This is the first in a series of essays concerning nothingness. How in the world is there anything to say about nothingness, given that nothingness involves that which is devoid of anything? Yet, as we are about to discover, nothingness is dynamic. It is found in everyday life and is inherently valuable. This is a remarkable, even absurd declaration to make about that condition which is devoid of any substance. While admitting that nothingness is a very elusive topic to address, I will try in this essay and the three following essays to make sense of this seemingly senseless condition.
In this first essay, I bolster and elaborate on this assertion about nothingness being not only a condition that relates to our daily life but also a condition that retains great value. I will consider the condition of nothingness as a “strange attractor”—a condition that calls for our attention, that pulls in energy and substance, and that serves as a point of organization. I will address the emotions associated with nothingness and absence, as well as the very broad and distant matter of where we all come from and from what emerged our universe. I will consider matters such as the frightening numinostic status of nothingness, as well as psychological structures, such as symbols and archetypes, that we construct to deal with this numinostic status. I will also look at ways nothingness comes into being and being devolves into nothingness. Perhaps of greatest immediate importance are the psychological features that accompany nothingness—these being such features as anticipation, freedom, beauty, and waiting.
We now begin our venture into the world (or non-world) of nothingness.
Nothingness Lingers in Our Lives
Multiple levels can be introduced when considering the presence of nothingness in our lives. Nothingness is to be found at a very personal level (proximal), and at a level far away from the human condition (distal). The proximal presence of nothingness is experienced by us as anxiety.
Anxiety
While we are afraid of many things in our life, the fundamental source of anxiety is a fear of nothingness and “nonbeing” according to many existentially and social-critical philosophers (e.g. Martin Heidegger), authors (e.g. Jean Paul Sartre), theologians (e.g. Sǿren Kierkegaard), social scientists (e.g. Robert Jay Lifton) and even poets (e.g. W. H. Auden). The noted existentially oriented psychoanalyst, Rollo May (1977, p. 208) puts it this way regarding the connection between anxiety and the condition of nothingness:
“. . . the security base of the individual is threatened, and since it is in terms of this security base that the individual has been able to experience himself as a self in relation to object, the distinction between subject and object breaks down.”
