The Mattering Instinct
Goldstein argues the drive to matter is basic equipment rather than vanity, then follows what that implies for ethics, ambition, and how we justify ourselves.
Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist, argues that the drive to matter is a basic feature of human psychology rather than vanity, and traces what follows from that for ethics, ambition, and the stories we tell to justify ourselves. She calls it the mattering instinct, and treats it as the thing underneath both our best work and our worst behaviour.
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Maria Popova
That longing, argues philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein in The Mattering Instinct (public library), is more than a whim of feeling, more than a wave in the mind — it is part of our creaturely inheritance, part of the price of consciousness, the source of our deepest consanguinity and our most ferocious conflicts.
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