The Mattering InstinctThe Mattering Instinct

"Offering a new framework for understanding what can go tragically wrong in our lives and in society and how progress in each can be enhanced, best-selling author and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein returns with a book about the primal, biological drive in every living thing that, in our species alone, is transformed into one of the most persistent forces in human motivation and a force essential to human flourishing: the longing to matter. Mattering, Goldstein posits, is lodged deep in the core of humanity - it is our most profound longing, and our most opaque. It is the source of endless frustration, division, and tribalism (if this matters, how can this matter too; if we matter, how can you matter too?). And yet, this desire to matter can also save us. In a world where many of us are experiencing what Goldstein calls a crisis of mattering, perhaps we are finally poised to accept that this insatiable longing that drives humans to such different ends may also be the key to truly understanding each other. Goldstein first described "the mattering map"-a central idea in this book-in her 1983 novel, The Mind-Body Problem, and she has written many articles and given many talks on the subject for years. No surprise, then, that talk of 'mattering' has started to crop up in the mainstream conversation, especially in positive psychology and business circles. But Goldstein's decades-long obsession with the idea means that no one else can write the book Goldstein is writing: The Mattering Instinct is a major intellectual contribution, decades in the making, unfolded for a wide audience by a superb writer and storyteller"--