WEBVTT - Ep136 "Why do we care about mattering?" with Rebecca Goldstein 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:08.119 What does it mean for your life to matter? 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.480 Is the drive to matter sometimes stronger than the drive 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.360 to survive? We humans talk a lot about happiness and 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.800 pleasure and meaning, but what if the real engine underneath 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.120 all of it is the need to feel that we count? 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:28.720 Is it possible that depression and extremism and ambition all 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:34.280 stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:40.040 less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Today we're 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.040 going to speak with philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, who 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:46.080 has written a new book on what matters to people 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.720 and why and why it's not the same for everyone, 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:54.760 and why mattering is a fundamental instinct that underlies all 0:00:54.800 --> 0:01:01.240 the others. Welcome to intercouse most with me, David Eagleman. 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.280 I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.640 episodes we sailed deeply into our three pound universe to 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.240 understand how we experienced. 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:11.240 The world. 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:29.480 When I was younger. 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.440 One of the great mentors I got to work with 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.080 was Francis Crick, who had won the Nobel Prize for 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.160 discovering the structure of DNA. As you may know, in 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.800 the second half of Krick's career, he turned from studying 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:47.120 genetics to studying the brain, and specifically the question of 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:52.720 how the physical stuff of the brain gives rise to consciousness. Now, 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:57.600 Krick had a chalkboard that was full of ideas and equations, 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.120 but the most striking thing to me was that that 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.160 right in the middle of the board, outlined in a big, 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:07.840 thick rectangle, was a single word. And this word represented 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:11.640 to him one of the central mysteries of biology. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.520 The word was meaning. 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:18.560 In other words, he had a better understanding than most 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:22.520 people on the planet of the vast and intricate biology 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.600 that makes up the human brain. But he recognized that 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:29.919 one of the key questions was why does anything matter 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.760 to your brain? You can look at the visual system 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.840 and you can come to understand how photons hit the 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.160 retina and the signals move to the visual cortex in 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:40.800 the back of the brain, and you can get a 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.239 sense of how the sigles move around and get processed, 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.680 and get a reasonable understanding of how this all works 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.240 from single cells to feedback at the global level. That 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.240 equates to expectations. And you can do the same thing 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.320 with hearing and touch and so on. But no amount 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.160 of that very important kind of science gives you insight 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.800 into why anything matters. Why is there any meaning at all? 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.000 In other words, why don't we just run like computers, 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.680 where we process signals and have inputs and outputs. Why 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.720 do we instead care so much about our lives and 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:20.200 accomplishments and whether people like us, and whether events have 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.959 meaning to us? Why do we ask whether we are 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:28.520 doing something significant with our time? Now, there's a sense 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.760 in which neuroscience speaks to this. We talk about reward 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:37.119 circuitry and prediction errors and salience networks, and psychology gives 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.480 us language about attention and bias and motivation. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.080 But behind the. 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.560 Circuitry and the jargon, there's still a deep question. You 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.880 might be objectively safe and fed and housed, and yet 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.880 you need to feel that your life registers, that you're 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:59.680 somehow making a dent somewhere. It's the difference between surviving 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:05.280 and signifying from a neuroscience point of view that remains 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.760 difficult territory to access. Evolution can explain why we care 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:15.000 about food and shelter and reproduction, but we humans also 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:19.640 care fiercely about other things, about whether our work is respected, 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:24.520 whether our team wins, whether our group identity is affirmed, 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:29.400 whether a text message gets answered, whether a stranger on 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.839 the internet agrees with us, whether our absence would be noticed, 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:38.239 whether someone is proud of us, whether we feel replaceable, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.520 whether our existence registers at all beyond the. 