[Draft 3-2-2026, additional notes 3-3-2026]
Beyond warp & weft
Words matter. And I like finding words which, literally or metaphorically (even poetically), integrate existing concepts in sociology, psychology, philosophy, religion, education, business – in a more accessible manner. For example, the “layered cake” model helps visualize an interdisciplinary context.
Braiding and mattering are such words. More than “connecting the dots,” they weave together complex (multidimensional) strands.
Braiding
Braiding recently struck me as a more accessible way to characterize the essential concepts of superposition and entanglement in quantum physics [1]. Then I sought images which illustrate braiding.
But an AI Overview of the term as a metaphor clarified its wider context. A connection with storycraft. And associations with other terms: interconnected, intertwined, interlaced, interdependent, …
AI Overview
As a metaphor, braided describes the intricate interweaving of separate, distinct strands—such as ideas, storylines, or life experiences—into a single, unified, and stronger whole. It signifies complexity, interconnectedness, and the mingling of elements that remain distinct yet inseparable.
Key aspects of the “braided” metaphor:
Intertwining Elements: It is often used to describe combining different concepts, such as braiding fact and fiction, or weaving multiple narratives into a single story.
Structural Unity: A braided essay connects three or more distinct threads (e.g., interior experience and exterior facts) to create a complex, coherent narrative.
Process and Complexity: It emphasizes that the resulting structure is stronger and more complex than the individual, separate strands.
Flowing Together: Inspired by “braided streams,” it represents a system where separate channels continuously merge and divide.
Mattering
Coincidentally I’d been reading three books on Mattering. The most recent one – The Mattering Instinct by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein – has a braid on its cover (although the word braid is not used in her book [2]).
And The Mattering Instinct opens with a visualization (yeah!) – the mattering map: “the great diversity among us that amazes and dismays us … in a culture that increasingly assesses mattering in terms of wealth.”
My 2022 post The meaning of life in one word? discussed mattering and meaning (along with my comments).
Book covers
Reviews matter [3].
Foundational storytelling – fables
Fables dramatize a culture. Typically in accessible chunks. About what matters. Shared vocabulary, norms, values, … weaving together a community. Strands of good, bad, ugly.
Looking back on my 21st century fable “Fox & the ants,” braiding and mattering apply. In my notes for the story, I unpacked possible perspectives of the fox and crow.
One perspective on this fable is that the crow stayed rooted in trickle down moral obligation. The belief that moral attachment abates by ranked kinship circles. By increasing distance between neighborhoods.
The fox learned that being a neighbor meant aligning widely with others. Unlike the crow, he saw kinship as not so simply circumscribed – not so easily bounded; and relationships as more complex. Moral challenges required more than a set of tribal rules (or so-called natural law).
In other words, the fox gets (groks) braiding, while the crow does not. The crow’s world remains small, without growing. The fox’s world grows, becomes a web of relationships – it’s not a zero-sum primal landscape. [4]
And in her book, one of the central points is that mattering is not a limited resource, not a zero-sum thing.
Into the vast God-shaped hole in our hearts, contemporary culture has instead inserted such values as power, wealth, and fame, suggesting these are the best paths to salvation. But such an exclusionary salvation leaves many feeling that they don’t, can’t, and will never matter – to say nothing of how the desire to reach such goals intensifies the destabilizing competition among us, turning us into mattering adversaries instead of mattering allies. There just doesn’t seem to be enough mattering to go around, and we scramble like children beneath a piñata. – Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger (2026). The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. Kindle Edition.
Scaling ourselves
Both braiding and mattering have a darkside. In our uniquely human way, they connect to polar purposes … as evident in the complex interplay of better and darker angels. Diverse braiding of temperaments & experiences across lives (including childhood trauma and grace). Mattering to the light and the night.
In my poem “the gods need not take our sight …” (peak of eternal light), I wrote:
in moving from low to high,
we see our pathway as true,
and that we are in the right.
yet forever left nearby,
as if they are out of view,
still the shadows of the night
In my poem “midstream” (even as we do), I wrote:
we are suddenly
one that needs care.
germinating in a culture,
located within a history,
of lives living midstream,
even as we do
That stanza may be recast as:
so, we are suddenly
one that needs to matter,
braided into a culture,
as one moving midstream,
twined paths of salvation,
flowing as we mightand whether that might be
on the left or the right,
to gods, demons, or ‘we’,
or the acclaim of might
Notes
[1] In QFT and math
• Google: use of the term “braiding” or “braided” or “braid” in quantum field theory
For example:
[2] Google: is the word “braid” or “braided” used in Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s book The Mattering Instinct
AI Overview
Based on the available search results, there is no direct evidence that the word “braid” or “braided” is used in Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s book The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us.
The search results for the book focus on its description as a non-fiction work discussing the “longing to matter” referencing stories …
The search results do mention the phrase “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas R. Hofstadter, but this appears in search results only as a related book or product that customers often buy alongside Rebecca Goldstein’s works.
Note: My own Kindle search in the published book found no use of the words: braid, braided, or braiding.
• Google: is the word “braid” or “braided” used in Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach
AI Overview
Yes, the word “braid” is used directly in the subtitle of Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
“Braid“: The term refers metaphorically to the intertwining themes of the works of Kurt Gödel, M.C. Escher, and J.S. Bach throughout the book.
“Braided“: While “braid” is prominent in the title, the concept of the book is often described as “braiding” together various intellectual threads.
The book is frequently referred to by its acronym GEB.
