As in Klein’s model of peremptory ideation, Carl Jung’s notion of “numinous” consists of cognitive content picking up the emotional content and races along, accumulating more thoughts and feelings. In many ways, this expanding dynamic is similar to that of an avalanche drawing in nearby snow, trees, and rocks while plummeting down a mountainside. Complexity and chaos theorists speak of these dynamic processes as strange attractors. The volume of a snowpack at the bottom of the mountain is much larger than the snowpack that started to fall as an avalanche at the top of the mountain. Similarly, the numinous is much larger when it comes to prominence than it was when first precipitated by some profound external or internal experience.
Preparing for the Future: Meaning and A-Causality
Our capacity to make something out of nothing is evident not just in our envisioning of systems and in our creativity, but also in our envisioning of a future (something) that does not yet exist (nothingness). Fred Polak (1973) proposes that this capacity to envision a collective future is fundamental to the maintenance of any society and culture. Elsewhere, with two of my colleagues (Bergquist, Weitz and Pomerantz, 2026), I have relied heavily on Polak’s work when identifying the primary pillars needed to support true freedom in a mid-21st-century society. I wish to build on this analysis regarding freedom by suggesting that our construction of a meaningful present-day reality is critical to any construction of a future reality. Furthermore, this present-day construction requires our search for and acknowledgement of initial indications (seeds) regarding aspects of the desired future—whether it be our personal future or our collective future.
Finding Meaning: we humans are not passive recipients of reality. Rather, we actively construct our reality from moment to moment. Specifically, we are in the business of constantly constructing our current reality. We construct our anticipation of what is about to happen and use this anticipation to guide our immediate actions (Bergquist, 2026). We begin with the unknown (nothingness) of the immediate future and adjust our thoughts, feelings, and actions based on what we anticipate in the immediate future (something). These adjustments are made from moment to moment as we receive feedback from our environment as a result of the actions we take. Longer term, we construct an envisioned future to inspire and guide our actions over an extended period. Similarly, as a society, we anticipate, act, revise, and find guidance in our socially constructed future.
All this constructive activity and production of ongoing, altered anticipations can be incorporated in a single act—this being the “making of meaning.” We find meaning in what we see and what we anticipate. We find meaning and purpose in the actions we take based on this constructed meaning. Without meaning and purpose, we are adrift in an existential sea of anomie (Durkheim, 1897/1997), alienation (Becker, 1971; Becker, 1973), and ultimately despair (Sartre, 1993)
In making meaning out of nothingness, we bring in past experiences (“I can anticipate that the same thing is about to happen.”) and we bring in our hopes and aspirations (“I want this to happen, so I will anticipate that it is about to occur.”). Our meaning at any one point in time is also influenced (even determined) by our current relationships and the meanings already constructed by our society. We also bring in content from our unconscious life when establishing meaning. The peremptory ideational train might even be influencing our immediate meaning-making and anticipation.
