340 | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on What Matters and Why It Matters

Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll. Some of you might know that back in 2012, I put together a small symposium in Stockbridge, Massachusetts called Moving Naturalism Forward. The idea being that naturalism is as opposed to theism. Naturalism being the view that the universe is just stuff, obeying laws of physics, that there's no extra supernatural deities or demigods or evil spirits or good spirits, pushing us around and affecting our lives or getting us guidance or anything like that. The reason why I wanted to have a symposium on Moving Naturalism Forward is that especially at that time, 2012, there was still a lot of public discussion about atheism versus religion. And the public discussion was, it took different forms, firm different directions, but a lot of it was, you know, the atheistic side, the naturalistic side, just explaining how bad religion was in various ways. And I was on that side, but I always felt that that was the easy part of the whole discussion to have. We needed to not only discuss why the world is naturalistic at heart, but all of the problems with naturalism, all of the not reasons to disbelieve it, but the unanswered questions that we really needed to address. Indeed, I now teach a philosophy course at Hopkins on philosophical naturalism, which every week we discuss a different question, puzzle issue that naturalism has to think about. So we got a lot of great people together there. You can look it up online if you want the full roster of participants. It was a high-powered group, including a number of former mindscape guests like Alex Rosenberg, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, who else? Simon Dedeo was there, David Puppel, a bunch of people whose names you would recognize, Jan 11. And one of the best, most important, I thought, participants is today's guest, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein was there. And the reason why Rebecca was so great in that particular environment, where we're just having casual conversations about deep and important ideas, is that she, as we'll mention in this podcast, sort of started out her college career wanting to be a physicist. Later realized that being a philosopher was an even better fit for what she cared about. And then even later than that, realized that she actually wanted to be a novelist, as well as someone who thought deeply about philosophy and physics and so forth. So through her career, Rebecca has gone back and forth writing about both philosophy and writing fiction. And at that meeting in 2012, what she was really interested in was mattering. That is to say, what does it mean to say that something matters to us, or even more importantly, that we matter in some broad sense. You can matter to other people. You can matter to ourselves. If you are not a naturalist, you might matter in God's eyes for that matter. And this is obviously one of those questions that on the one hand is very big and important. On the other hand is maybe almost too big to be tackled in a productive way. Like, mattering is just so central to how we live. You know, when we talk about what's important, we're talking about what matters. How is it possible to just write a single book that kind of codifies some issues like this? But I think that the point is that you can talk about, giganically overarching ideas that suffuse every aspect of our lives if you sort of pick an angle and, you know, have a lens to look at that. And so Rebecca's point is that the fact that we human beings conceptualize things in terms of mattering, in terms of what matters to us and how we matter to other people and things and ideas is part of what makes us specifically human. It's both what helps us in many ways. It provides purpose and meaning to our lives. And it hurts us in certain ways if we feel that we don't matter for one way, but also if we want other people's idea of what matters to line up with ours and to say it only our idea of what matters is what's important. So she's finally, you know, written it all down into a book that is about to come out called the mattering instinct, how what we have in common drives us and divides us. So this is a fun conversation in the sense that there's some like careful analysis of psychology and philosophy, but it's also something we can all relate to, right? It's not like talking about the Higgs boson, which I love talking about the Higgs boson, but we can easily put this kind of conversation in the context of our own individual lives and try to figure out how to make those lives matter in a better way to ourselves and to others. So let's go. Rebecca, Newburger Goldstein, welcome to the Mindscape podcast. And that's a pleasure to be here, Sean. So you've written a book about mattering. I know that this is something you've been thinking about a very long time. I didn't realize until I got the publicity materials for your book precisely how long you've been thinking about it. But let's, you know, ease our audience into it gently. Mattering almost sounds like too big a topic. Because isn't that cover everything? Like what should we be focusing on when we're thinking about that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. We're right. Yeah. And actually that was a big problem in writing the book. I think it should slide, you know, on our own, you know, personal well-being and self-growth. And I think it's, it's a lot of light on our political and religious divisions. All of the most irreverable and fraught divisions, I think, have their heart, the different ways we go about mattering. And I think ultimately it should a lot of light on morality and on meaningfulness and on, you know, ethics. And one of the things that I've always been very concerned with is trying to show that science, starting with physics, going to the theory of avatural selection and onward neuroscience, it doesn't undermine our morality. It can be used to help us guide us toward morality. So that's never really, it's always been a big intuition of mine. Right. But you're right. It's really, really big. And it has, it's very, very personal and it's very impersonal. And yeah, and so I had to team this thing. And I also wanted to team it with a lot of stories of how it plays out in individual lives. So my other job, so I'd be trained as a philosopher, an analytical philosopher, a philosopher of science, in fact, is a manovalist. So I'm a storyteller. And I'm terrifically interested in the diversity of human stories and the way matter he plays out. And you remember when we were both participating in the movie naturalism forward workshop. And one of the other participants was Steven Weinberg, who had a famous quote about the more we learn about the universe, you know this quote? Yeah. Yeah. The more we come to understand the universe, the more it seems pointless. I know what he meant. But I think that maybe you're going to agree with me that it's a little bit misleading, that quote. Yeah, I do. I do think so. And there is a kind, I mean, of course, you know, probably, you know, what he had in mind and you know, one of the things I'm very interested in the book is mapping out the different ways that people try to satisfy this longing to matter. And you know, which I try to define analytically what that means, you know, commaturing. And you know, and one of the ways is to think that we were purposefully created by some higher transcendent being, you know, that which created the story heavens and created the moral utter created each one of us. And so we have a role to play in the narrative of eternity. It doesn't get any bigger than that unless you're all lunatic. You know, I think that you are a transcendent being, but short of that, you know, that is the most sort of grant grant and perhaps grandiose view of of of mattering. And you know, the more we learn scientifically, the less likely that seems. That's what he did. Yeah. And that's what he meant. But that doesn't mean that we give up on our mattering projects. Right. Yes. So there can be, I had a good friend, a film director, Scott Derrickson, who was a former mindscape