Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 0:00 When I think about certain of just the truisms that we take, that we accept that certain things are better than others, that knowledge is better than ignorance, that clarity is better than confusion, that compassion is better than cruelty, that flourishing is better than suffering, that beauty is better than ugliness. These are just like truisms. Kurt Nelson 0:24 We agree those are truisms. They are the fundamental elements of what makes us human. They are the connective tissues between our overwhelming modern life and our deepest genetic selves. Tim Houlihan 0:38 Yeah, truisms. You know, these are the things that we don't question because they're pretty much universally agreed upon, like these are the things that we just know, not because we just believe in them, but because they articulate a broad coalition of facts about our humanity. That's what truisms are. Kurt Nelson 0:57 Yeah, so they're not just these obvious ideas or preferences that we express, right? I think that is really key. That's like they're not just like knowledge over ignorance or compassion over cruel cruelty, right? They're clues, they're clues to something deeper. Welcome to Behavioral Grooves. I'm Kurt Nelson, Tim Houlihan 1:23 and I'm Tim Houlihan. And today we're joined by philosopher and author Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein, who takes us on a journey into what she calls the mattering instinct. Kurt Nelson 1:34 It's this idea that at our core we are creatures of matter who long to matter, and that longing is powerful, and it's not just a nice philosophical idea, it's a driving force behind much of what we do in our everyday actions, activities, all of that kind of stuff, and we have seen this come up with other contemporary authors, such as Zach Mercurio, in episode 484 back from June of 2025 Tim Houlihan 2:02 Yeah, we also talked about it with researchers, such as Ari Kugelanski, in episode 372 from September of 2023 Now, Ari's research described the psychological effects of the need to strive, the need to matter, no matter what your culture that you live in. It's really a central component of our goals and our relationships and our ambitions, even our conflicts, they can be understood in what Rebecca calls mattering projects, and these projects are ways that we try to justify ourselves in our own eyes, Kurt Nelson 2:36 and here is where, at least, I think it gets really interesting. It's the one kind of big groove idea that I think we want you to take away from this conversation today, is that not all mattering projects are created equal, not all of them, they're some help you create clarity, they give you compassion, they help you flourish, the thing that we heard in that opening quote, Tim Houlihan 3:03 absolutely, and the others. Well, there, there are mattering projects that can create confusion and cruelty, or even destruction. And this is why Rebecca brings in this surprising connection to physics in our discussion, entropy, that, and this is the idea that everything naturally drifts towards disorder unless we actively push back and try to maintain order. Kurt Nelson 3:27 Yeah, listeners, it'll be fascinating to get your take on the physics of this. It was cool, I thought that was cool. So, the question actually becomes, are our lives devolving into disorder, or are we actively and purposely creating something more ordered, more meaningful, and that's what we explore in this conversation. What does it mean to matter? How do we choose our mattering projects, and how those choices then shape not just our lives, but the entire world around us. Tim Houlihan 4:05 So, we hope that you'll sit back and relax with a generous cup of mattering tea. Kurt Nelson 4:10 Let's Speaker 1 4:10 enjoy Tim Houlihan 4:11 our conversation with Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein. Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein. Welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 4:25 It's a pleasure to be here. Tim Houlihan 4:27 We're excited to talk to you about your new book, and let's start with the speed round, because that's what we do. It's infamous here on Behavioral Grooves. So, first question, would you prefer to have dinner with your favorite musician or your favorite actor? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 4:41 Oh, musician, Kurt Nelson 4:42 I just endeared yourself to Tim. Tim Houlihan 4:48 Yeah, exactly. Kurt Nelson 4:50 Well, I'm sure Tim will have some questions about that later on. Okay, Rebecca. Second of our speed round questions: Are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 5:00 I am a coffee drinker. Kurt Nelson 5:06 Yes, yes. All right, Tim is not. I am so we have a competition going, and I am, I am winning so far. Do you, are you a coffee kind of sewer, or does it, any kind of coffee, or does that feel very Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 5:20 special? Dark roast, Kurt Nelson 5:21 dark roast. Okay, Tim Houlihan 5:23 sounds pretty specific around this. You've got your preferences. Okay. Third speed round question. This is, we're getting a little deeper into it now. Is the second law of thermodynamics just a law about physics, or can it be applied to other realms like psychology? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 5:48 It is so far-reaching, it is, it is the supreme law of physics, never to be falsified, and, Tim Houlihan 6:00 and for those who don't know, the second law of thermodynamics Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 6:05 is, it says that all physical systems are sliding from the order they need to maintain their what they do to disorder, and even the universe itself will end in heat Kurt Nelson 6:23 entropy. Right there, you go Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 6:28 entropy, which means literally the physicists who coined the phrase Rudolf Clausius. It literally means transformation from within, and our, Tim Houlihan 6:43 yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 6:43 to work constantly fighting from within. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 6:48 we're gonna talk about that as we get into this, but we're still in the speed round, so which are speed.. no, no, our speed rounds are never speedy, just we call it this, it's a misnomer by whatever means. All right. The last of our questions: Can our life be thought of as one big long mattering project? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 7:12 We, we change our mattering projects over life. Kurt Nelson 7:15 Okay, Tim Houlihan 7:16 and we are definitely going to come back to that. We are definitely going to talk about how mattering projects change and why they might change, but we are talking to Rebecca about her book, The Mattering Instinct, and I've just got to start with what is mattering, is that like meaning, but help our listeners understand Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 7:37 more basic than meaning, I think meaning is an ancillary term, I define it in terms of mattering, mattering, and we talk about what matters, we talk about who matters, and in all these cases, what we're saying is deserving of attention, and so those are two very interesting words, deserving and attention Tim Houlihan 8:02 kind of loaded, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 8:03 both really loaded, yeah, and we, I think, are creatures of matter who long to matter, and so, yes, I think that captures what we are, Tim Houlihan 8:16 yeah, and is it is it mattering about self or is it about mattering to ourselves, mattering to others. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 8:24 Yeah, I would say, you know, so basically what it means is deserving of attention, and deserving is to me, as a philosopher, as a trained philosopher, a particularly interesting word, because it's what philosophers call a normative term, it doesn't it entails ought, it's not just about is, but ought, and so what I call the mattering instinct, or the longing to matter, really involves a relationship with ourselves, there is mattering to others, but this is more fundamental and existential. It really is this kind of existential dimension to being human that makes being human so complicated and difficult, Tim Houlihan 9:18 and maybe so wonderful too, right? Speaker 1 9:19 And Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 9:20 so wonderful. Yes, but truly, you know, truly complicated that we take on. So we already spoke a little bit about entropy, and all living things are battling entropy. They're taking in energy and have to take in energy. We're not closed systems, and that energy is put to work to resist entropy for as long as we can, you know. Entropy always wins in the end, but what we have, we humans, is so we're doing this just, just like all things, and all. Creatures that have evolved the adaptation of attention are basically putting attention to work to in self mattering to to examine, get information from their environment, take in what they need, avoid what that will hinder their basic project, which is to survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. We now know, so we humans, with our incredibly complicated brains, the most complicated objects yet discovered in the universe have the capacity, we call it self-reflection, to step outside of ourselves to look at all the attention we have to devote to ourselves, you know. And when we're in the default network mode, when we're not paying attention to the environment, we're not being stimulated by that. What are we doing? We're fantasizing, we're mind wandering about ourselves, this is this is where it always comes back to ourselves. We can look at that and say, do I really deserve all this attention that I have to give myself in order to pursue my life. We have those moments where we can step outside. I think we all do it. Some of us do it repeatedly. Some of us do it in adolescence, and say, well, this is how I'm going to, you know, justify myself, but it makes us.. I've used that word, justify. It makes us justificatory. I'm glad I got that word. Well Tim Houlihan 11:36 done, well known. Yes, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 11:38 justificatory creatures. and value-seeking creatures, so it makes us already just this deserving of attention to ask it of yourself already kicks us up into a realm of great complexity and confusion and uncertainty. Kurt Nelson 11:57 There is, you have a great little image in the book, that just kind of talks about this, this idea of, you know, the component of that. I love that whole part, and I think there's an interesting piece that you're bringing up here, and you talk about this in the book. You suggest that the instinct of mattering is both deeply human and yet deeply divisive as well, and, and so, how is something that is so universal, as you said, we've evolved to have this sense of any kind of creature that has that sense of being out there, it's universal from that point. How does it lead to such conflict in that manner? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 12:37 Yeah, you know, it's the scientific story that I tell, which is so important to me, you know, making this up, I'm not just philosophizing, and I started in physics, so you Speaker 1 12:51 know, well, Kurt Nelson 12:51 that's your background, that's what I was gonna say, yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 12:54 so it brings us to this point, you know, of I can explain how we came to be these creatures who want to justify ourselves in our own eyes, and that's what we mean, you know, that meaning a meaningful life that we can somehow justify ourselves in our own lives. So I can tell you, you know, the scientific story up to then, but the laws of nature have made us these creatures who want to know, you know, I don't want to waste my life. I don't want to waste my short time here on earth. How do I, how do I live a life that matters, which is the fundamental, called the mother question of all mattering questions, and but it hasn't prepared us, these great brains of ours, to answer that question, of course, it's a question about values, about justification, and so it throws us up into something very complicated, and I think very estimable, I think there's a dignity to that, which I keep you reminding myself of during these hard times of such division, and you know, whatever side we're on, and the way we divided ourselves up, and decides many, many ways we've divided ourselves, and decides it's really important for me always to go through this, you know, as I'm reading the morning paper, I understand why these people are acting this way, you know. It's coming from this deep existential longing that I share with them. I see the humanists and human humanity in them, and it's hard to be human, you know. It's so.. how does it do it, you know? Well, basically, yeah, we've been kicked up into this realm of values without, without knowing how to navigate ourselves within it, and it's, and it's hard, and so I do feel that, but we stake our lives on this if we don't find a way, I call, you know, a kind of mattering project, if we don't find matter. Marine project to kick us into our future to give us the strength to resist entropy. We fall into depression. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 15:11 I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 15:12 Yeah, that is, you know, in fact, the US hotline for suicide prevention is www.youmatter.com I've spent a lot of time talking to people in deep clinical depression. What they say is, I don't matter, others do, I don't, I never will. And they could be people of tremendous talent. In fact, I go into the story of William James, you know, the great philosopher psychologist who was paralyzed in his early adulthood by depression, you know, could not get out of bed. It's almost a death within death, this kind of depression, and constantly thinking of thoughts of suicide, except he had too many talents, he didn't even know where to put it, he couldn't focus on what I call a mattering project, and so you know we need this in order to get on with life, and we have to make a leap into it. Well, this is what will be of value, and we stay, we're staking our lives on this. This is what's a value for me, you know, knowledge, you know, understanding for other people, other things, you know, many, many different things. It Kurt Nelson 16:33 reminds me, we had Ari Kruginski, and I don't know if you're familiar with him, psychologist, right, and he's written a lot about this quest for significance, striving for significance as kind of the the underlying motivator from a motivational perspective for most of our actions, and he's done that, and it's really interesting because his work was about people who have been radicalized, so again, what you were talking about, like they use, like going, what they're finding is the sense of significance in what they're doing, and to your point, I think you were talking like you see the humanity in them, even if they're on the opposite side of whatever political or divisiveness that you have, there's a part where you can understand, if you can understand that, you can see that human part of them is that Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 17:22 you can see it, you can sympathize, and often you can understand what went wrong at these extreme. So I read, I read through all the manifestos left behind by these random murderers, you know, acts of random violence, you know, often young people. It is all you know. I am a nobody. The Parkland, Parkland, Florida, suicide wasn't a suicide murderer, right? Tim Houlihan 17:59 Mass, mass murder, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 18:01 mass murder. I am nobody. You tune in, you will know my name. You, you know, and, oh, you know, the sand, the Santa Carber, a guy that manifests, you know, that they're, they feel like nothing insignificant. Something has gone so terribly wrong. One of the people I profiled, because you know, theory is theory, but no, you have to show how this really plays out in, in life, in stories, and, but one of the people who I, I profile was, is in, was an ex, he's an ex neo-Nazi skinhead, I really wanted to talk to a racist, right, but you know, surprise, surprise, all of them. So I was on Reddit, you know, reading all their stuff, surprise, surprise. I would get in touch with them. Nobody, none of them wanted to talk to Rob Beck on Goldstein. None of the neo-Nazis were interested in talking to me, so, but he was, because he is an ex-Neo, you know, neo-Nazi skinhead, he had had a tattoo of goebbels on his chest, all his knuckles, his knuckles spelled out skinhead, so that when he would beat people up, and he did terrible things, you know, he did, and he will tell you he did terrible things, but when he beat people up, they would know why they were beating up, being beaten up, people of color, and such. And then, of course, you know, the Jews were all behind it, and it was, it was all about what had gone so terribly wrong in his early life, terrible early life, a violent early life in which he felt yes, that he didn't matter at all. He's really smart guy, and, and charismatic, good looking. I mean, you know, he had a lot going, but you know, his family life was terrible, and school. Will give, and how terrible his family life, that was terrible. And he was walking home from school as a kid, trying to get hit by a car, comes in contact with some neo-Nazi skinheads, and they say, "You matter. They use that language, "You matter. Look in the mirror, "You are a white male heterosexual American. You matter more than all these other people who are stealing your mannering away from you, so this kind of zero sum notion of mattering very powerful when you had the kind of background that he has, Tim Houlihan 20:31 so that became his mattering project, right? This is because you brought up this term about the mattering project, and but it changed at some point. He left that mattering project and went on to another Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 20:46 one. Yeah, yeah, you mean his story is extraordinary. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 20:50 yeah. So this is one of the things that is so interesting about the complexity of the human condition that you, you write about, is that some people arc one mattering project across their whole life, but others might have multiples. What, what separates those two sea of longing? Yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 21:10 you know, very various, various things. I, too, I was born into a very religious family, saw my mattering in terms of that, you know, that's what it is to be a truly, I call such people transcenders, you know, it's the notion of a higher power, whether you call it God or something more spiritual and vague, but the mattering is out there in the universe, and you were created to serve it, you know, and that's how you see your life, and that has a great, great effect on one sense of mattering, you know, and I took a little nibble from, I remember this very well, Hostess, Hostess cream cake, Twinkies, Hostess, you look so delicious, you know. So, I did. You know, as a little girl, and I was at a friend's house, and I took a little nibble, and I felt the Lord of the hosts watching me eat this hostess Twinkie, and that Tim Houlihan 22:17 was wrong, and it was wrong. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 22:18 It was wrong, and I can't begin to tell you how, how scared I felt, and how, how much penance I did. I was extremely nice to my little sister, who I often was not nice to. I'm Tim Houlihan 22:33 sorry, Speaker 1 22:35 we Tim Houlihan 22:35 shouldn't laugh about being mean to the little sister, Kurt Nelson 22:39 being nice for having a nibble of a Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 22:43 Twinkie, how much I mattered, you know, that God himself, the creator of the universe, was watching and was not approving of little Rebecca, you know, so that's very, but I did, I came not to be a believer, you know, and I radically changed my whole sense of what my purpose is, what my mannering project is. So, I know what that feels like, and how difficult that is, you know. It's hard to be an immigrant on the geographical map, you know. You should have great, great empathy for people who have to do that, extremely hard to be an immigrant on what I call the mattering map, you know, to change your region of that, it's very, very difficult. So, yeah, so I came out of, and as my, as my ex-neo Nazi friend came out of it, by seeing to me it seemed wrong, I couldn't believe in it anymore, and that's he too. He could not believe in it anymore, because when he was put in the slammer at the age of 17 as a felon, his best buddies were two black guys, and and then when he came out, and nobody would employ an eighth grade dropout with a great big swastika on the side of his neck, except for this Jewish guy who told him that he was smart and that he mattered. He had to give up his last hatred, and, and so I mean, it was really, really hard for him, you know, when he came out of the at a prison, he was no longer anti-black, but he still hated the Jews. And then I'm not gonna say how the story ends, because Kurt Nelson 24:32 it Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 24:34 is really amazing story, and he is.. I talked to people, you know. Well, it was 40 years ago that I came started thinking about this mattering, and came up with the idea of the mattering map, and I just been talking to people ever since, because it's the best, best conversation starters. You know, what I see, your mattering project.. when you explain what.. what.. what you mean by. This people understand it, which tells me, you know, that we're all deep down, we're thinking about this, Tim Houlihan 25:07 and I just have to say, Kurt, you've got to, you've got a great question coming up, I'm sure, but I just have to say, Rebecca, I am going to be using this as a conversation starter, because I so dig the whole philosophical side, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 25:18 Kurt Tim Houlihan 25:18 is not going to be a an Kurt Nelson 25:24 overstatement. There Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 25:28 was, was I was waiting for a friend in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel. Guy comes up, this years and years ago, guy comes up, and he's, uh, he's pestering me, he's trying to pick me up, you know. So I start talking to him about mattering and his mattering project, and you know, it turns out this was his mattering project. He picked up women, he was a pickup artist. Tim Houlihan 25:56 That's an interesting mattering project. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 25:58 Yeah, it was. So he had his statistics, he had his heroes. He told me the books to read about it, and you know there are books about it. How to pick up women, and you know, and it's even.. it's the, yeah, the Mattering Project is very, very complicated. There are so the amount of creativity that our species has lavished on this longing to matter is astounding. The creativity is amazing. Good, you know, good ones and bad ones, and yeah, you know, and one of the things I try to do is come up with some kind of criteria to judge what are the good ones or what are the bad ones. Kurt Nelson 26:42 Hey. Groovers, we want to take a moment away from our conversation to thank you for listening to Behavioral Grooves. If you enjoy the conversations we're having and want to help us keep the groove going, here are a few simple ways that you can support the show. First Tim Houlihan 26:56 off, subscribing to our Substack is a great way to stay connected with us between episodes. The weekly newsletter provides you with cool insights that are beyond the episodes, and they get delivered straight to your inbox. Kurt Nelson 27:08 And if you haven't already, leaving a review or a rating of the podcast on a platform like Apple or Spotify or YouTube helps other curious minds discover us. And there's two great things about that: one, it gives us a boost, and two, it costs nothing, Tim Houlihan 27:24 and it only takes a second, but it makes a huge difference for us. Plus, we love hearing from you, so don't be shy, leave us a review, or give us a quick thumbs up. We're coming up on 500 episodes, and we're doing this because we love the conversations we have with our guests. Yeah, we also want to do it because we love bringing you insightful behavior-changing content every week, and we hope that some of those insights will help you find your groove. Speaker 1 27:53 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 27:53 well, you, you mentioned this mattering map, and so, at the, you know, you in the, in the book, at the very beginning, you have a visual for islands of this mattering map, and you talk about the different types of people you want to explain to our listeners, just a little bit, kind of define that, and then we can get into maybe a little bit of the different different islands that you have, and yes, again, good and bad of those, yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 28:18 yeah, so yeah, I say that, you know, mattering map is so complicated, so many regions, the stories I've heard amazing, but I began to think, you