One of the stumbling blocks in making sense of reality is our concept of time.
As these mobile organisms we logically evolved this sequential process of perception in order to navigate, so the flow of time, from past to future, is integral to our conception of reality.
The evident fact though, is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
So there is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests the present and creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
So energy, as dynamic process and present, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.
Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts defining it go future to past. Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, "feeding the flame," while the central nevous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise. Consequently our tendency to define reality in terms of order and chaos, rather than energy and form.
The three dimensions of space are really the xyz coordinate system, which is a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude.
The primary elements of space are infinity and equilibrium. Which is implicit in Special Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilbrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero.
So space is absolute and infinite.
What fills space is this energy and the forms it manifests. The energy radiates out, toward infinity, as the forms coalesce in, toward equilibrium.
One toward black body radiation and the other toward black holes.
The two dynamics expressed are synchronization and harmonization. Centripetal and centrifugal.
Organisms are centripetal, ecosystems are centrifugal. Nodes and networks.
As for the current economic mess, people are linear, goal oriented organisms in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, so while markets need money to circulate, people see it as signal to extract and store. The medium has become the message. The tool became the god.
It functions as a contract, with the asset backed by the debt, enabling the flow of value around the community, like the flow of blood around the body.
But we treat it as a commodity to mine from society, to save and store. Requiring ever more to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted.
Such as restricting the flow of money through the economy, requiring it to run on that much more debt and draw the saved money back into circulation.
Which 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 Ancients devised debt jubilees to reset this process, but we lack even that level of perspective.
The other primary method is having the government as debtor of last resort. The elephant in the room is the capital markets could not function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money.
The wars are just to make it go away, so more can be borrowed. Consequently the overwhelming strategic ineptitude and no one is held responsible.
A medium is not a store. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store.
The functionality of money is its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It is the quintessential public utility, like roads and has to be respected as such. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and are not personally responsible for sustaining its value.
The fact is there isn't sufficient investment potential to individually save the amounts necessary, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so the commons will have to be resurrected and updated, in that rights and responsibilities have to remain within shouting distance of one another.
The irony of our individualistic ethos is the resulting atomized culture is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic financial system.
This is somewhat tangental to your essay, but I think there are various aspects of these traditions that do patch together various solutions, without totally clarifying them and given the state the world is in, we need a bit more clarity. We've reached the edge of the global petri dish and colonizing space is not a viable option.