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.640 Private theater of our own minds. 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.679 And there's a related question, why is one person willing 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.480 to sacrifice everything for an artistic project that no one 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:58.200 else understands? And another person finds fulfillment through family and 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:07.080 another through God, another through achievement, another through domination, same species, 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:11.960 same brain architecture. But people can have very different maps 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.080 of significance. So the question that's kept nagging at me 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.760 ever since I saw that chalkboard in Francis Krik's office 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:25.120 is this, what is the brain's code for meaning? What 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.200 does it mean psychologically and neurologically for something to feel 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:34.120 like it matters? Now, this question about mattering and the 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.920 brain is a big interdisciplinary question. It lives at the 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:43.559 intersection of neuroscience and psychology and philosophy. So I called 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:48.280 my colleague, the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, because she's been 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.240 thinking about the issue of mattering for decades. 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:53.080 How does this. 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:58.440 Longing to matter shape our identity, our relationships, our cultures, 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.960 and the political world that we're all trying to share. 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:05.279 Goldstein has just written a new book on this, called 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.279 The Mattering Instinct, which is about this deep human drive 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:13.160 not just to survive, but to matter to ourselves and others. 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.599 Rebecca Goldstein is a MacArthur Genius Fellow, a Fellow of 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.359 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she was 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:25.000 warded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. So today 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.640 we're going to explore her idea that each of us 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:32.520 carries around a kind of inner mattering map that tells 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.200 us who and what is significant. Here's my interview with 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:43.880 Rebecca Goldstein. So, Rebecca, to get us oriented, what do 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:46.839 you mean by the mattering instinct? And how do you 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:48.520 explain that to people at dinner parties. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:54.279 I think we are programmed to act on a very 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:59.640 deep motivation that often goes hid in. But it is 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:00.640 a long matter. 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:02.120 What do you mean by matter? 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.080 You know, we use this word matter all over the 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.560 place of the verb to matter. We talk about what matters, 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.640 and we talk about who matters. And I think its 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:18.320 core meaning, deep down is to be deserving of attention, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:24.800 So it has that notion of deserving this built into 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:30.800 it what philosophers call a normative concept, something that has 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:35.880 to do with with our values. So that term mattering 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:42.480 already gets us into this domain of values. We want 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.080 to know what's a value, We want to know who's 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.320 a value, And our mattering instinct is that we desperately 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:54.000 want ourselves to be among those who matter, who are 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:59.160 deserving of attention, interestingly, our own attention. 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.880 And you argue that this longing to matter is the 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.360 crux of human motivation. What makes you feel that this 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.760 longing to matter is more important than the pursuit of 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.480 pleasure or truth or survival? 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.960 Yeah, I mean many of us pursue are mattering by 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:26.920 ketenistic pursuit of pleasure, of truth, the knowledge of beauty, 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:34.560 of creativity, of power, of fame. But beneath all of 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:41.440 these things is this more basic, uh, motivation to to 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.800 prove that we are deserving of all of the attention 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.600 that we have to give ourselves in order to live 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:53.600 a coherently human life. Uh. And we that that is 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.920 what I think the longing to matter is all about. 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:03.559 And all these other motivations that give us the arc 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.319 of the narrative of our life, our ways of trying 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:13.240 to respond to to realize this deep longing. It's even more. 