guest. And maybe he got this from somewhere else, but he put it very eloquently, I thought he said like the world, the universe has to be meaningful because I'm part of the universe and it means things to me. You know, that's really true. And that's one way of thinking about what we, you know, we, we vaguely talk about the intrinsic dignity of human life. And one of the things that I think, uh, gestures towards this is yeah, that we are the ones who in this striving that comes out of the laws of nature that shape us, um, this striving to try to live lives that we can justify in our own eyes, uh, that make us, um, seal justified and pain such a awful lot of attention to ourselves. Each one of us, right. Right. Um, that, that trying to just write that at first of all, we become just a cookatory, oh, I'm really glad I got that word out. I'm not going to try to speak a dime that we become, those kinds of creatures, we bring justification into the universe, we bring values into the universe in this effort. Sometimes we're in bad values, but nevertheless, no other creature is doing this, at least on our planet. So let's home in on that, um, analytically rigorous definition of what the word means when, when we talk about mattering, do we necessarily mean mattering to somebody else or matter into ourselves? Like what, what does mattering mean to you? I think so we talk about what matters and we talk about who matters. And I think that the core elemental, uh, meaning is, uh, deserving of attention. Um, and so already this is a term that combines, um, you know, what philosophers call the normative, right? Deserving is a normative term. Um, it, it, it, it brings in norms of justification. So if we are what I, my shorthand for what we are, are creatures of matter who long to matter, it already says we are, we are normative creatures at our core. And yeah, and that doesn't necessarily, that's what I mean. Yeah, by gathering, but that doesn't require taking a stance on moral objectiveism versus subjectivism yet. No, no, it doesn't. And you know, and you know, might be your full fledged, you know, weach in or a heating list or whatever it is, but whatever you are, you have a way of trying to justify your own life, um, which is a condition for engagement in that like, you know, um, who Nord Williams had this, uh, notion of, uh, foster important British philosopher of primarily the, you know, the 20th century, 21st century. Um, and, um, I spoke about ground projects, you know, and he, these are these projects that are sort of existentially charged with us, I call them mattering projects, but that see us through that they give us the evidence to get on with our lives and do it, and, and, and, and they themselves take a lot of energy, um, and it all, of course, I, I'm a little trepidacious about talking about entropy. You're gonna have to do it this there, yeah. We'll have to do it because it all goes back to that, you know, to be alive is to be in resistance to the transformation from within, which is what entropy literally means. So if, if, to matter is to be deserving of attention, there's already like a hackle that goes up and you say like, should we want attention? Is it the same thing as, as asking for attention to want to matter or those, but necessarily, it's our own attention. So there, there is, you know, there are different ways of trying to fulfill what I think is this core human, a need, uh, longing, and it's a long name because we can never be sure. I really can never be sure. Um, not even those who go after, you know, religious or spiritual, um, you know, grand, grand mattering, they, they certainly can never be sure. Yeah. There we certainly understand our leap of faith, but all of us are making song leap of faith in trying to justify ourselves to ourselves. And one of the ways is certainly mattering to mattering to others. And I, I, I, I ought to say, I think that there are two fundamental needs that we have, uh, and, Freud, it said love and work. Um, and I would amend that. Love, I think it's, it's connectedness, longing, uh, belonging, I mean, not longing, be longing. You know, that's interesting. That be longing has. And, you know, and other, that, that comes to us by way of being gregarious creatures of all from gregarious creatures, we're not the only creatures who need other special creatures of our kind in our lives, who will, um, regard us as deserving of the tension, whether we deserve it or not. That's what I look for for the people who are in my life, right, my friends, my family, my lovers, my, their lover, um, my, you know, my community, perhaps, my colleagues, they're in my life. I, I, I need it. Love them. Um, but I, I will get attention from them, you know, whether I deserve it or not. And so this, belonging is a kind of mattering, this mattering to others in your life. But then the thing that I'm talking about, this, this existential dimension that I don't think any other creatures share, um, is, uh, so let me just back up the moment, belonging means, um, uh, it has to do with our relationship with others, clearly. The, the longing to matter that I'm interested in, it has to do with our relationship with ourselves. Um, and it is, it's a given that we are going to pay, uh, the court, an incisive, abundant, excessive amount of attention to ourselves. It is a given, it's a biological, um, it's written into our biology. Who, who am I, you know, who am I? I am the person who, if you were to ask, um, why are we paying so much attention to Rebecca Nuber-Gurgholz? And I would say, I am Rebecca Nuber-Gurgholz. The question is answer. That's all you need to know, to, to be, um, a particular thing is to, uh, that identity consists in paying yourself first and foremost a tremendous amount of attention. Um, and, and nothing else, no other relationship is needed. I pay a tremendous amount of attention to two young women who exist in this universe, right? And now two young men, um, two very little young men, um, and those two young women are my daughters and those two little men are my grandsons. And if I say, look, I, you, these, you know, these people really, really matter to me, um, and they say, why? I would say, I would give my relationship to them. Um, but for myself, why do I pay myself attention? Um, I am myself. That's what it is. When I am gone, they will, nobody else in the universe who has an unreasoned inclination to pay so much attention to that particular thing. And it's a very, very wordy Spinoza gets it all in a very briefly to his notion of Konitas, uh, that what it, what individual identity consists in is it striving to persist and to flourish in one's own being. That that is where this is this Konitas. This is the very essence of one identity. Okay. Now I've totally forgotten what you know, this is good. But let me, let me see if I get the distinction because, um, look, I have two cats. They certainly want attention. Yeah. Frequently. But is it, am I correct in thinking you're drawing a distinction between wanting attention and feeling that one is deserving of attention, that sort of a higher meta level consideration? Exactly. And first and foremost, which I think is amazing that we, that we have come to this to want to deserve our own attention, our own attention. I mean, what depression is and I've suffered from vows of it and certainly had friends who suffered from more than about so that is you can't stand to live with yourself. You know, it is, it is like an auto, a psychic, autoimmune disease. You can't stand it because you're, you can't be yourself without paying yourself all of this attention and to feel unworthy of it, um, is, is to not even want to continue on with one's life. You know, so this is a very deep psychological need and has to do with our relationship to ourselves. And is the word attention, especially relevant now in a world where demands on our attention are more intrusive than ever? Yeah, because, you know, what is it? What is our mind filled with our subjectivity? It's what we're paying attention to, you know, so there is, there is a gap, there's a kind of, um, a, a, a, a value of no shun that goes into this. If you're paying so much attention to what you must think