Lol. Being an observer of such debates over the decades, I’ve seen your name mentioned a number of times. I tend to be a of a similar vein, in coming up with logical ideas, but certainly not the tenacity of following through on them.
For instance, the real problem with time is that as mobile organisms, we experience reality as flashes of cognition and so think of time as the point of the present, flowing past to future, but it’s change, turning future to past. Potential, actual, residual.
There is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.
Energy is “conserved,” because it is always and only present and that which is the present, as its changing configuration is what creates the effect of time.
Making time similar to temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one calls them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
The left, linear, cause and effect logical hemisphere of the brain is analogous to a clock/ruler, while the right, emotional, intuitive side is to a thermostat/barometer.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think frequencies, or metabolism. It is just that much of history has been getting everyone dancing to the same tune, reading from the same page, or else, that we assume there is some universal time. Winners write the history books.
The simultaneity of the present is dismissed by observing that different events will be perceived in different order, from different locations, but this is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment go, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It’s the energy that’s conserved, not the information! The changing information creates time!
Time is asymmetric because what is being measured, action, is inertial. The earth turns only one direction, not either. Entropy is not what’s being measured and is irrelevant. It’s a secondary effect, like thermodynamics, from temperature and pressure.
Then there is space. Three dimensions, basically the xyz coordinate system, are a mapping device. They are no more foundational to space, than longitude, latitude and altitude are foundational to the surface of this planet.
If you take all physical properties away from space, it is left with the non-physical properties of infinity and equilibrium. Infinity because there is nothing to bound it and equilibrium is implicit in Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The absolute zero of the unmoving void. So space is the absolute and the infinite.
What fills space; matter and energy, or rather energy and the forms it manifests, go opposite directions, as energy radiates to infinity, or at least until coalescing into form. While form coalesces to equilibrium/zero/neutrality, or basically until all energy is radiated away. Thus the primary features of the universe are galaxies. These cosmic convection cycles of energy and form, going opposite directions.
We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process the energy driving us on, along with a central nervous system to sort through the information precipitating out, as well as referee the emotions and impulses bubbling up. Motor and steering.
As such the energy amounts to a process, driving us on, while the patterns precipitating out, define and direct this process. So process goes past to future configurations, while the patterns rise and fall, like so many waves.
Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past. It’s just that thoughts are like waves. They are only fully formed, as they crest, so it seems reality is hollow, but it is emotion and intuition that sense the waves as they are starting to build.(pilot waves?) The higher consciousness is reflective, in order that our future reactions are better informed.
Lives go birth to death, while life flows onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. While the feedback; profits, wages, our actions as intentional beings, etc, direct the future of the process.
As Alan Watts put it, in refuting determinism; The wake doesn’t steer the boat, the boat creates the wake. Events have to occur, in order to be determined. The output cannot be known, no matter the laws of cause and effect, if the input cannot be fully known, beforehand. It’s in this present state where the computations occur.
We look for immortality in terms of time, that we continue after death, but spatially, it’s seeing the same light/sentience shining/churning through all of life. As Emerson put it; We are but thickened light.
There are lots of other points civilization totally overlooks/ignores. For instance, a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. So basically all the centuries of philosophic horsepower can’t even figure out the difference between ideal and absolute!!!!
While this top down, father figure lawgiver is a useful narrative device for educating passing generations to social and cultural needs and beliefs, the result of conflating the ideal with the absolute is to instill a cultural narcissism, as we are taught our social mores are/should be universal, rather than unique expressions of our context.
The issue of morality is that good and bad are not a cosmic duel between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, so there is never going to be some set moral model, as it will always be that tension and balance between desires and judgements.
Youth and age. Liberal and conservative.
Another fallacy is that our medium of exchange, money, is also treated as a store of value. What??? A medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store.
The functionality of money is in its fungibility, so we own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies. There really shouldn’t be more than necessary.
Money is a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt, so to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated. One problem is this creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the core of the community, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. Since finance and money function as the value circulation of the community, like arteries and blood in the body, this is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don’t need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.
The other problem is the government has become the debtor of last resort. Where would those trillions go otherwise? Bid the market up even further?
So we blow up other countries and pay people not to work, as a method of storing excess money. Wonder how that works as a long term investment?
We save for many of the same reasons, housing, children, healthcare, retirement, etc, that if we invested in them as a community, rather than everyone trying to save for them individually, in a metastatic financial system, it would be far healthier.
I could go on, but I find most people are truly turned off, if too many layers of their illusions are peeled away, but you know the drill. It’s like yanking a bandaid off the soul. They figuratively(once literally) cross themselves and walk away.
Having done my best to avoid formal education and spending much of my life on various horse farms, there are other perspectives on life, than what is officially on offer.
Ps,
Epicycles were brilliant math, but lousy physics. Sometimes it takes awhile for the lessons to sink in.
