Maarten,

Yet people are very goal oriented. We have eyes on the front of our heads and not the sides, as many creatures do. Our lives are about forward motion, in a reality that is cyclical and reciprocal. How do we reconcile that our minds seek signal in the noise, such that success often means carving out a very small niche of order in the cacophony? The reason money has so much appeal is that it is quantified, distilled, digitized hope. Infinity in a wallet.

Our fundamental belief is in the ideal. That there is some perfect, singular state, towards which we move, or are driven. Yet the reality is the polarity of balanced elements. Even the presumption of materialism is that there is some base state to the physical, but what we actually experience is the tension and interaction of conflicting forces.

Just because everything is connected, doesn’t make it singular, just networked. The thing to also keep in mind about those feedback loops are all the strands being pulled in by the positive and radiated out in the negative feedbacks. Pulled in by the absolute and radiated toward the infinite.

Think of reality in terms of the dichotomy between energy and the forms it manifests. Energy, being conserved, goes from prior to succeeding forms, as these forms come and go. So the timeline for energy is past to future, while the timeline for the forms is future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, while form coalesces in.

In factories, the product goes start to finish, while the process goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. As individuals, we go birth to death, while the species goes onto future generations, shedding the old.

Consciousness goes one thought to the next, as these perceptions come and go. Each building on the next, seemingly sequential, but as that overall feedback between patterns and processes.

Cosmic convection cycles.