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:19.120 Powerful than the longing to live to survive. 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.959 People will sacrifice their lives if they think that that's 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:29.679 what's required in order to realize their mattering instinct, or 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.880 in the very very tragic cases where they think they can't, 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:42.520 which is clinically known as as depression, whose most characteristic 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:46.760 expression is I don't matter. Others do, but I don't, 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:52.440 I can't, I never will. They will, in fact often 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.200 and their life or or contemplate empty their lives. So 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.400 it's belief deeper even matter instinct. 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:03.880 For survi, how do you distinguish wanting to matter from 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:09.000 the desire to be admired or loved? Are these different flavors? 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.280 Are they trying to get it the same thing? 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:12.040 You know? 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:17.319 Freud had said that the two cornerstones of our humanness. 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:23.040 Are love and work, and I would amend pride. 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:28.400 And volubility to say that are the two cornerstones of 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:36.800 our humanness? Are longing for connectedness, which is also involves mattering, 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:44.360 but distinct from that as a separate motivation. This longing 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:49.280 to matter so connectedness, I think has something to do 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:54.720 with having people in our lives who will give us 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:59.240 special attention, whether we deserve it or not. It's kind 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:05.520 of unconditional. That's what we needed as the helpless creatures. 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.800 We're born into a helplessness unmatched in the animal kingdom. 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.320 You know, it takes to our early adulthood for the 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.720 last bits of our brain, when we're all the mature 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:21.240 stuff takes place to fall into place. So we're extremely 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.480 dependent on other people, and we are like that for 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.560 the rest of our lives. That there must be certain 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.040 people that I count as those people who are in 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:35.199 my life, my families, my friends, my you know, romantic partner, 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.920 my colleagues, my neighbors, perhaps the members of my community 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:45.440 whose attention I feel is coming to me. And just 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.240 as we felt as children led the attention of our 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:50.839 family members were coming to us. 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:52.319 And that's always in place. 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:57.280 We are gregarious creatures, evolved from gregarious creatures, born into 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.360 a great helplessness. It takes a very long long time 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:05.280 for us to outgrow that is connectedness, and connectedness has 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:09.559 to do with our relationship with others. The mannering instinct 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.199 has to do with our relationship with ourselves, and as 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.439 I say, if it's not realized, we feel. 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:19.280 Disgusted with ourselves. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.400 I've known some people close to me who have gone 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:28.640 into the deepest of depressions and there's this kind of 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:31.400 just self clothing. They can't stand to be in the 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:36.800 presence of themselves anymore. That shows that there is something that. 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:37.360 We all need. 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:43.400 It in their privation of this need, it's it shows up, 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.640 but what a good life, of life of flourishing requires. 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:52.200 And in the book, I define different strategies for satisfying 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:56.120 the mannering instinct. And although I would say that we're 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:59.400 all alive in sharing this deep motivation, in fact, what 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:04.760 I think I think the most elegant expression for what 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.280 our species is creatures of manner too long to matter. 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:13.600 And for some people it really is the connectedness that 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:14.440 we all need. 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:16.800 That doesn't I call them socializers? 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.439 You know that to have the people in their lives 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:26.480 paying the attention to them that they require it does 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:31.040 it for them? That is how their mannering instinct is satisfied. 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.280 And I think that's probably true for most people. I've 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.560 been talking to people about this for over four decades now, 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.240 just because I find it really interesting. I find the 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.680 diversity of the way that people try to realize this 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:48.480 common motivation fascinating. But there are other. 