil War reenactors, and analytic philosophers.” By the end, we have moved from this cabinet of curious specifics to something general and grand: “To be a transcender is to believe that your personal existence has a role to play in the narrative of eternity.” At its best, the book inspires us to make a difference. At its worst, it puts us off with pretentiousness.

A boldly out-there meditation on why humans want to make a difference in the world.