Andrew,

Very true, but isn't monism a conceptual tool, as well?

What if there were no distinctions? Take out all the ups and downs and it's a flatline. The absolute, the non-fluctuating void, is nothing, rather than everything. The opposite of the absolute is the infinite. So reality is somewhere between everything canceling out and everything fading out.

If we are to really sense and comprehend the world as it is, wouldn't we need tools that could help to frame it?

Consider the idea of time; As mobile creatures with a sequential process of perception and a narrative based culture, we think of it as the point of the present, moving past to future. The reality though, is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it, aka, causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

So energy is "conserved," because it is what is the present. It's always and only present. Its changing configuration creates time.

So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

As consciousness goes past to future, while the thoughts and emotions being expressed by it go future to past.

As individual lives go birth to death, being in the future to being in the past, while the process of life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old, past to future.

Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

So an ecosystem is a process, while organisms are the entities expressed by it. They effectively go opposite directions of time. That would be a rather essential duality.