Often the future is as much reaction to the past as continuation of it.

As these mobile organisms, we view time narratively, as the point of the present moving past to future. Yet the reality is change, turning future to past.

Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, informing and driving it. Causality and conservation of energy.

So we are not so much determined by the past, as the past is an effect of what is. As Alan Watts put it, ‘the wake doesn’t steer the boat, the boat creates the wake.’

Energy is “conserved,” because there is no physical past for it to recede into, nor future from which it arrives. As it is the changing configuration of this energy which creates time. Duration is the present, as the events come and go, rise and fall.

Time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. Think frequencies and amplitudes.

Think of reality as a dichotomy of energy and form. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. Our bodies have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through and further distills the forms precipitating out.

So the energy, as process, goes past to future, while the forms go future to past. Consciousness goes past to future while thoughts go future to past.

The future is not pre-determined, as the process of determination only occurs as the present. The total input cannot be known prior to the event, so neither can the output.

As products of a narrative based culture, we have this outside time point of view, yet we lose sight of what is actually occurring. We think of reality as some narrative arc, leading to some final denouement, but then lose all sense of the endless feedback loops permeating the present, getting knocked on our butts by all the noise we ignored, searching for the signal, as the shreds of that desired goal rapidly fade away.