The Mattering Instinct: Our Desperate Need to Find Meaning | Rebecca Goldstein

What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens that challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Rebecca Goldstein, a philosopher, novelist, and MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She is the author of 11 books, including her latest work, The Mattering Instinct, which explores our fundamental human longing to feel that our lives matter, that we didn't just come and go, and it was all for nothing. We spend the first hour exploring the origins of Rebecca's fascination with the question of mattering, how this instinct manifests differently from our biological drive for self preservation, and why we long not just to matter to ourselves, but to feel that we matter objectively. We discuss the critical role played by attention and deservingness in our our sense of mattering, the distinction between happiness and fulfillment, and how parenting and early family dynamics shape our relationship with this fundamental human longing. The second hour is devoted to a more in-depth exploration of Rebecca's concept of the mattering map, which identifies four distinct archetypes, heroic strivers, socializers, competitors, and transcenders. We examine the relationship between depression and our longing to matter, the role of social media in shaping how contemporary generations experience their own search for validation, and how some approaches to mattering are objectively better than others. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes q and a calls with guests, discounted access to third party research and analysis, and in person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats. You can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this deeply philosophical, heartfelt, and distinctly human conversation with my guest, Rebecca Goldstein. Rebecca Goldstein, welcome to Hidden Forces. Welcome back to Hidden Forces, I should say. It's great to be back. So you were on the podcast, like, almost seven years ago, I think, or maybe six years ago. No. Yeah. 2018, 2019. Almost '7 or 2018. Before before the pandemic. Yes. It was before the pandemic, and it was in studio as well. Those were the good old days where we we got to do things in studio, and it was a privilege to get to meet you and all my other guests. You came on the show back then to talk about your book Plato at the Googleplex. But even then, a conversation about mattering, which is what your new book is about, came up. And you even talked to me then about how you were working on …