I think we need to look beyond our human afflictions in order to understand how they are constructed.

Reality is a dichotomy of energy and form. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in.

We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through and further condenses the information precipitating through the process, the signal from the noise we use to navigate.

As these mobile, intentional creatures, we experience reality as a sequence of perceptions, then narrate our journeys and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge. Consequently the basis of our understanding is this narrative flow of time, from past to future.

The physical 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, in order to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Energy and its forms, constantly mutating.

Thus the process, the energy being “conserved,” goes past to future, while the forms/patterns generated, go future to past.

As consciousness goes past to future, while the thoughts and feelings being expressed go future to past.

Which suggests consciousness exists as an energy. More the light shining through the film, than the images and story line on it.

Yet it’s our heart and gut processing the energy, the flame burning, seeking sources of fuel. While the head has to sort through and give direction and focus to these appetites bubbling up. More the referee of our emotions, than their source. Motor and steering. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement.

Which is to argue that these boxes we create around our lives are somewhat necessary. What limits, defines, as what defines, limits.

The problem is when we think it is all about the box, than the processes giving rise to it. When it becomes about the rules, rather than the decision making process giving birth to them.

Take the Trolley Problem, as an example of how Western philosophy can’t seem to see beyond this assumption of a top down structure, to give form to our lives. Where it is a search for that set rule which will answer our dilemma of having to decide, but at the end, it is still the decision that affects.

It is the long shadow of God. Logically a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. Yet no society could function, by simply reveling in sentience, so we have this father figure lawgiver, as the idol.

Unfortunately there is no ultimate ends, if time is simply a process of change, only means, going in cycles. So the ideal is not the absolute. The absolute is that equilibrium at the center. The Black Hole, where all form is canceled. The flatline between the ups and downs.

Consequently when we conflate our communal ideals with the absolute, the effect is social implosion, as only the most rigid and doctrinaire are deemed fit to be the perfect form.

Since the theistic version has faded, we have replaced it with the materialist version and so the bottom line now rules. Yet money is not a commodity that can be saved, but a contract between the individual and society, where the asset is backed by a debt. In order to store the assets, equal amounts of debt have to be generated. One way is to squeeze the parts of the economy that have to function, in order to force them into debt, that this investment capital can be utilized. The other is having the government borrow up these surplus vouchers, rather than simply negating them. The capital markets could not function, without government siphoning up trillions in surplus money. Much of which is thrown into the miltary burn pit. Requiring us to blow up other countries, in order to spend the money, so that more can be borrowed.

The illusions have us spiraling into the abyss, but the energy radiates back out, towards infinity. So we fluctuate somewhere between the absolute, where everything cancels out and the infinite, where everything fades out.