Whereas instrumental orientations have reference to goals, to effects anticipated for the future, the expressive content of experiences serves to stabilize the present in the security of its constancies rather than as a flickering presence of momentary events, but a present that constitutes itself – through its own particular horizon of the future and the past – as the enduring basis of changing events.

DEFINE: Distinguishes instrumental (goals/effects) from expressive orientations in terms of how each relates to time — instrumental points forward, expressive stabilizes the present.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 123