• Google: is the word “braid” or “braided” or “braiding” used in Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach
AI Overview
Yes, the word “braid” is prominently used in the full title of Douglas Hofstadter’s bookGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
Braid: It appears directly in the title and is used throughout the book to describe the intertwining themes of the works of Kurt Gödel, M.C. Escher, and Johann Sebastian Bach. [I can’t verify this usage.]
Braided: The word “braided” is used in descriptions of the book’s structure and thematic, such as in the context of “braided models” or in describing how Hofstadter “braided” his chapters.
Braiding: The act of “braiding” is often used to describe the thematic intertwining, such as in discussions of “braiding” ideas together.
Reddit, Medium
Reddit: “… investigating the motifs that bind the three titular subjects. It’s not making arguments so much as observations, but in tying (or dare I say braiding) them all together, …”
Medium: “The mental braiding entailed in Escher’s tricks and twists …”
M.C. Escher’s Braided Visions
The book frequently uses the metaphor of a “golden braid” to describe the connections between mathematics, art, and music.
[3] Book reviews
I’m still exploring the classic question “What role does a good man have in a society that does not value goodness?”
Perhaps books on mattering explore a similar question: “How does a good man live in a society in which mattering is adversarial, exclusionary – in a society which assesses mattering solely in terms of power, wealth, and fame?”
- THE MATTERING INSTINCT
• The Atlantic > “A New Understanding of Human Beings’ Most Basic Desire” by John Kaag (January 8, 2026) – The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life.
[Article excerpt, as behind paywall]
We are, Goldstein asserts, “creatures of matter who long to matter.” This phrase captures the central paradox of the human condition: We are physical beings governed by the indifferent laws of nature, yet we are consumed by an obsession with our own significance. Her book is about, as she puts it, “a missing piece in the puzzle of understanding ourselves, one another, and our troubled times.” Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist known for her ability to bridge the worlds of science and the humanities, undertakes an ambitious project. She seeks to trace the origin of this profound desire and redefine what it means for a human life to flourish. She comes to a somewhat-surprising conclusion: that happiness isn’t always attainable or even desirable, but that anyone can achieve a good life by working to create order out of nature’s chaos.
• Bookshop.org US > The Mattering Instinct a book by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, Goldstein argues that this need to matter – and the various “mattering projects” it inspires – is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience.
Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects: … These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict – and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around.
… The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others – and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other.
Reviews [some blurbs]
The Mattering Instinct is a testament to the idea that humans find purpose when, as the poet Rumi wrote, we “let the beauty we love be what we do.” In a world fractured by competing claims on what’s important, Goldstein offers a vision that is both intellectually resonant and humane, reminding us that the struggle to justify our existence is the very thing that makes our existence matter. – John Kaag “The Atlantic“
“Incisive…. [Goldstein] catalogs the rich variety of ways people try to carve out purpose: ‘socializers‘ try to matter through relationships; ‘heroic strivers‘ through achievement; and ‘transcenders‘ through communion with whatever spiritual principle orders the cosmos…. Convincingly situating the instinct to matter as increasingly vital in a world that can feel impersonal and starved of meaning, … It’s a fascinating take on a profound yet little-understood aspect of the psyche. – Publishers Weekly, starred review”
The Mattering Instinct is an extraordinary and urgent book. Rebecca Goldstein helps us to see that so much of our lives, and so much of human history, is driven by the need to matter. As technology weakens our social ties and frees us from needing other people, the crisis of mattering will explode. Giving everyone a generous universal basic income will not help. This book, and its delineation of multiple paths to mattering, will. – Jonathan Haidt, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Anxious Generation and The Righteous Mind
Rebecca Goldstein’s books always get to the heart of the matter. This one, provocative and timely, gets to the heart of mattering itself. The Mattering Instinct is a powerful and original book. – Sherry Turkle, best-selling author of Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries
“What drives human beings to do both great good and terrible evil? Rebecca Goldstein brilliantly argues that the answer is strangely simple yet incredibly powerful: it is our need to matter in the world. To understand others – and yourself – read this book. – Arthur C. Brooks, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Build the Life You Want and From Strength to Strength”
- MATTERING
• Midstream Musings comment 1-2-2026
- LA Times > “10 page-turners for a new year” by Bethanne Patrick, freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.” (1-1-2026)
- Bookshop.org
From award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jennifer Wallace comes Mattering – a landmark book that introduces a transformative new framework to confront the loneliness, burnout, and lack of purpose so many of us face today.
[4] NPR > “Expanding The Circle Of Moral Concern” by Tania Lombrozo (November 15, 2016) (February 2, 2026) – Moral progress is an easy idea to embrace, but it’s not an easy idea to defend. What, after all, is the force that ensures we move in the right direction?
AI Summary
The idea of an expanding circle of moral concern, where our ethical considerations grow to include larger groups and even nonhuman animals, is widely accepted. However, moral progress is not guaranteed and requires active effort to treat others well and make ethical decisions. The author expresses a personal commitment to expanding their circle of moral concern to include various marginalized groups.
Quotes
In an influential book of ethics first published in 1981, the philosopher Peter Singer offers a striking image of moral progress over the course of human history: an expanding circle of moral concern, beginning with our own family or tribe, and expanding over time to include larger groups, nations, families of nations, all humans and perhaps even nonhuman animals.
With our evolved cognitive capacities and the help of increasingly sophisticated reasoning, we can come to appreciate how and why the scope of our moral concern should grow.
Other references
• “Kumihimo is a Japanese braiding method”
Work in progress
I’m still working on visualization of braiding using Gemini. To create images which are interesting and accurate (so that the strands being braided clearly matter in the resulting braid, eh). And visualizations that aren’t overstuffed. Images for more fables, perhaps.