it's deserving of attention. Okay, we're all frivolous in one way or another. You know, and we, you know, binge on things that we probably ought not to be paying attention to. But, but, we draw this, we draw this distinction between those things that truly deserve our attention. That matter, that's what matter means being deserving of our attention. And to ask this question of whether I who must to be myself, I must pay so much attention to myself. And truly, deserving of this attention is to become a different order of being whole together. Mm-hmm. And then you do think that this is something that is different for humans than for other kinds of animals. Is there some relationship here to our capacity for abstraction or something else? How does that relate to other human beings? Yeah, I mean, we've got these amazing big brains. Yeah. Have you tried which take a tremendously amount of energy, right? So many ways for them to break down. And, um, we have, it comes with the capacity for self-reflection for it, which is a really quite an amazing thing, right? For being able to, we have a theory of mine, which I think we evolved in order to, because of rigorous, gregarious creatures. It's, you know, it's good to be, not only our rigorous creatures, we're outtricious. I don't know what that means. Yes, outtricious comes from the Latin. For, um, we are, we take a lot of nourishing. Actually, when we talk about our alma, my, my, matter, alma matter, um, we're saying, you know, we're, we're saying that our colleges or universities are, are nurturing mothers. And that's really interesting too, then the word matter comes from mother, which is like fascinating semantic story. I'm not going to go in. Is that true? Is it like, no, I want you to go into that. Is that true? Yeah. The word mother was first and the word matter came later? Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. So here's, you're, so it's, um, it's an interesting story. It's a philosophical story. So, Aristotle, um, wanted this word for what we call matter, the stuff, the basic stuff, and, you know, uh, contra his, or Pache, his, uh, mentor Plato who thought real being is in the forms. He said, you know, was kind of stuff informed, you know, and that's how a thing is made. There is this, what we call matter, but there was no such word. Right. And so he used the word for in ancient Greek, um, for wood, um, highly, um, and it, and, but just think of it as he thought of it as pure potentiality, having no characteristics of its own. It was just pure passive receptivity. The Latin translators of Aristotle didn't want to use the word wood. And they were trying to come up with a concept for pure receptivity, passive, uh, formless receptivity. And they just grabbed hold of the metaphor of motherhood because according to them, following Aristotle, the master, women have no role to play in conception other than being pure passive receptivity for the informing male. And, and, and of course, the stood to reason because Aristotle thought that what women were, his definition of women, were people who failed to be men. So, to me, this is such an amazing story because it's a very word we use for the stuff of the universe that you physicist studying, right? Um, is, and the verb that we, uh, in English have, um, derived from it, the verb to matter to be worthy of attention, has written into it the ancient and still ongoing view among some people that men matter more than women. So what a storm. That is a great story. Just to add to it, uh, I had Jacob Burandis on the podcast recently. I don't know if you know Jacob. He's a, no, no, I know of course the name yet. So he told me that the word matrix is also, uh, developed from the word mother etymologically. And it makes me think that, you know, when physicists in the 1990s were very excited about M theory, they refused to specify what the letter M stood for and two of the options were matrix and mother. But, uh, mattering was not one of them. Maybe I could put that in there as an, as I'm gonna put that in the mattering theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're we, we were, I was trying to explain the word out, Tricil. And I got off on I'm a mother. It's, yeah, it's my fault that I insisted that you do that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So yeah, not only are we, you know, gregarious, but we are traditional meaning that we are helpless for an incredibly long time. Right. Um, because of these big, big grains. And so we're born in substance prematurely. Uh, you know, the brain, there's, it's hard enough to get those, uh, fetuses out of our, out of our bodies, right. And, and we are, you know, and I think birth is it exactly at the point at which the, um, the caloric needs of the fetus would overcome the metabolic needs of the mother. That makes sense. Time to get help, right. You're on your own from now on. You're on your own. Yeah. But, you know, the brain up, which I, you know, every time when you have a little infant thing, you know, we, and you bring it the first year, um, to the pediatric appointments, they're measuring the skull, you know, because the brain has to double, I think that first year, because it's so much, um, maturing, have to go, and it takes place until our early 20s, when the last piece of the brain finally comes in, the one that has us, uh, being responsible and some, some sense of accountability comes in around 22, 23, 40. So, but, uh, yeah. So we are, uh, really, we really need other members of our species who will pay us attention, whether we deserve it or not, um, our very lives depend on it. That's why we're born so cute. We smell so good. But, well, but as I recall in your book, you, you mentioned maturing as one of two aspects of human flourishing. Is that right? Yeah. Well, man, manoring to others is belonging, manoring to others, you know, those special others who are in our life on pain of extreme loneliness. We know what happens if there is nobody in your life who will pay you special attention. That is the hell of loneliness. Um, but there's another hell that comes to us by, and, and, and other animals, animals, certainly, oh god, if you've ever lived with a dog, you know, right? They too, moved in there, and he has, they were very, very sensitive, uh, and, and, and you have to pay them special attention. And, um, but, uh, to a certain extent, cats too, but not like dogs, but in any case, and not like humans, because we're, we're, we're so very, uh, dependent on this. Um, and everything is more complicated in us. We're, we're just more complicated. But there's this, this other way that we can go to hell. Um, and that is when we feel that we don't matter, we can have all of those social connections. And I tell the story of William James, one of my favorite, um, figures, both philosophers and psychologists and a fantastic writer, so William James, um, yeah, important, important figure in, in, in, in, in this kind of question, these, these existential questions. Um, and, um, he suffered a terrible depression during his youth, multi-talented, very, supportive family and friends and, um, and, um, and yet, um, you know, he, was contemplating suicide, uh, for, for a very long time. He tells the story. He disguises it. He attributes it in the varieties of religious experience. He attributes it to somebody else, but he told, um, his son and some other people that it was, yes, it was him. And it is, it was, this other thing, this existential thing, he couldn't hit on what I call a mattering project that would carry him forward. Once he did, he was often running. I mean, he revolutionized psychology. He was important figure in philosophy. He was a beloved teacher. He was a wonderful, wonderful author of the principal psychology is still an amazing work. Um, and he missed over countless energy. Um, and, and yet he, he, in his youth, you know, spent half a year or more in bed, um, contemplating suicide. So there is this other, and all, and his sister, Alice James, you know, who we only learned of, um, when maybe in the 70s or, you know, then when her, when her journal was finally published, um, but, um, she had the same psychology of William James, but being a