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:49.920 Ways of doing it. 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.480 It's still needing that connectedness. I think that's always a 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:57.520 given in almost everybody's life. I know a few mathematicians 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:03.320 who don't seem to connectedness at all. But there are 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.920 these other ways of doing it. The people I call 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:12.400 transcenders who seek their mattering in some sort of metaphysical 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.560 belief about the nature of the universe, that there is 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.320 some transcendent presence, whether they call it God or something else, 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:26.200 who purposefully created them and whose purpose gives them their purpose, 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.640 gives them what I call mattering project Uh, that's what 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:31.280 makes them feel as if they matter. 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.960 So there are these transcenders religious the spiritual. 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:41.120 Uh, there are people I call heroics drivers, and they're 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:45.240 not trying to really matter to others, not to other mortals, 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.280 and not to you know, some transcendent being that they 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:53.000 may believe exists. It's there. There's it's really a matter 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.479 of some standards of excellence that they've said for themselves 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:02.680 to be intellectual, artistic, athletic, ethical, and maybe some combination 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:08.720 of those and that's that's what gives the purpose to 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.240 their life. And then there are the competitors who understand 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.520 this question of mattering in zero some terms. To matter 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:20.120 to them means to matter more than others. So it's 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:23.000 interesting when I talk to people about mattering, people hear 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:27.240 that question, how do you go about your mattery? According to. 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.920 Their strategy A central idea and your framework is the 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:33.080 mattering map. 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:34.520 What is the mattering map? 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:38.880 And how does that differ from values or identity or 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:40.360 personal narrative. 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:44.280 Yeah, sort of contains all of those things, I think. 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:50.200 But what I've noticed in this pretty long life at 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.640 this point is that it's hard to live a human life. 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:59.760 People need to feel like some purpose, something that gives 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.560 some coherence to their life, and a life that's meaningful 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:04.480 in their own eyes. 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:08.480 But the projects that are taken. 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:15.800 On within these four strategies are so diverse, so many, 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:21.120 I mean pick up artists and just reading today in 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.240 the Washington Post about a man whose project was to 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:28.320 walk the whole planet. He's almost done with it now, 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.720 but that's his project, or you know, I don't know. 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:36.840 You saw that movie Julia and Julie about this young 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.600 woman who liked to cook but she was in the doldrums. 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.640 I think she was a would be writer and it 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:43.720 wasn't going anywhere. 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:45.080 And her project was to. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:51.640 Make every true perfection, every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.880 in the Heart of French Cooking a tattoo. Artists, so 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:05.040 train spots, analytic philosophers, mathematicians of the Saints. So there 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.719 are many, many, many regions on the mattering math. And 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.000 I think of these four strategies as the kind of 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.640 continents of the mattering math. There are transcendors, many ways 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:20.399 of being a transcender. Christianity itself has forty four thousand 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:25.800 worldwide detominations. Words have been shed, I needn't say over 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:29.040 the disagreements among those who are very close on the 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.080 mattery map. But you know the way one defines this, 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.280 and it does have to do very much with our 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:39.200 identity and what we think we're about, what we're supposed 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:42.199 to do here. As I say, what makes our lives 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.040 keeps us engaged in our lives. And it's when it 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:50.439 dies you're in bad shape and we don't know how 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.520 to go forward. 