*What is the most distinctively human drive — and what happens when we get it wrong?* Philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein explores the “mattering instinct”: the human need to feel that our self-importance is objectively warranted. Drawing on physics, biology, Spinoza, and decades of philosophical inquiry, she explains how this longing shapes our lives, divides us, and points toward what a well-lived life may require.
0:00 Why Mattering Matters
1:57 What It Means to Matter
6:39 Matter, Entropy, and Life
12:48 Becoming Human
14:49 Eudaimonia vs. Happiness
17:21 The Four Mattering Strategies
22:38 Transcendent Mattering
25:27 Competitive Mattering
27:36 Getting Mattering Right and Wrong
33:57 Achievement and Atrocity
*Rebecca Newberger Goldstein* is a MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medal recipient whose ten acclaimed books span philosophy and fiction, including her new work _The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us._
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Closer To Truth, created and hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence and sentience. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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