Victorian woman, there was no outlet from her. Um, and so she turned all of that into, she was a professional invalid, and that's what she was. She got a lot of attention from her family like that, but she was constantly contemplating suicide. Um, and when she finally got him with early 40s, which you finally got breast cancer, she was sort of happy in a way because she finally had a diagnosable illness and she could just go to bed and wait for death. I mean, so it, it's almost like a controlled, controlled experiment, you know, two people with very much the same kind of temperament, the same what I call heroic strivers. I go on and, um, and, and, and distinguish between various ways that people try to meet this, this mannering instinct. Uh, but one had an outlet, and so when he, he loved, you know, the, the, the, the Konega came pouring in, you know, I read a whole book of, of tributes to him when he died. Um, and, and the other one, what's Portuguese have, you know, this in port of ineffectual doctors and fucked up pillows. Yeah. And there, I guess the, uh, the low brow version of this, it, it, didn't you tell the story of Kevin Bacon in your book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, he's the actor, right? Yes, that's right. Walking around in disguise. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now, so, you know, I, we'll get into, you know, but there are, um, different ways that we, we, we go after this. And I think of very much defines our lives. You know, when I'm, um, writing novels, and this is how I came on this, really, it was really trying to understand characters that I was writing about who were not myself and trying to understand, made them tech. It's hard. Um, it's really, really hard. And this was my window into it. And then I saw, this is a window that opens up into many, many things, right? From the legend and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and politics and, and too much, too much as you say it was too much, right? Um, but, uh, but some, one of the things that people, you know, tried to do is, is, is to be famous. That is, if tons of people, including strangers, are paying attention to us, surely I'm deserving of my own attention. I've got these hordes, you know, uh, tweeting about what I eat for breakfast or who my latest lover is, surely, surely, um, I matter, you know, and so that is a very, uh, natural way of trying to feel like you matter to be famous. And now that because it's come so much easier to be famous, I mean, really easy to become famous, you know, we have people who are famous for just being famous. Um, so, um, that way has really been open. And then, you know, there are polls that show that, you know, young people would give up all sorts of things, a good love partner, children, in order to be famous, you know, that that's what quenches this long aim for them. It often turns out to be not so very satisfactory because the public is fickle, right? And so, yeah, but, um, Kevin Bacon, you know, he got sick of being so famous and he wanted to experience what it would be like to be able to move through people I knock, you know, and not be swamped with selfies and that sort of thing. And so he got a prosthetic nose and um, like glasses and all sorts of things. And he said, I said, this sucks. I had a way to hunt line for a fucking coffee. I didn't have people coming over to say him, which they love me. Forget it. So, yeah, but most of us have to make do with waiting on the line for a coffee and not having people come over and say how much they love us. So you've alluded to this already, but, um, if human beings do depend on this feeling that they need to matter so much, if it's an instinct, like you put it, uh, how does that relate to, of course, biology and fundamental physics, which is, you know, two of our big themes here on the Winescape podcast. You talk a lot about entropy and natural selection and all that stuff. I'm sure you do. Yes. So I don't have to go into the nitty gritty, of course, but you know, entropy, you know, means that every, in every close system entropy, which is disorder, um, increases, um, and, um, and, and all things do tend toward disorder. Um, but the closed systems, meaning that there's no resource to external free energy that can be put to use, um, that we are able to use that energy to resist entropy. Um, no living system is a closed system. Right. Wouldn't work. That's, that's, and that, you know, that's definition, right? Um, and I guess Schrodinger was really the first who pinpointed this, you know, what, what is life? It is to be a resistance, uh, to entropy. That's what, what life is, and, and type, recourse to, you know, uh, low entropy sources of energy, mainly food and sunlight, and certain chemicals. Um, and what do we do with this? We resist entropy. Um, what this means, and, and, and in creatures who have evolved attention, right, let me just, yeah, in creatures who have evolved attention, it follows that the bulk of the attention is going to be put, is, is going to be centered on ourselves. Um, how the environment, um, affects our ongoing resistance to entropy, right? We want to, we don't want to, we, we are, we have a, we are, our project is to, no, it's as, as Spinoza had, had put it in Kona, our, our project is to survive and to flourish in our own being. Um, and this is, it's even deeper than the instincts. It's sort of the organizing principles of all of the instincts that we've evolved. Um, this is, you know, talking in very, very general terms, or we can speak more specifically, but this is, you know, the direction. And then there are, there's attention, no intention evolved, so that we can take, um, more finely attuned advantages of our, um, environment food, you know, go towards it, predators run, you know, and so, um, attention again is going to be, you know, it's, it's, it's attention to the environment, but there's a kind of self-referentiality that hangs over a good deal of our attention. How is this affecting my primary project, which is to survive and to flourish? So, you know, um, okay, and then we, we develop, oh, ah, this is where we broke off to talk about the word matter. We, we have a theory of mine because we are so developed, so, um, slowly developing and so dependent, um, on others of our own species. And so, you know, we have to be able to distinguish who is going to be a source of nourishment and comfort and softness and who, who to flee. And then we make out, we are able to, at a quite early age, I think it's, you know, toddlerhood, able to make out, or maybe even earlier, make out, uh, the notion that others have, minds have desires, have the beliefs that are different from our own, right? And then we, they're really different from our own. Have you're me, you know, yeah, my, my desires and beliefs seem to be different from everybody's stuff. Um, anyway, it's, um, uh, but then we develop this capacity for self, um, reflection. We can kind of step out of ourselves and turn the theory of mind on ourselves, right? Look at ourselves as an object, um, of interrogation to, to, to try to discover things about. And one of the first things that becomes so apparent in being yourself is how much damn attention you pay to yourself. And if you have any sense of perspective, uh, you realize that you're not worthy of all of this attention. If we measure how much we think something matters, by how much attention we pay to it, it would seem that we seem to think that we are the thing that matters the most from all the universe. And as I say, short of lunacy, we know that this is not true. Even done Trump notices this is not true, right? That it, well, okay, you're, I, I see, you're, you're on your pace. Oh, okay. Well, he's what we call very well defended against self reflection. Very well defended against self reflection. Um, but, um, you know, it is, it is to us, and it's out of that, seeing the ink, what I call the mattering in commensurability, I don't think I say that in the book, but this in commensurability between how much we must in order to be ourselves matter to ourselves. And how much, you know, we think in, in our moments of objectivity, you know, which we are capable of in