Why Imagination Matters More Than Ever
A look at what the modern world is doing to our inner lives.
My last post traced the path that led me to the deeper ground of my current work. This post continues that thread, shifting from the personal to the cultural. The more I look around, the clearer it is that creativity is needed now more than ever as a form of psychological survival. Central to that is imagination.
Before I go into this, I want to be clear about what I mean by the term imagination. Imagination, as it’s used in depth psychology, is a perceptual capacity and an inner form of intelligence that reveals meaning, direction, and emotional truth before language can name it. It’s how the psyche communicates. On a deeper level, it’s how we metabolize the complexity of our inner and outer lives.
So with that in mind, here’s the landscape before us as I see it.
We’re Living Through a Cultural Contraction
There’s a reason abstract art has erupted during times of upheaval. When the outer world destabilizes, the old forms stop working. Artists turn inward because literal representation can’t hold the psychological truth of the moment. Kandinsky developed his abstract work during a period when European order was collapsing, and Rothko moved into what came to be known as color-field painting in the post–World War II era. Their work was a response to a world that had become unstable. The external structure was breaking down, so the inner structure had to speak.
I feel like we are entering one of those moments again.
The United States hasn’t collapsed, but the cultural psyche is under real strain. Economic pressure is tightening. Political hostility is escalating. Social fragmentation is accelerating. Shared narratives are dissolving. Technology moves faster than our systems can adapt. And the pace of information is reshaping our lives whether we want it to or not. We feel this even if we can’t name it directly.
What Happens When Imagination Collapses
When the outer world becomes overwhelming, our psychological energy shifts toward survival. Our focus narrows and curiosity shuts down. The greater meaning of things becomes harder to access. And imagination, which requires inner spaciousness, begins to contract before we even notice.
When imagination is no longer present, the inner world goes flat. Emotional life becomes muted or reactive. Our ability to dream into the future weakens. We lose the quiet internal compass that helps us navigate uncertainty. Life feels drained of possibility because we no longer have access to the perceptual capacity that recognizes it. This isn’t as simple as burnout alone; it’s an erosion of inner life.
Imagination Is How We Navigate
It’s important to be clear that imagination is not an escape from reality. Instead, it gives us a fuller version of it.
Jung described imagination as the psyche’s way of presenting what lies beneath conscious awareness.
Einstein used it to reshape modern physics.
Thoreau saw it as the capacity that wakes us up to the depth of everyday life.
Agnes Martin treated it as the quiet field of clarity beneath thought.
Across disciplines, imagination shows up as a form of perception. It reveals possibilities logic alone can’t reach. It reconnects us to depth when the surface becomes overwhelming. In a destabilized world, imagination becomes a navigational system.
Reclaiming Imagination Through Art
If you’re wondering what to make of all this, stay with me. Turning toward imagination is something every human being can do.
This is where art, and our human ability to make art, becomes essential. Making art that is exploratory and honest disrupts the forces that shrink our inner world. It reopens the imaginative field because it requires us to slow down and meet what’s actually present.
Imagination arises on its own terms, often before we understand it, and it reflects the deeper movements of our psyche with far more accuracy than conscious thought ever could. Creating without performing gives the psyche a place to speak without needing to translate itself into something digestible, consumable, or marketable.
This kind of art-making is a form of perception. It lets us see what we didn’t know and gives shape to the experiences that have no other language. In a world that feels increasingly unstable, staying in contact with your inner life isn’t only vital, it’s your responsibility. It can keep you rooted in something other than fear and survival.
So What Now?
Getting back to yourself is not easy. It takes commitment and real purpose, the kind of purpose I’m trying to give you with this post.
That might look like sitting down with a blank page and following an image without judging it. It could mean paying attention to a color that keeps appearing or simply noticing where you’ve gone numb. Ultimately, it means letting your imagination move and speak before you decide what it means.
The point of making art right now isn’t to create something “good.” The point is to reopen and return to the imaginative field in your daily life. Imagination isn’t something to worship or idealize. It’s simply a human capacity we can’t afford to lose if we want to stay connected to what is inherently true and real in us.