know, in the scientific way, are there some patterns here? Are there general strategies that are being used? And it seemed to me that there were four. I've been constantly testing this, you know, and it's an empirical hypothesis open to falsification. Here's what I've come up with. So the first are the transcenders, what I call the transcestors. I already spoke a little bit about that, and that is, you know, a very, yeah, the Mandarin is there's a trans empirical being who created the universe and the laws of nature without and the moral order within and in our our Mandarin project is to figure out what that transcendent being has for us, what our purpose is, and to serve it, and this is, as I imagine, this I was very, very strong. It itself can be, don't have to tell anybody, very divisive, because we've come up with very different ideas of what that meaning wants, right, the religious wars that have taken place and that continue to take place, and the certainty with which people avow this is what it is to matter, and without this, people don't matter, maybe they're even less than human, so it can. Be very, very powerful, but it certainly it delivers, and I can attest to this personally, such a strong sense of mattering, a kind of cosmic mattering that you little you have a role to play in the narrative of eternity, or you wouldn't be here. It doesn't get any big short of lunacy, I should say, bigger than that, sort of thinking that you are somehow God, or whatever, you know, this is a big, so it's big, and it's no surprise that it has the, you know, it's the tenacity, the stickiness, the stickiness, you know, and as I say, that for everything there are creative ways of realizing the strategy and destructive ways, and that's as true for transcenders as for anybody else. I'm not putting down transcenders. Most of the people I've spoken to, when I say mattering, they immediately complete my phrase by mattering to others. They mattering means mattering to others, and we all need to matter to others. We do. We're a gregarious species evolved from gregarious species, and that's what it means to be gregarious, and we have to have others in our lives to whom we matter, whether we deserve it or not. I call those people my friends, my husband, my family, you know, hopefully my colleagues, you know, but it is socializers there. There are two different kinds that I've, that I've, I've distinguished socialized. Some socializers, I call them intimate socializers, those people who are, they need to have in their lives by reason of, you know, being a gregarious creature, that's those are the people to whom they need to matter for their mattering instinct to be satisfied. So many mothers that I spoke to, it's all about their children raising their children to be flourishing, and so yeah, I've spoken, I've spoken to romantics. It's the love, the great passion, the great love affair. Often they're serial romantics, keep going from one to the next, because it's hard to maintain that. Tim Houlihan 32:34 Right, right, it's not enough. One isn't enough. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 32:36 Yes, Kurt Nelson 32:38 it's the pickup artist. There you go. Yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 32:40 there you go, and but then I'm very, very interested in, and I, and they're socialized issues too, those who try to convince themselves, and it's always convincing yourself that you matter, it's always that's the person you're trying to convince yourself, but you know it could be by means of your relationship with others, but there are those who are trying to convince themselves their mannering projects involve mannering to a bunch of strangers. What do we call that? Fame, that's what it is to be famous. You matter to a bunch of strangers, you know that they are paying you tons of attention, what you have for breakfast, whether you have six toes, I mean, just every crazy thing, and, and if they are paying, so I mean, I well understand it, that why that would answer to one's mattering instinct, if they're paying, if they find you so deserving of attention, surely you are deserving of attention, surely, which Tim Houlihan 33:40 is why we started the podcast, just, you know, we knew there'd be instant fame, Kurt Nelson 33:47 it Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 33:52 didn't work, so, and for some people it really does work out well, so one of my favorite stories was I read about it. I didn't speak to the actor Kevin Bacon, and he was getting sick of being swamped by strangers coming over all the time. So he put on a prosthetic nose and eyeglasses and a wig, and he went to a mall in LA, and then he was being interviewed, Tim Houlihan 34:19 and he wasn't, he wasn't picked out, I mean, just, Speaker 1 34:21 just, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 34:22 he walked, it was able, no Tim Houlihan 34:23 one, no one recognized him, he had to wait in line, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 34:28 he said nobody came over to say how much they loved me, I had to wait in line for a fucking cup of coffee, it was terrible, Tim Houlihan 34:39 right, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 34:41 I'll give the prosthetic nose for some people, yeah, it works, but for many people it, it doesn't, it because it's very unstable, you know, the public is very unstable, and, and you know, and who was the guy who was just, I mean, yeah, no, they often end in a bad way. Drug addiction, all this sort of thing. Who was it? The guy from Friends, who you know, terrible Kurt Nelson 35:06 Matthew Perry, Matthew Perry. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 35:08 Yeah, yeah, you know, and there are lots of stories of this, you know. You were high on fame, and then you need it, and it's gone. And so, but for some people it works, you know. So we're so different. The diversity here is amazing. Okay, so these various kinds of socializers, there are different kinds. Cults are also when they're mattering to a cult leader, but then there are heroic strivers, and heroic strivers, it's really not mattering to others, that's not the game, really. It's not mattering to God, it's not marrying to other people. They have certain standards of excellence in mind, it could be intellectual, artistic, athletic, ethical, and they need to come closer to these standards or make progress, you know, with these - Speaker 1 35:56 these are Tim Houlihan 35:56 really, really high standards that they're striving Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 35:58 to can be, it can be, I know, heroic strivers who I just.. I just want to finish the marathon. I don't want to be the last one mannering project, but what I have found is the higher the talent, the higher the standards you have to be reaching, and so, for those of a very high talent and passion, it's reaching very, very high, and, but, but, no, there are, there are those, you know, I want to, I want to perfect the art of French cooking, it's, it's, I don't have to be the innovator, I just want to perfect this, and it's a kind of esthetic, you know, esthetic, or I'm raising a beautiful garden. It's, it can be small, it can be big, heroic strivers. When the challenge is great, then we tend to know of these people, but that's not, you know, so they might reach fame, but, but that's that's not the end game, Speaker 1 37:06 right. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 37:06 And then there are the competitors, and they're the ones I least understand. I had to read a tremendous amount on the psychology of competitors, because I, and then I took some tests, and I seem not to be at all competitive. It makes me competition makes me want to curl up and die. Out of my mattering project, actually, so, but they are the people who think of mattering in zero sum terms. To the extent that others matter, they're getting, they're taking something away, and so it could be individual, and it may be just in their field, in their, Tim Houlihan 37:48 yeah, just, just to clarify, it's about me mattering, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 37:51 yeah, Tim Houlihan 37:52 you mattering less than me, right? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 37:55 If you matter as much, or God forbid, more, yeah, it hurts. It hurts. It's a pain, you know. And, and the neo-Nazi that I spoke about before, it wasn't on an individual level, there it was on a group level. My group matters more to the extent, you know, and you could have, you could see there are many studies about this, but for example, racist jokes went up when the Obamas were occupying the White House. You know that this kind of to see people who you thought you could look down on now raised to such a level had a very bad effect on certain segments of the society who really base their mannering on before belonging to a superior group, and it's not just, you know, so this can lead to racism, sexism, classism, also elitism, you know, Speaker 1 39:00 you Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 39:00 know, I have met scientists who, when you probe them, feel scientists matter more than other people. They really matter, Speaker 1 39:07 yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 39:08 philosophers who think philosophers matter more than other people. You know, so it's not, it's not, yeah, it's not just great, it's interesting. You know that my group matters more, and so, though, so that's the kind of those basically are the four strategies that, so far, you know, I've been thinking about it for over 40 years, trying always to be open to falsification. I haven't yet found any reason to doubt these four strategies, but I'm open. Speaker 1 39:38 I think it's Tim Houlihan 39:38 amazing that you started thinking about this when you were five years old, I think that that's Kurt Nelson 39:44 actually, I want to dig in, because you talked about how the, like, the racist jokes and other things happened when Obama's came in, and there's something there, I think, that if you peel away some of the layers when you're, you're looking. At that, it was like I was okay, because I could hold this mindset that I am above, and there's no evidence out there at this point that points to that, otherwise, at least that I don't have to have it in my face every day, right? I mean, there's there's lots of evidence around there, but we have a great deal of ability as a human being to kind of look away from things that we don't like and look at things that that we do, and is that I see that happening even more so all of a sudden now I have to become more engaged in this and I need to feel like that that instinct is to go out and make sure that I am putting those people in their right place, and in that manner, is that, is am I getting that correct? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 40:51 Exactly right, that, that you know, when the whole mattering scheme has been turned topsy-turvy, and you know it's wrong, right? That can become your mattering project, you know. To put it right, that's what happened, you know, with my friend, you know, the neo-Nazi. You know, oh, these people, I feel terrible because these people are making me feel terrible, and I have to put it to right. And he is such a smart guy, he became such a brilliant organizer, and he had a, he had a radio show, he's, he's really creative, right, but he, that became his mannering project, and that, that finally he felt like he mattered. Speaker 1 41:37 Yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 41:38 so, yes, yes, and I have you know, I did a lot of reading about incels, you know, I got on their Reddit, in the sense of not mattering, my, you know, is it's profound, you know, they feel, and these women, these women, don't they realize that they are supposed to love me and be available to me, you know, and that I am the man, you know, you know this whole Tim Houlihan 42:04 it matters to them, it Speaker 1 42:05 that that's their mattering Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 42:07 that matters to them. I don't know, there's this wonderful new documentary inside the manosphere I recommend very much, just came out, and this guy, you know, he is interviewing, you know, these influencers, yeah, and, and the who are really making money off of other people's feeling that they don't matter. He knows how to reach them. There are certain demagogues who know how to reach them, you know. This is if you know how to reach the people who are aching, who are existentially aching, this is a way of either making a lot of money, coming famous, or gaining political power. So, it is, it's intense, and so, if you know how to harness it, yeah, Tim Houlihan 42:59 so we've been talking about mattering in relationship to the human condition, to the human species, to Homo sapiens. Speaker 1 43:08 Yeah, Tim Houlihan 43:09 do you think AI will ever matter? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 43:11 Yeah, I certainly hope not. I mean, it matters. Tim Houlihan 43:15 It matters that it doesn't matter, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 43:18 but Kurt Nelson 43:19 AI itself, yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 43:20 AI mattering to itself. If AI starts asking, why pay all this? I mean, all this attention to myself, do I really deserve it? And what we will have are non-carbon-based, silicon-based humans, that is, who will have rights, obligations, and our whole ethics, you know, we'll have to expand to take them in. You know, they are.. I'm thinking so much about AI now. Who is it, right? It's.. I think I froze. If I froze, Kurt Nelson 43:53 we can hear you. So, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 43:55 yeah, yeah. So, it's.. and I use.. I use it. It's very, very intelligent, you know. It's definitely intelligent AI, you know. For how we define intelligence, AI is intelligent, but it is, you know, still we're setting the goals. We ask the questions. It, you know, this word agency and agent and agentic is being used very much in Silicon Valley. I think it's a marketing ploy, but it's they're not really agents, they, the goals are ours, it's not, they're not setting their own goals, but if you know we allow it to develop, if it can even be done, I have my doubts about it, but if we could develop it to such an extent that we are completely beside the point. We are dispensable, and it's, you know, we're just put out to pasture to amuse ourselves. This will be terrible for us, so we should stop it before it happens. We should not allow this to happen. Kurt Nelson 44:59 Oh. That, so many, so many movies that kind of point this way, that I don't understand why we're not like following what the science writers have written, and books and different pieces. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 45:11 We don't have to go where the technology, Tim Houlihan 45:15 right? Right. We didn't choose. Kurt Nelson 45:17 Well, this is.. I'm sorry to interrupt. You had written before about reversible and irreversible components, you know, the billiard ball, which, if you viewed a billiard ball hitting another one, if you reverse that film, it would make perfect sense, but an egg dropping and smashing on the ground, if you saw that film reversed and going up, that doesn't, you know, the splattering going back to our entropy and second, you know, the second, yeah, yeah, I think there's, there's something there that once that genie is out of the bottle, it is an irreversible component to a certain degree. At that point, that was just a commentary, I apologize on that. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 45:56 Good, Kurt Nelson 45:59 I do want to ask you, because before we began, you know, one of the things that you talked about before we started recording was like you ended on ethics in the book, and for you that was very important. Can you tell us a little bit why kind of the arc of the book went and you ended with this ethical component? Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 46:19 Yeah, well, because I think that this core existential, you know, longing we have to justify ourselves in our own eyes. I think there's something very estimable about it. I think when people talk about the intrinsic dignity of being human, which was always to me too squishy a term, I couldn't get my little analytic mind around it, but now I think this is what it's about, you know, that we, this is this is something, it's a real big burden that we take on for ourselves, and to try to justify ourselves and to seek the values that will help us justify ourselves in our own minds. I mean, it might be terrible values, it may be, you know, to empower others. If my monitoring project is that in order to feel that I matter, I may have to invade Poland tomorrow, I must be stopped. So, you know, so it brings out, I would say the best and the worst of us, because that's what it is to be human. What is the best and the worst of us? You know, it can I give some kind of maybe crude criterion to, to divide it, to do justice to our innate feeling that some ways are very bad and some ways are good, and there's so many ways to be good, but there are ways for your mattering project to be bad, and again I start with entropy, and how fundamental that is, and I end with entropy when I with ethics, that all of life is this resistance against entropy. You know that that's what life is, and that's what you know it's hard just to stay alive, and you know entropy is going to get us, but perhaps the best thing to judge our mattering projects is, are we on the side of entropy? Are we hastening disorder, maybe disorder in other people's lives, maybe disorder in in the life of the planet as a whole, are we, are we, yeah, are we on the side of entropy? Is there more entropy because of the way we're choosing to live our life, or is our mannering projects counter entropic? Are we do Is it on the side of order, as opposed to disorder? And when I think about certain of just the truisms that we take, you know, that we accept that certain things are better than others, that knowledge is better than ignorance, that clarity is better than confusion, that compassion is better than cruelty, that flourishing is better than suffering, that beauty is better than ugliness. These are just like truisms. They are so, and when I think about the things that are better, they require order, you know. So, when knowledge, knowledge is ordered, ignorance is disordered, clarity is ordered, confusion is disordered. That there's a certain sense, and we respond to that because I think we're receptive to that, because our whole battle is against entropy to keep this order. For as long as we possibly can, you know, until entropy gets us at the end, and so in general this is the maybe crude way I have of trying to capture these ethical distinctions, but it's I think we can all recognize that whether we're Tris, you know, whether we're religious or secularists, whether we're scientists or humanists, whether you are, you know, that whether we have very small little mattering projects or very large. I need to change the world. Yeah, and so when I look at certain other people who are most powerful right now in society, who seem to be gobbling up all the mattering, so there's very little left for the rest of us, the very rich, the very powerful, the very famous, often lodged in the same people. I ask, are you on the side of entropy? Are you counterentropic? Many of them are on the side of entropy. There is more disorder because of the way they're carrying out their lives, and I would say they are not living good lives, you know. They may seem to matter a lot in my eyes. They don't matter, they're doing it all wrong. Yeah, as this.. I don't know if you can see the guy behind me. No, I'm blind. Tim Houlihan 51:18 No, no, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 51:19 it's. it's my statue, Socrates, with succulents growing out of his head, but you know, when he said the unexamined life is not worth living, what was to these very powerful, imperious power, Athens was the imperialist power of its saying, rethink it, guys. You know, you may be doing it all wrong, and even, you know, we are dominating the world, and we are so superior, but you may be doing it all wrong. You may be getting your life all wrong. And I guess I'm just repeating that once again. Tim Houlihan 51:59 That's okay. That we need, we need to hear that message, especially, especially right now in the world, so that we don't end on a bleak note. You do a fantastic job of bringing up great musicians, you talk about Bach and Joan Baez and Christina Aguilera and Glenn Kurtz and Scott Joplin, and you got all these fantastic stories to tell, and not gonna give all those away, because you should read about them. I wanna encourage our readers to actually read about them, but here's the question, Rebecca, if you happen to be stuck on a desert island for a year and you had a listening device that could only take two artists on that listening device. Now you get their whole catalog, everything that they've ever recorded, but only two artists. Which two artists would you choose to take along with you? Speaker 1 52:55 God, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 52:55 that's tough. So I could hear everything out there. Huh? Speaker 1 52:59 Yes, yeah, Kurt Nelson 53:01 everything they've ever worked on, so Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 53:04 yeah. Well, the first hit would have to think I'm probably going to disappoint you, but it would, it would be Bach. Tim Houlihan 53:10 That's not a disappointment at all, getting disappointment from Sebastian Bach, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 53:17 just because there's so much to listen to, there's just so much to hear. The richness is, you know, it's ever coming, and big Tim Houlihan 53:29 catalog, lot of variety, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 53:31 a lot of variety, and I mean, and every time I listen, I hear something new, and it's very. it pleases my mathematical mind. It sets off many, and I think the other one would be Leonard Cohen. Kurt Nelson 53:49 Oh, I love Leonard Cohen. Yeah, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 53:52 yeah, I would need.. I wouldn't want to be.. I would.. I would need to feel, be in touch with what I feel is the best of humanity, you know what makes us human, what makes us human, you know, and what, and he gives that to me, he makes me, puts me in touch with the deep, the deep existential stuff in Tim Houlihan 54:21 such a beautiful way. Kurt Nelson 54:23 When you think about his, his lyrics, they're poems. I mean, they are poetry that examines our lives and how we do it. I mean, even going up to his last album, right, that he, you know, released right before he died, bringing blues in and different all those components, it was just, he's, it's an amazing, he's an amazing storyteller, poet, and putting that, then into music, and the variety of the music again is, is you have a wide, yes, wide variety, from kind of, you know, work that he did with Trent Reznor, and like, you know. Heavier stuff to like some bluesy to you know more, you know, acoustic folk, so Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 55:06 yeah, Kurt Nelson 55:06 all over the board, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 55:08 and you, and you, you actually brought up what is so important, that there are words there, you know, that there were also words, I mean, Bach is Bach, and yes, if the richness is everlasting and ever coming, but the words, you know, combined the poetry combined with the, and he was, you know, he was, he was poet, he set out to be a poet, and he wasn't making it as a poet, and he put the poetry to music and math, the impact, close second, Paul Simon, Tim Houlihan 55:38 fantastic list, just for the sake of full disclosure, let's not exclude box oratorios and masses. Speaker 1 55:46 He's, he's got some Tim Houlihan 55:48 words in there. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 55:49 Yeah, and you know, a few interesting is that, you know, he was a transcender, his music was in the service of his God, and you know, and he always ended with all to the glory of God, you know that you know that those were always his, except for the last one, because he died before he could finish it, but it is, you know, so you know, he, he was a transcender with a tremendous talent marked Tim Houlihan 56:17 over his entire career, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 56:19 arced over his entire career, so a good way to end is, you know, one of the things I would like other psychologists, I mean, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not trained to test people, you know, so I would love more information about how we end up, where we end up on the Mandarin Babbit, why are we transcenders? Why are we heroic strivers, socializers, competitors? You know that, and why? Why do we change sometimes over the course of our of our lives? But what I would like to end on is, you know, no matter what you're drawn to, there are really creative counter-entropic ways of ministering to it, and then there are destructive ways, you know, building more, and so one of my favorite, I have two favorite sayings from ancient sages, one is from my own tradition, the Jewish tradition, Hillel the Elder, first century AD sage. He said, "You know, if I'm not for myself, then who will be for me? And that's yeah, we have to matter to ourselves as our first responsibility to find a mattering project that serves us. That's our first responsibility. It continues, but if I'm only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, then when? And I think that that just captures, you know, I can put it in the terms of entropy, I can turn it into physics, but that statement is complete into itself, and the other one, which also sort of, you know, addresses this last point I wanted to make, that there are so many ways that we can minister counter-entropically and creatively to this longing. It comes from the Sufi master, Rumi. He says, let the beauty you love be what you do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel down and kiss the ground. That one makes me usually tear up and cry. You know, I find it so beautiful. You know, Tim Houlihan 58:36 roomy, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 58:37 leave it to roomy. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 58:39 that lyrical, lovely sense that just, just like, drives a stake through your heart at the same time you're going, this is fantastic. Speaker 1 58:48 Yeah, yeah. Tim Houlihan 58:49 Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein, thank you so much for being a guest today on Behavioral Grooves. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 58:53 Well, thank you, Tim and Kurt. What a pleasure to make contact with you, and I want to keep it for really meaningful. Thank you so much. Tim Houlihan 59:08 Thank you. Our pleasure. Kurt Nelson 59:17 Welcome to our grooves session, where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Rebecca. We have a free-flowing conversation, we hope, and we groove on whatever else comes into our brains that strive to matter. Tim Houlihan 59:33 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 59:34 I reversed it. I didn't have brains at the end. Did you see that? That was Tim Houlihan 59:39 that was mind blowing Kurt Nelson 59:41 on 500 plus episodes. I don't know if I've ever done that before. Tim Houlihan 59:46 Wow, so you're saying this was the first time, Kurt Nelson 59:49 the first time in people you are listening to a first on behavioral grooves, maybe not, maybe I've done it multiple times, and I just can't remember because my brain is that. Way these days, yeah. So, what did you think this was? She's a philosopher, and I know you love that. Bing, Tim Houlihan 1:00:09 bing, bing, bing. Yes, totally love that. Totally loved that. And, and I liked the map idea of sort of charting out this space of saying there's, you know, I mean, if you're going to have a point of view on it, as authors need to have to write the book, you can't just be wishy-washy, you got to create some things, and rather than having pillars or or foundational elements or something more structural or corporate, she chose these islands, Kurt Nelson 1:00:42 you like the Lord of the Rings map, that Tim Houlihan 1:00:45 Lord of the Rings Kurt Nelson 1:00:46 fantasy book front page map, and there's some coolness about that. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:00:51 yeah, and so, so I like that, and I like that I, I think our discussions with Zach Mercurio and Ari Kuklansky are really tying nicely with talking to Rebecca, and it's something - this whole mattering thing is something that I think we have undervalued. Kurt Nelson 1:01:13 I agree Tim Houlihan 1:01:15 that I haven't thought about it enough in my life until we started having these conversations with Ari and Zach and Rebecca, and the more that I reflect on it, the more I really believe that that mattering is integral to motivation and goal setting and all those kinds of things, and just on a personal basis, I really like it, Kurt Nelson 1:01:39 so we talk about the map. What island are you on on the map? Tim Houlihan 1:01:47 Oh, so Kurt Nelson 1:01:48 for people who don't, so we talk about this. We talked about this in the episode, right? There the transcenders, there's the socializers, there's the heroic strivers, and there's the competitors, and each of them have their own island, right? And so you said you've changed islands, and when we talked about this prior to getting, yeah, you said you've, you've, you've migrated islands over the course Tim Houlihan 1:02:13 of I've crossed the great sea of faith, and Kurt Nelson 1:02:18 straight of faith is that, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:02:21 because I used to be a transcender, I was so very deeply identifying myself and my mattering instincts, my mattering projects evolved and developed from my, my faith and religious, you know, upbringing. Kurt Nelson 1:02:39 That's fascinating, Tim Houlihan 1:02:41 yeah, and and I moved away from that to focus more on, like, you know, friends, family, that sort of thing, and at the same time I kind of straddled the socializer island with the heroic Strivers Island, which is more about, like, I'm, you know, striving to be intellectual and thoughtful, and Kurt Nelson 1:03:02 well, and artistic, like with your, with your music, and various different pieces of that. Tim Houlihan 1:03:06 How about you? Yeah, what are you? One island guy? Kurt Nelson 1:03:09 I think I'm mostly.. I live on an island, and I visit another. Tim Houlihan 1:03:14 How you do? Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:03:16 so I think I'm a heroic striver. I mean, it's the intellectual aspect that that that is what matters mostly to me, right, that ethical component of, like, let's find out what's truth here, but then I'll travel over and spend some time on the socializer island, because again, friends and family community are very important, and so I don't think there's a piece there that I would not necessarily say, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:03:53 you don't object to the socializer thing. Kurt Nelson 1:03:56 No, I don't think I've ever set foot on Transcenders Island, though, and I might have maybe once completed, you know, said landed on competitors island and totally turned around quickly and left. Tim Houlihan 1:04:09 Okay, interesting. So that's I think that answers an interesting question for me when I think about the overarching conversation, like it matters what you choose to matter about. I thought that that was a really great thing that Rebecca points out that there is a material difference between sort of being choosing a more heroic life versus a villainous life. There, right, that you can choose the kind of projects that are going to make you feel like you're mattering and give you the sort of respect and response in the world. Kurt Nelson 1:04:48 Okay, Tim Houlihan 1:04:48 and and the kind of choices that we make around that are important in not just how we show up but what the world is going to benefit from, so. Kurt Nelson 1:05:00 Will we be the hero or will we be the villain? Tim Houlihan 1:05:04 But exactly, Kurt Nelson 1:05:05 here's my question: Does anybody ever think they're the villain? Tim Houlihan 1:05:11 Oh, yeah, yeah, Hitler probably didn't think he was a villain, Kurt Nelson 1:05:15 right? I mean, there are so, so much of psychology points to even rapists and murderers who are in prison and have admitted to that the vast majority of them still consider themselves good people. There was, they rationalize a way that was things that you know were outside of my control, and I'm still a good person. Where everybody else would be like, "No, you're not. You made bad choices, and you've done that. And on a much lesser veil of looking at this, everyday people make choices all of the time that others are going, that is not a hero, that is a villain choice. Tim Houlihan 1:06:12 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:06:13 where my community might say no, this is a hero choice, and your community says no, that's a villain choice. That's a, that's a really interesting perspective. So, it does matter what mattering projects you undertake. Yeah, however, how they're perceived by others could be different from the way you perceive them. And this is where the intellectual part of me gets in, going, isn't there an objective truth to some degree, or is it all subjective? Is there the component, and again, what I'm tiptoeing around the political conversations that we're having in the United States right now, the the left versus the