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.119 So in your book, you bring this idea to life 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:16.720 through several stories. Scott Joplin, William James, a woman rescuing infants, 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.879 a former neo Nazi skinhead. Tell us about those people 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:23.440 and how they matter to the story and what they 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.760 represent about mattering theorious theory. 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.479 But to really bring these ideas alive, you have to 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.760 look at people's lives stories. I could just start with 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:41.320 William James. Actually William James, who was a great favorite 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:46.040 of mine, both a psychologist and a philosopher. Multi talented. 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.520 He got a medical degree first. He wanted to be 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.359 an artist. He did have great artistic talent. His father 0:18:54.760 --> 0:19:00.920 was a kind of a religious thinker, Sweden Bornian, very 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:07.880 supportive family, very supportive community. Multi talent, but he didn't 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:13.080 know where to put his his talents. He was what 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:18.480 I call the heroic driver, or somebody who was mattering. 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:24.360 Instinct demands excellence in some or more areas that they're 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:29.920 very high standards of excellence, and he wasn't fulfilling those. 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:34.560 He went from art to medicine and he fell into 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:41.760 a really deep depression. He was prostate on his bed. 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.399 He you know, he couldn't get any energy. He is 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.480 such an example I think of what happens to a 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:55.280 person who's got all of the connectedness, the beautiful, wonderful relationships. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.479 But that's something else that by temperament, by talent, whatever 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:06.560 it is, uh, demands of his mannering instinct, something aside 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:11.240 from connectiviusy Is was a heroic striver. And until he 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:16.919 found his niche in psychology and philosophy, lending them together 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:20.199 in a way that I re there, he couldn't go 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.480 forward and uh, and then he was known as a 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:27.959 person of tremendous energy. He was just always going. And 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.000 so this to me, I mean he I should say 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.280 that he had a sister. She was the youngest of 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:37.320 those five children, and she had she was also born 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.320 to be a heroic striver. She had the same kind 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:45.800 of temperament as her search to older brothers Henry and William. 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.399 Being a Victorian woman, she had no place to put that, 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:54.000 and she turned it into She was a mattering project 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.240 was an invalidist. She was an invalid. She was a 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:02.240 lifelong invalid. When she finally developed cancer at age I 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.800 think was forty two, died at forty four, she was grateful, 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:10.680 but at least she had a diagnosable illness. 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.440 I mean, you know, she was suffering from severe depression. 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.600 And so to me, this family, the James family, it's 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:22.480 almost like an experiment and to see what happens when 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:27.920 a person, given their temperament isn't, for whatever reason, isn't 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:29.920 given the means to. 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:30.720 Realize what. 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:34.080 They're mattering instinct demands of. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.000 It's very hard to be a heroics driver, but it's so. 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:41.440 Much harder to be going to be a heroics driver, 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:43.960 not allowed to be one for whatever reason. 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.399 So this illuminates the connection between mattering and mental health. 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:53.280 Let's move to Scott Joplin. What does that story tell us, Yes, it's. 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:58.800 Not Joplin, who was known as King Ragtime, and I 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.879 don't know if you know his music, ly wonderful he 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:04.760 has it became he was forgotten for a long time. 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:08.439 And then this was in the seventies with what was that. 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:14.040 Movie That's Staying Right and that that's that music is 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.440 played and he was buried in a pauper's grave, and 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:20.679 after that, you know, he was dug up and he 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:26.240 was I think he was given a posthumous polar surprise 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.359 for not for his Ragti music. 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:35.960 He didn't take that so very seriously. He wanted to 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.000 be a classical musician. 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.360 And he did compose classical pieces. 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:46.840 He composed two operas, one of which was lost and 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:51.760 the other Tree Minitia, which has been in some sense 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.000 found not with the full orchestration that he had provided, 0:22:55.920 --> 0:23:01.240 but musicians have provided the orchestration. I think marvelous. He 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:06.520 tried to do something extraordinity. His mattering project was to 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:10.399 bring the Black American experience. 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:13.040 Into music and to try to create the. 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:18.560 Highest forms of music from the African American experience. 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:22.480 And it was in Congress it was considered ridiculous. He 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.600 got He poured. 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:29.920 Everything into this mattering project, kept perfecting it, could not 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:35.360 get anybody to perform it. The idea of opera using 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:41.560 the grand forms of opera from classical music, to speak 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:45.280 of the African American experience in the United States post 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:51.400 Civil War during reconstruction was just considered preposterous. Poured everything 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:55.640 into it. As I said, died of pauper. He could 0:23:55.680 --> 0:24:01.879 have just kept creating his ragtime pieces, could have tried 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:06.119 to create more popular forms of music, but to show 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:09.919 the African American experience in its most glorious setting. This 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:11.200 was his mattering project. 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.760 So tell us about the mattering project of your of 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:18.200 the neo Nazi skinhead that you met. 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:25.040 So, yeah, I'm very interested in where the mannering instinct 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:29.840 is really not being realized and many people are driven 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:37.159 to quite horrible ideological extremes. This is very rich pickings 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:44.119 for ideologies to go amongst those who are wanting to 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:48.520 feel that they don't matter. And I really wanted. 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:56.240 To talk to an inceel involuntary selibates, and I spent 0:24:56.359 --> 0:25:02.040 a lot of time online reading their message boards. 0:25:01.560 --> 0:25:07.320 And the extreme things they say, and the resentment is 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:10.800 just boiling up because they feel that they don't matter, 0:25:10.880 --> 0:25:14.399 They're not getting what they feel they need, and they 0:25:14.400 --> 0:25:18.520 blame it on those from whom they want this young women. 0:25:19.440 --> 0:25:24.920 And I was also reading about neo Nazis and I 0:25:25.000 --> 0:25:28.639 really really wanted to get to know one. Most of 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:31.399 them didn't answer me when I wrote to them, but 0:25:31.520 --> 0:25:36.000 there was this one who answered me. He is an 0:25:36.000 --> 0:25:42.159 ex Nazi skinhead. He grew up under terrible circumstances and 0:25:42.240 --> 0:25:48.520 the really mean streets of Philadelphia, horrific family life. 0:25:49.440 --> 0:25:54.040 His mother was a drug addict, his stepfather was a 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:59.160 brutal ex Navy man who would eat this young man, 0:25:59.240 --> 0:26:02.240 and much so that sometimes on the way home from school, 0:26:02.280 --> 0:26:04.080 he would try to get hit by a car. 0:26:04.880 --> 0:26:12.800 And during one summer he met some neo Nazi skinheads 0:26:13.480 --> 0:26:16.600 and they were very impressed with him because he actually 0:26:16.920 --> 0:26:19.479 he actually knew that the enemy had gone to school 0:26:19.520 --> 0:26:24.199 with black kids and as they had into you know, 0:26:24.280 --> 0:26:30.520 he was a street warrior in Philadelphia. And then they 0:26:30.560 --> 0:26:33.399 told him because he really felt like he didn't matter, 0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:38.000 they really puffed him out, they flattered him, and they 0:26:38.040 --> 0:26:43.359 told him, look in the mirror, you are a white male, 0:26:44.440 --> 0:26:51.879 heterosexual American. You matter more than all these others. They 0:26:51.920 --> 0:26:57.159 are stealing You're mattering. And this is very typical of 0:26:57.280 --> 0:27:02.080 certain spheres of the mattering man to think of mannering 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:06.520 as zero sum to the extent that others matter, they're 0:27:06.560 --> 0:27:10.399 taking away pieces of the pie from you. That is 0:27:10.440 --> 0:27:13.520 how he was telling his story in terms of the mattering, 0:27:13.560 --> 0:27:17.000 of feeling that he mattered, feeling that he was powerful, 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:20.560 feeling that he had to make to punish those who 0:27:20.560 --> 0:27:25.840 were stealing mattering from him. It is very typical of 0:27:25.960 --> 0:27:31.080 certain areas problematic, troubling and troubled areas of the mattering 0:27:31.160 --> 0:27:36.240 that that people feel that others are stealing mattering from 0:27:36.240 --> 0:27:38.399 them and there's not enough mattering to go around. I 0:27:38.400 --> 0:27:41.640 think that's one of the big messages of the Book 0:27:41.920 --> 0:27:45.840 of ways that we could try to change things so 0:27:45.880 --> 0:27:49.159 that people would feel that there is enough mattering to 0:27:49.240 --> 0:27:52.760 go around, that the extent that any of us matter, 0:27:52.920 --> 0:27:55.440 we all matter to that same extent. I think that's 0:27:55.480 --> 0:28:00.320 the basics of ethics. He's an example of, yeah, trying 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:05.479 to realize this deep motivation, how very wrong things can go, 0:28:05.680 --> 0:28:11.280 and he fortunately found much more creative, life fulfilling ways 0:28:11.640 --> 0:28:14.600 of meeting his instinct, which is why he was willing 0:28:14.640 --> 0:28:15.159 to talk to me. 0:28:31.760 --> 0:28:36.560 So, how do you see distorted or threatened mattering playing 0:28:36.600 --> 0:28:39.040 out in our politics or culture currently? 0:28:39.400 --> 0:28:44.000 The ways that we choose to try to realize our 0:28:44.040 --> 0:28:52.960 mattering instinct with it's religiously spiritually achievement, competition, socializing. It's 0:28:53.000 --> 0:28:58.320 so fraught for us, it's so fraught with our emotions. 0:28:58.360 --> 0:29:00.720 We're staking our lives lives on this. 0:29:01.560 --> 0:29:03.880 Uh, this is the way that we try to prove 0:29:03.960 --> 0:29:06.600