As a response to the series;
It might help to consider the mechanics of time, as not so much the point of the present moving past to future, but change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.
There is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Causality and conservation of energy.
So the flow of time goes from the near infinity of future potential, to the quite definite present, to the meager residue of memory and history.
Energy is “conserved,” because it is always and only present. It is the present, this dynamic state, rather than some dimensionless point between past and future. It is the changing configuration of this state which creates time.
So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. Frequencies and amplitudes.
It is just that as mobile, intentional organisms, we perceive our situation as a sequence of perceptions, which we are constantly judging, as a function of navigation. Thus the close association with space.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
Consider it as the relationship between this energy and the configurations it is constantly manifesting; The process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.
Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past. Life goes from one generation to the next, while lives rise and fall, like so many waves.
The energy manifests and drives, while the forms define and direct. As frequency and amplitude define the wave, they don’t motivate and manifest it.
As thoughts direct our actions, but desire drives them.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. We think of that coalescing form as mass and gravity, yet there is much ‘missing mass’ to explain all the actual contraction observed.
We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the brain and mind sort through the information precipitating out and further condense it.
So the energy, the physical brain, goes onto the future, as the mind sorts through the forms rapidly fading into the past.
As society is that dichotomy of social energies bubbling up, as civil and cultural forms coalesce in, it becomes a conflict between the multiplicity of desires and the need to sort among them. We are part of nature’s process of selection.
Yet it fluctuates, as forms harden and decay, to be shed, as another cycle of re-generation starts. Sometimes the future is a continuation of the past and sometimes it is a reaction to it.
It is more the thermodynamic cycles, than the linearity of time.
Expand and consolidate. Heat and cool.
If you want to understand the past, study the information, the waves that have crested. If you want to predict the future, study the energy, the waves still building.
