The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us [Hardcover]

MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of[An] extraordinary and urgent book. Jonathan Haidt The novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein may be playing the same melody, but shes transposed it from the major key of self-help to the Baroque counterpoint of self-knowledge. Her book,? [An] engaging book populated with stories of people both famous and ordinary who have sought to bring purpose to their lives. What emerges from the pages of Incisive.... [Goldstein] catalogs the rich variety of ways people try to carve out purpose:? 'socializers' try to matter through relationships; 'heroic strivers' through achievement; and 'transcenders' through communion with whatever spiritual principle orders the cosmos.... Convincingly situating the instinct to matter as increasingly vital in a world that can feel impersonal and starved of meaning, Goldstein takes on some of lifes biggest questions with a loose-limbed exploration of such wide-ranging topics as thermodynamic entropy and Victorian fly-fishing lures made from exotic feathers (which still matter to modern-day connoisseurs of the art). Its a fascinating take on a profound yet little-understood aspect of the psyche. What drives human beings to do both great good and terrible evil? Rebecca Goldstein brilliantly argues that the answer is strangely simple yet incredibly powerful: it is our need to matter in the world. To understand othersand yourselfread this book. Rebecca Goldsteinwho uniquely combines the gifts of a novelist and a philosopherwrites with rare insight, warmth, and humanity. Rebecca Goldsteins books always get to the heart of the matter. This one, provocative and timely, gets to the heart of mattering itself. How refreshing, in our time of heated antipathies and narrowed hopes, to discover a book that celebrates the meaning-seeking imperative that underlies the wondrousness of what it is to be human. Rebecca Goldsteins eloquenls&