turning our theory of mind onto ourselves, that is an objective capacity towards ourselves. We are able to see this income, interrability. And what I think this, what I call the mattering instinct, it's not really, it's more complicated than a real instinct, but what I call, um, it's, it's the combination of two instincts, self reflection, um, applied to our own self-mattering, uh, gives us the mattering instinct. Um, it is the, the, the longing to make the amount of attention, um, that we feel we deserve a little bit more commensurable with how much we give it by choosing a certain kind of life. Uh, you know, that we feel will make them more commensurable. I was telling this to a, um, do you know Richard Thaler, the, the economist, I know his name, yeah. Yeah, he's a Nobel laureate in, in economics. And I was telling this, um, this theory to him and, and I said, and he said, how much mattering, how much matter do you think it takes? And I said, I know you're the economist, you tell, you can see the, the amount, and he said, a smattering of mattering, which I really like. Um, so I have it from a Nobel laureate. I'm disappointed that he didn't say, you know, $2.5 million worth of mattering. Let's quantify this. So I will very briefly, um, mention just for historical reference purposes. It's absolutely true. The Schrodinger highlighted this fact that, you know, we make use of free energy out there in the world. But Boltzmann totally understood it. Yes. He did not like write a book about it, but he definitely mentions it and talks right from the start. Absolutely. Right. And as you know, he's one of my big heroes, in the book, you know, and a man who accomplished so much, right? We are still reaping, right, the benefits of his insight. And, and he made probability, you know, he introduced it as a fundamental of physics, which went to get, you know, he got hell for that, right? And so, um, you know, I, I worship and, you know, when I, ever since I was a student of physics, you know, as I was as an undergraduate, did you know that? I did. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I only invite people in the show who are former physics students. Yeah. We are many. That, um, that yeah, that there is something, there is something of human, um, the consequence for the second law of thermodynamics. There's something so tragic about it, but his story is, it's, you know, is so tragic. Um, and, um, but yes, yeah, I'm really glad you brought up, Boltzmann. He deserves so credit for that. Okay. But I want to, um, I want to get in a little bit more to this sort of theory of mind stuff. I wonder how general it is. I mean, one of the things that human beings can do is kind of run counterfactual simulations in our brains, right? We can imagine how things could have been different. And I, I, I've heard different claims at different levels of, uh, strength here, but that does seem to be something that we're better that at than other species. Yeah. Yeah. And somehow, like every species wants to survive, but is it somehow that the combination of a drive to survive plus our ability to run these simulations and think about other people and what they think, etc. Uh, yeah, gives us this extra handle where mattering suddenly becomes super important. Yeah. I think that that's, that's absolutely true. And we are also able to have this notion. I don't know, me, me, and, you know, we obviously have a very well developed sense of self. You know, there are tests and, you know, the mark on the forehead, what do they call that the mark test or something, you know, that whatever, you know, that some other animals, you know, certainly, um, yeah, the mirror test and things like that. The mirror test, the mirror test, right, right, right. You know, I had this, you know, that they have a sense of their selves as a thing that has characteristics, you know, and that some characteristics may or may not belong to it. And that is a notion of self, but our notion of the self and of our lives as our whole life, um, is, you know, involves a degree of counterfactual, um, reasoning, um, uh, projection into the future and into the past, you know, this notion of ourselves over a long term, um, and are wanting that long term thing that we are very finite, uh, thing that we are, um, to matter in this sense of, it is going to take up all of this energy of, of us, it's going to take up our valuable attention. It's really, you know, the contents of our brain, of our, of our minds, of our living conscious mind is what we're paying attention to. And most of the time, we're paying attention to our self. The default network mode, you know, where our minds are when they're not really focused on anything external, when we're sort of daydreaming, fantasizing the sort of thing, what are we thinking about? We're thinking about ourselves, you know, as psychologists, they've done tests on this, it's like some very high percentage of the time it's spent thinking about ourselves, we, yeah, that's self-mattering. And every creature has it, you know, self-mattering in the sense of this conatus, they are striping to survive and to, um, and to flourish. Um, as I say, it's just, it's just built down. It's, it's, it, that's, we, well, we get there from a lot of, of, of nature that shaped us. Ultimately, right. But then there is like the dark side of all this. You already mentioned the fact that, uh, once mattering becomes important, we have a new anxiety that maybe we don't matter to other people. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's probably this other. Don't keep saying to other people because there are, right, you're right. Right. Right. Um, it could be true. God, it could be, you know, I, can I, we will talk about that, that I have these four different strategies, general strategies. Exactly. Let's go into that. I'm not a psychologist. I haven't run all the experiments that you're supposed to. What I've been doing is ever since this first emerged in when I started thinking about it, um, I've just been talking to people about it constantly. If you sit next to me on a bus, you're going to talk to me. I am going to question you about, you know, what is, what is your existential longing? What are, what is the thing that you do that really matters to you? And if it went wrong, you have to really rethink your life. Think I'm getting it, I'm getting it wrong. And so I, I come up with, you know, I've spoken to pickup artists, right? You know, they try to pick me up. They're going to be talking about mattering and why that pickup part is right. And, you know, I, I spoke to an ex-nazzy skinhead, you know, who has become a, a good friend. Um, and so there, there's so many different ways, um, you know, and this ex-nazzy, I mean, he used to believe that his mattering, um, derived from his being a white male American, and people like me, women, Jews, um, are trying to steal it from him, you know, that, and this is a kind of mattering that's understood in zero some terms, um, for me to matter, others matter less. Um, and these, those others might be defined by their group, um, or it might be defined by everybody. I can, again, um, I think Donald Trump is a wonderful example of this. He's in competition with everybody, unless those who, you know, are the fruit of his loins, you know, because they're extensions of himself or, you know, or his lacs, you know, um, but, you know, this is an extreme example of competitive, what I call competitive mattering, mattering more than others. Um, and, um, which is, you know, those who love after power are, that's what's motivating them. So there's, so there is, but the four types of mattering that I have come in contact with is, um, what I call transcendent mattering or cosmic mattering, and that is sort of religious, spiritual, the belief, a metaphysical belief that there is some author of one's being who created you for a purpose and, and, and, and you matter to that being, otherwise he or it wouldn't have created you, but, you know, he may very well be judging you and you better do what he wants, you know, so that's, you know, right. Um, and I was born into that, you know, I, I come from a orthodox Jewish family and I believe that