right, the megas versus the, you know, more rational sane people. The sorry folks, I know we shouldn't get there, but I do think that there is an element of saying, can we going all the way back to what Rebecca said at the very, when we, the quote we pulled at the very beginning of this episode, Tim Houlihan 1:07:26 yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:07:28 there are things that we can point to that we can say, yes, this is, we are doing comfort more than harm, we are doing, and I am misquoting Tim Houlihan 1:07:42 it, right? Right, but this, this lovely dichotomy that she set up, these, these two parallel paths, one being sort of more virtuous and one less virtuous, they are truths, not because, again, like, like the way that we said it in the introduction, the way we talked about that, these are truths, not because we just believe in them, but it's because we can actually point to these things having actual effects in the world. There are facts that these truths are based on accumulation of lots of facts that become truths, not we're not ascribing them as truths, because, oh, it just feels good, but there are objective facts that they're built upon. Kurt Nelson 1:08:26 Yeah, so let me.. I'm going to quote here. So we take, you know, that we accept that certain things are better than others, that knowledge is better than ignorance, that clarity is better than confusion, that compassion is better than cruelty, that flourishing is better than suffering, and that beauty is better than ugliness, that so can we objectively identify the mattering project, is are we adding to clarity over confusion, are we adding to compassion more than cruelty? Are we looking at flourishing more than suffering? Are we adding to that in our mattering project? Are we bringing beauty into the world versus ugliness? I think that's a key piece as we go through this, Tim Houlihan 1:09:20 and a challenge might be to loop back to your comment about about the way that we think about these things might rely or might change when we use a Jonathan Haidt lens of our moral foundations, Kurt Nelson 1:09:38 oh my gosh, Tim Houlihan 1:09:39 because the kinds of things that we value in it's not that everyone, everyone can universally agree that compassion is a good thing, but Who we have compassion for and who we and how we distribute that compassion might be different depending on your moral foundation. Kurt Nelson 1:09:59 Expand on that. Expand on some of Jonathan Heights work there and those moral foundations, and that, particularly that part. I think there's a key aspect of who are we caring about, and we talked about this actually a little bit in, in the response to the video that I had out in regards to the Tim Houlihan 1:10:21 Alex Freddy's murderer, Kurt Nelson 1:10:22 Alex Pretty's murderer, and the ice kind of response here, but go explain more about Jonathan. Tim Houlihan 1:10:27 So, if, if we use compassion as, as a fundamental truth that, that we universe, we believe that all humans universally agree that compassion is better than cruelty, yeah. Then we get into Jonathan Heights question about, well, what does that mean? And if it, when you ask that question of more conservative people, it, they say, well, I need to be compassionate to the people who are in my tribe, I need to be compassionate to my family first, and, and, and they take precedence, they, they rank higher than someone who is not in my family. Yeah, and animals are way out, even side the human thing. I don't even, I'm not even gonna be concerned about compassion for animals, because I've got all these layers of all these human rings that I would have to go through that are starting with my, my family, whereas people who tend to be more on the liberal side want to distribute compassion more evenly, Speaker 1 1:11:28 broadly, Tim Houlihan 1:11:29 more broadly, and say my, my next of kin shouldn't matter more, shouldn't I, shouldn't need to be more compassionate with my, my own children than I am with the person who lives next door or the person who lives in another country, Kurt Nelson 1:11:45 there's that component of locus of harm, where do people focus? So, again, from that cruelty, compassion, so in that response to the video that I had posted up, there was a person who talked about, but look at the bringing up examples where immigrants had harmed American citizens or other people. Yeah, and brought up a few cases, which there are a few cases. Tim Houlihan 1:12:18 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:12:19 and it was interesting, because as soon as I brought up the harm that was caused to the people that the immigration officers were grabbing and taking, and Freddie, who, Alex Preddy, who was murdered, Renee Good, who was murdered, there was, they deserved it, and so that locus of harm was on again different others, and so you could see where that divide happens, and it's very interesting, because there's a truth part to each of those, Tim Houlihan 1:12:59 yeah. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:13:03 but it's like you have to accept that there's harm and compassion that needs to be spread across that, so yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:13:12 it's a really interesting and complicated aspect, and I agree with Jonathan Haidt when I think the subtitle of his book, The Righteous Mind, where he writes about this, is it's a really, it's a good read recommended for every, any, everyone, but I think the subtitle is something along the lines of why smart people can disagree on things, Kurt Nelson 1:13:36 yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:13:36 and and it has to do with these moral foundations, and again, it's not that we disagree on compassion or cruelty, it's it's the way that we stack them up in terms of our general moral foundation. Kurt Nelson 1:13:50 Yeah, if we look at there's a set number of moral kind of universals which take precedence for us, and that determines how we view the world, and how we show up in the world, and to a certain degree in our own mattering projects, what we want that mattering to be. Tim Houlihan 1:14:13 Absolutely, yeah, we've, we've gone a long way down that rabbit hole. Kurt Nelson 1:14:17 Oh my god, I just talked philosophical for a bit. That was weird. Speaker 1 1:14:21 You did, you did, Kurt. You did it. Way to go. Holy Kurt Nelson 1:14:25 crap, what the.. Speaker 1 1:14:26 you did the Kurt Nelson 1:14:26 hell. Oh my god. All right. What else should we talk about? Rebecca's conversation.. Tim Houlihan 1:14:34 I think we've, we've waxed on a long time here, Kurt Nelson 1:14:38 but you Tim Houlihan 1:14:39 think we have to bring it back to mattering. Kurt Nelson 1:14:41 Yeah, let's bring it back to mattering. Tim Houlihan 1:14:43 Are we going to pursue the hero's journey or the villain's journey? At least in our own mind, at least, at least from the way that we're thinking about it. Try not to deceive ourselves, and let's try to pick virtuous mattering projects. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:14:59 so not. All mattering projects are equal, that some build order, others accelerate disorder. And again, going back to the entropy piece that Rebecca talked about so much. Tim Houlihan 1:15:12 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:15:12 are we are our actions are the way that we're showing up and making a difference in the world, helping to create order to build compassion, to you know, so love versus creating disorder in the world. Tim Houlihan 1:15:33 Absolutely, okay. Groovers, check out our Substack, check out our Behavioral Grooves community page on Facebook, we'd love for you to join that, engage us in a conversation. Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, because likes are our currency. Kurt Nelson 1:15:50 Oh God, not that again. Tim Houlihan 1:15:52 I'm gonna, I'm just gonna like, Kurt Nelson 1:15:54 I can't buy anything with our likes, Tim. It's not, it's, but it is, it's a mattering currency, Tim Houlihan 1:16:00 it matters Speaker 1 1:16:02 to Tim Houlihan 1:16:03 us. Yes, Kurt Nelson 1:16:03 there you go. It shows that we matter to you all. Right now, I'm more online with that. There you go. Tim Houlihan 1:16:11 And we hope that you can take these mattering ideas and build good mattering projects in your own life, so they can help you as you go out this week and find your groove, Unknown Speaker 1:16:23 you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai