Consider that as mobile organisms, the basis for our sentience coalescing as a sequence of perceptions arises from the need to physically navigate. Which is why our perception of time is as the point of the present moving past to future. Which even physics codifies as measures of duration.

Logically though, 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. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved,' because it is the physical present. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, which are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as the sequence of change is to our thought process.

Different clocks run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

That civilization is about getting everyone following the same narrative, adhering to the same rules, using the same measures, it might seem like there should be some universal flow of time, but change is situational. There is rabbit time, turtle time, tree time, etc.

So the energy, as the present and dynamic process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise. So we tend to think in terms of order and chaos, rather than energy and form.

Given galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in, this dichotomy extends out much further, but I get treated as a crackpot for coloring too far outside the lines.