for the first 12 years of my life, um, that, that, yes, that, that, that kind of mattering and I used to pray through each time today. I mean, I was, I was, even though women are required to, but of course, I'm in, you know, I took it to the extreme, you know, um, but, um, so there's transcendent mattering. There's social mattering and that is mattering to others and there are those who I call intimate socializers and they're the belonging, belongingness and, um, and, and the mattering instinct are collapsed into one. It's to matter to those who are in one's life. Okay. Um, and that is, and that's what mattering means and an awful lot of people are up this time and, you know, and they're not necessarily doing it right, you know, the advice columns are filled with people who, you know, are doing it all wrong, you know, my mother, Gresham, you should say, you're already already knows, you're once the run-lay life and blah, blah, blah, you know, and so, um, yeah, so it's not necessarily doing it right. And then there are the none in what it called the none intimate socializers and that's like, you know, wanting to matter to a hoards of strangers, might be a co-leader or you might be a thane seeker or, you know, something of this sort, but that is, you know, so it doesn't have to be people who are in your life, you know, just tons of people paying attention to you. So these are social, um, socializers. Then there are heroic strivers. Um, that sounds like it's one to be. Yeah, I mean, not necessarily easy and not necessarily, nothing's easy really. Yeah. Um, but it's, yeah, it's hard to be, it's hard to be human. I think there's my major takeaway. It is hard to be human, you know, to be trying to not only live according to the laws of nature that have shaped us, but to prove to ourselves that we're worthy. Right. We're worthy. Thank you for that. That's right. We matter. Yeah. That's right. And so it's a real burden. Uh, and so, um, but heroic strivers have some standard of excellence in mind. It could be intellectual, a career artistic, it could be, um, athletic, it could be ethical, could be some mixture of those. Um, and they are not, it's really not manoring to others. And I have many examples of this, you know, it's, you can be very, very famous and then, you know, be a very famous poet and like John Barerman, one of the people whose story I tell in End of Committee suicide, you know, because, yeah. And, um, you know, it's, yeah. And so the, that's been a, um, the heroic striver. And then there are the competitors, competitive, manoring, they really see, uh, manoring as a zero sum game. Um, they are, uh, they have mad, mad marine adversaries. Um, you know that they have, and that they, they, and you know, here's the interesting thing, Sean. Some people who really seem like, um, heroic strivers, really are competitors. So, there is another, yeah, yeah, yeah, here in academic. So you know, no, one of my favorite stories is about another, um, another, uh, Nobel Laureate, whom I know. And some, I was discussing him with somebody else who knows him very, very well. And he said to me, you know, um, well, I'll just call him ex. Ex was happy for all of 15 minutes in his life when he got that call from Stockholm. And then he realized that other people have also gotten the call from Stockholm. And that like, yes, that is a component. And it's very, very hard. I mean, you know, you have to have sympathy. I think that's the other thing. Uh, this, you know, we wouldn't go on through some very hard times, right? In this country and in this world. Um, and we're very much at loggerheads and we're, we see adversaries wherever we are. We're seeing adversaries. I can't tell you how much this framework has helped me, um, to, to, I don't know, lower my anger, my, my, my, how can you be like this? Um, you know, to realize that, that yeah, there's something very human, even when it goes so very wrong. Um, but there's some, some way in to understand these people, I can be friends with an ex Nazi. Um, ex Nazi though. He is an ex Nazi and he's a wonderful person and he's spending the rest of his life doing penance for what he had done in his earlier part of his life. Yes. But it does show there's a way out. And it was because he was treated with dignity by other people. That's how he came out of it, which is also, I think, such a lesson to, you know, everybody struggling to feel like they matter. Don't tell them that they're dirt. Don't tell them they're de-plurable. Yeah. Yeah. We get in trouble with that. But I want to distinguish because it sounds like there could be some overlap between the competitors, socializers, transenders. But, uh, because the socializers care about mattering to their circle, whatever that circle might be, uh, competitors want to matter more than anybody else, but you could want to matter more than anyone else to your circle, I suppose, right? You could. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But it, you know, it is what is going to make you happy? Is it going to be the relationship itself, you know, that it's a nurturing that you matter or the fact that you matter more? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it is. I mean, it's sort of subtle and I have now some very wonderful, um, psychologists who have gotten interested in this mainly from the community of positive psychology. Um, and they want to devise, you know, questionnaires that will get at these distinctions. That's what they do. That's what they do. And I hope I've given them a lot of material, um, to do this because they are there are so many things that I would love to see tested. For example, among, uh, among, um, heroic strivers, um, some of us, um, who are heroic strivers and I'm a heroic striver. I come out and freely confess it. Yes. For you. Yeah. And, um, which is not to say that, you know, that the people who matter to me don't matter to me enormously, right? But, but in addition to that, I can be made miserable by my mattering projects going wrong, you know, and, uh, when they are failing, I feel that I am failing. Um, so, and if I am failing in my relationship to the people in my life, I also fail that I'm failing, you know, there are two ways. I mean, but, um, where socializers, intimate socializers, there's really only one way to fail. And that's in your relate. So, so that's, and it's better. But look, I don't think we have all that much choice in how we come out. Um, you know, that is a matter of, you know, it's both, um, nature and nurture. All I know is that I was not nurtured to be a heroic striver at all. Sometimes it happens. That's true. And sometimes it just happens. Yes. Yes. Um, so what, what was I saying? I've lost the, the, the, the, the case of, I wanted to ask in the case of your, for example, your ex skin head Nazi, friend, um, can you see the sort of a through line of the same kind of mattering instinct that that person had that just was sort of fulfilled in one mode early on and became different later or did they switch? Um, yeah, he really, um, you know, he, he really had a competitive notion of mattering. Um, he was really basing his mattering on belonging to a certain group white, might, might straight male Americans. And, um, and, and he ought to have mattered more than everybody else. And here are all these other people taking it away from him when he realized that that was in his words bullshit. Um, he, um, he really did, you know, look for another way of, of trying to, and he really has become an ethical heroic striver. That's what he is, you know, and it, so it really, it's an, an amazing, it's, I think one of the, of all the people I've spoken to, he amazed me the most with his transformation. That's a real transformation. Yeah. It was a real transformation. Um, and it was deep and, you know, and, and it was by stages. First, he was in jail with, and the, the, the people that he got along with were other black males, but it came out a still hated Jews, which, he hated them more than ever because that was the one thing that, one hatred that tied into his former identity who was he without this, you know, he had no idea. And then, you know, that felt by the wayside, um, again, because of somebody he met, um, who treated him with respect. Um, so, but, and he, but he really has changed his whole sense of mattering. I should also say that a very big difference, and I, I would love for these psychologists, people who know how to do this to test this. For some people, you know, they, they hit on their way of mattering, and it just serves them. They just goes charting them through life. And there it is. It's all just fine. For other of us, it emerges again and again, you know, as I say, you know, my mattering project is faltering. Uh, you know, who am I? What am I? Why? How do I deserve to be walking this planet, this sort of thing? So, you know, some of us have, and William James, um, throughout his life, um, had these periods of, um, uh, having to convince himself all over again, since a deep difference in our psychies, uh, those of us who are, it's very robust, and other so vast, it's not so robust, you know, who opted and we that might, you know, that might be a spur to ambition to taking on more and more, um, yeah. So one kind of failure mode, then is this sort of toxic mattering where you're, you know, putting too much emphasis on the wrong kind of mattering or whatever, but then there's another failure mode, I guess, where you insist that yours is the only right way of mattering and one, everyone else in the world to do it your way. Yes. So that caused us the urge to universalize and it comes so naturally to us. We know about transcendors. Of course, you know, they are the ones who have Gias and Crusaders and, you know, as you, I had, I don't know, you have debated, um, uh, religious apologists on stage. I had one experience doing it and we'll never do it again because I have never been exilious to somebody who fights so jury, uh, has it like really, really, really dirty pulled out something personal and, and fraudulent. Um, and I was just left a base. So yes. Um, and I think we'll never do it again. But, but okay, um, but, you know, of course, transcendors because they base it on some metaphysical belief, you know, that holds for all of us. We're all in the same reality, whether we recognize it or not in their God, however they conceive of it, um, you know, wants us to be this way. And so you're either failing or not, you know, and, um, I should, that's a little too coarse also. There are some, um, transcendors who think that the, the, the mattering falls on all of us equally, um, and, um, they have a kind of, you know, Catholic with a small, see, view of this, um, and some who know you have to accept this, um, and be living your life for this. And, you know, otherwise you really don't matter. You really don't matter. And, and so, um, yeah, but what I have found then all across what I call a mattering map, people universalize. And I have a whole slew of statements that I have been collecting, um, you know, from, from scientists and from artists and from, um, oh, one of my favorite is from the fashion, um, icon Diana Freeland, who was a editor of, um, Bogh Magazine. And she said, you know, um, you know, you, you have to, I can't remember it verbatim, but you have to dress well. That's what gets you down the stairs in the morning without it, you're nothing. What? I hate, yes. And then this other guy who was a strong man who says, if you can't do a deadlift, um, you're, you're nothing. You know, said, they're all, they're all these ways of, of, of universalizing. And it comes free naturally, it comes as naturally to us as, as the mattering instinct itself, because we are trying to prove to ourselves that we objectively matter. It's not just a case of my being me. So, of course, I mattered with me. No, there's something objective about what, how I'm living and how I am carving out this life of that I have that makes me matter. But if it really is doing the work for me that really is objective, then it must be the fact of the matter. And so it must, everybody ought to be doing it. It should be objectively true. I have this conversation with, with, you know, fellow academics and writers and so forth, less about mattering than about meaning, which is very closely related. Very close. And they'll say, well, you know, of course, a meaningful, successful life is one in which you're creative and trying new things and doing something different all the time. I'm like, well, maybe for you it is. And that's perfectly valid. It's okay. If somebody else just wants to have their pizza and watch football and that's, you know, maybe live a nice family life. That's good. That's right. Bring up their children, you know, yeah, to be flourishing human beings. You know, what? So we have, and this is really, this is the real diversity, the amazingly interesting diversity in us. I know diversity is now become a very loaded word, you know, I'm sorry, but here at the Mindscape Podcast, we are proud diversity. You can use that word. Okay. Me too. Me too. But, but, but this is, you know, a kind of diversity that leads to very deep differences between us, you know, and so, and our, if our whole life is staked on by saying, this is the Mavering Project. This is what makes my life worth pursuing. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Then why isn't it yours? And to the mere fact that you are living a life and not living it according to me is an offense. I cannot tolerate it. And it is clearly something is wrong in the logic there. And also, I am not a mealist. I'm not a moral relativist. I do think that there is a big difference between getting, getting our mattering right and getting our mattering wrong. That, that we, yes, if I decide I'm going to invade Ukraine to show the time matter. You know, Ukrainians be damned. This is not good, right? This is not a good way of pursuing my mattering. If I'm a love bomber, it's called love bombing, right? And the way, again, I tell a story of a young woman who's like, it's pretty much ruined. I love bombings. Not ruined, but really knocked off track for a long time. You know, that's somebody who needed to seduce in a passionate love affair, you know, an all-inclusive, heady, you know, crazy sentimental music playing in the background, love affair, but again and again and again and again, leaving behind, you know, completely damaged young women in the wake. That is a bad way of doing it. That is a bad way of doing it. So that there are, you know, bad ways on historical scale, Hitler, Putin, King Leabold, about you, you know, Trump, that they are bad ways of doing it and better ways of doing it. And can I say that once again, I go back to the second law thermodynamics. You can always say that. I can always say that. That's where it starts. That's where it starts. And to me, this is the best criterion for the dividing line between good and bad ways of trying to satisfy our matter and instinct, recognizing the huge diversity, you know, so that we're never going to do it in exactly the same way. And I would not recommend that everybody come up, you know, philosopher, God for it, this. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Right. Who would be the butcher? And so it's, you know, it's just, um, but, you know, that life itself is a counter-entropic process, right? And if you're a, if you're a manoring project, if you're alive is the way you're, um, is, is itself counter-entropic? If it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, creates things that demand order, like knowledge, like justice, like beauty, like colomity, um, like fairness. Um, if, if you're, if we are at one with our mattering project, with the force of life itself, um, this is a good, this is a good mattering project. If you're a doctor, if you're, you know, whatever, if, you know, if you're, if you're, um, adding to knowledge, if you're adding to justice, all of these things, everything worth living for is a real battle because it's a real battle for order, um, against its order. So yeah, I start with the love entropy and I end with the love and dream. And I, I do want to give you an opportunity here because you offer us a conceptual metaphor to help us along in understanding how this works, which is the mattering map. The mattering map, yes. Explain what the mattering map is. Yeah, this mattering map. And this was something that I really owe to what my, what if I, fictional characters, um, you know, which is just a whole other story, the way, um, you know, people, a lot of my colleagues, you know, felt that I went, I just went bizarre when I, when I published a novel when I was very young, I was still an assistant professor, meaning, not tenured. And I published a novel, the mind body problem. It was very philosophical novel, a full philosophical title, uh, but it was a novel. And you know, and here I was claiming to be a philosopher of science and doing something as frivolous as writing a novel, but it's that, yeah, I can, I can sympathize with that. And, um, but, um, in fact, that's where this idea came from of how important mattering is. And the mattering map itself, um, was, I was led to by this character. So what happened was, um, this is character and she's actually a graduate student in philosophy, at Princeton where I went, but unlike me, um, I was happy little graduate student because I was doing philosophy of science. It was a technical and, uh, it was all fine. Um, but she was sort of outside that ilk and was more existentialist and she's, she's, she's floundering. She's really floundering and, and she falls back on another way of feeling that she matters and that is just, uh, seduce one man after the other, you know, hence the mind, you know, different interpretation of what the mind about is problem needs. Um, and my editor at the time said, um, you know, I just don't understand your character. She's, she's very smart, she's very funny, she's certainly very sexually desirable, you know, basically has any magic wants. Why is she so endlessly miserable? And you know, I walked around for like two weeks and thinking about it and then, and she kind of, you know, you hear voices when you write, you, when you write knowledge, you've probably heard this from, yes. And you know, she said, because I don't matter in the way that matters to me. Um, and, and then she came up with this idea, which I would never have come up with because I was strictly analytic in those days. I was, this was too vague for me. She came up with the, this idea of the mattering that they were, so we're all located somewhere on this mattering map. And at your region defines how you think about your mattering, what you need to do in order to realize you're in the book, I called it the will to matter. Um, and so, um, you know, and, and yeah, so you know, the, the, uh, pick of artists, they have their little, uh, midsion. I once met a woman who told me my life is all about, um, uh, Tupperware about Tupperware, you know, she would, how about that, that, that I just, I'm always discovering or, you know, I'm always discovering different nieces or my husband will come home. Oh, I just spoke to somebody. I found a new niche, a new little region, um, of the mattering map, you know, um, and, and so that's where we're all, you know, we're, we're all located somewhere on this, on this mattering map and our co-inhabitants kind of share our view of what it is to live a life that matters. Um, they're all defining what it is. Yeah, it tastes just to be super down to earth. The, the map is a map of things that might matter to one. Yeah. And I have, actually, let me see if I have the book because I see, let me just see if I, okay, yes, I actually have a little sketch of the very broad, because it's just, there are so many regions of the map, but the book begins, oh, this isn't going to help, but I can show you. Yeah, it's an audio podcast, sadly, but, oh, you, but you, but the point is you've drawn it in the book. I drew it, and there are four, um, there are four continents, you know, the transcenders, the heroic strivers, the competitors, and the socializers, I'm like, buy that, them roughly up, you know, um, but, but there are just so many of these regions. And yeah, so it was really came to me in my effort to try to understand the character who was quite different from myself. Yeah. And, and that just became my window for trying to unh, yeah. And then I just went around talking to all sorts of people, well, you know, you know, what makes you feel, you know, we're, we're looking at you a bit in the morning. Well, that also very much helps with the, one of the final questions I wanted to ask, which was how has working as a novelist helped you, informed you in this working as an analytic philosopher mode? So, yeah, so much because, um, I had to sort of work this out in some way in stories because I do think that the way that we, the way that we respond to this instinct to both of these deep needs of ours are, are need for belonging, connectedness, people in our lives. And are need to justify ourselves in for, in our own eyes, um, that it, it produces a story, it produces the story of our life. Um, and I'm just fascinated by the multiplicity of stories, everybody you talk to, you know, they've got a story, and of course that story matters so much to them. It's their life. And I, yeah, it does strike me. I do wonder how the world is changing because I don't know if you saw there was this thing on social media very recently about people who are using AI to do family portraits of themselves. So it's not a photograph of them because they, but they as asked the AI to make a photograph of them and other people like aren't, isn't that not the purpose of a photograph? It's not a record of anything that happened, but they're telling a story that is more important to them than what actually happened. That is so true. That is so, so true. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's the ways that we lie to ourselves in our stories, retail, um, also has so much to do with how the mattering instinct is functioning in us, you know, the gap between how we're really behaving and, um, and how we think that we ought to behave if we're truly to matter. Um, and yeah, it's, so yeah, storytelling to me is, um, it's, has it just like science, you know, though, because I'm, you know, I, I set out to be a scientist. That's what I thought I was going to be, um, until it was a, it was a graduate course in quantum mechanics, I was taking that, uh, uh, because the professor didn't want me to ask a certain kind of question, and, and that was like, uh, that offended me. Yeah. And so I went to the philosopher to ask the question and got wrote into philosophy of science, but, but just, you know, science, philosophy, storytelling, art, you know, we need all of these things, uh, really, to do justice to the, the complexity of being creatures of matter, who long to matter. That is what a crazy thing we are, but it really makes, it makes me respect us. There's a dignity there. Yeah. There's a dignity there. There is a dignity there. Um, that, you know, as bad as the outcomes have been in history and, and in our, and our contemporary life, um, there is still, uh, you know, the reason it's so tragic when a human life goes wrong is because, because that one important human life is, you know, that's what makes it so tragic. So I love the idea, just a final thought that you can elaborate on to whatever extent you want that there's no right way to matter. There's no single right way to matter. And yet there are right and wrong ways to care about mattering. Both of that is true at the same time. Exactly. You know, I think one of the fundamental, political problems of our, of our times is how can we recognize that we're not all alike without wanting to ring each other's neck? And that is the political problem of our time. It's a problem of democracy, right? Of liberal democracy. So much the problem of democracy that the conditions have really brought it to the four, you know, it's, it's staring us in the face. And so yes, I think that that is probably my most important, uh, I don't know, point that I would like to make, um, that there are, there are objectively wrong ways of doing it. Um, and that can take many forms, but there are so many right ways of doing it. Right. More than one. Yeah. Very good. Yes. That is a wonderful thought to end on Rebecca Newburger Goldstein. Thanks so much for being on the Winescape podcast. Such a pleasure to speak with you, Shoff. Yeah