John Brodix Merryman Jr.
2 min readJul 10, 2022

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Is the dimensional model of time correct?

We are mobile organisms, so our sentience coalesces as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate. The consequence is that our experience of time is as the point of the present moving past to future. Given our cultures are based on collective narrative and physics models it as measures of duration, it is deeply ingrained into our psyche.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, as the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events form and dissolve.

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

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

That culture is about getting everyone following the same rules, using the same measures, as one larger meta-organism, it might seem there should be one universal, Newtonian flow of time, but it's rabbit time, turtle time, etc. and the turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.

That life is so diverse and so integrated is because everything doesn't march to the beat of the same drummer. It's multicultural, not monocultural.

Time is asymmetric, because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction. Entropy is a second order effect and not what is directly measured.

That different events will appear in different order from different locations is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were a moment ago. It's the energy being conserved, not the information. That the information changes is time.

Energy is conserved, because it is the present, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't refer to them as dimensions of space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is to thought.

As present, the energy goes past to future while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past, but 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 our tendency is to think of reality in terms of order and chaos, rather than energy and form.

Though galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.

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John Brodix Merryman Jr.
John Brodix Merryman Jr.

Written by John Brodix Merryman Jr.

Having an affair with life. It's complicated.

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