Rebecca Goldstein on Why Humans Need to Matter

I don't understand it as synonymous with making a mark in the world or these sort of grandiose plans. I think it's something much broader and it takes in many different types of people. Not everybody wants to make a mark in the world, but everybody wants to feel that they have somehow earned all the attention that they they paid to themselves and that they have to pay to themselves and they're they're committed to their own life. And now the good fight. with Yasha Monk.

What does it mean to matter? And why are human beings so obsessed with mattering in the first place? Is this a good thing about humanity? Is this what allows us to write rate novels and create a functioning economy and make the world more and more affluent from generation to generation? Or is this at the root

of some of the biggest human catastrophes, of lives misspent in the mistaken belief that you're some kind of genius, and perhaps even of wars and forms of human conflict. Well, my guest today is Rebecca Neuberger-Goldstein. And Rebecca is the acclaimed author of many books, including Plato at the Google Plugs. She is the winner of the MacArthur Award, of the Guggenheim Award, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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