One thing to consider is that as mobile creatures, with a narrative based culture, we think of time as the point of the present moving past to future. Even physics codifies this as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

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

Duration is the present, as events form and dissolve.

As such, it's an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes.

So the reality is much more complex, for our thought process to condense into the present, rather than the present as some dimensionless point between past and future. Yet conceptually much simpler.

We think of this sequence as a foundational aspect of reality, but yesterday doesn't cause today. The sun shining on a rotating planet creates this cycle of days and nights.

So the cycling is more a thermodynamic relationship between the "conserved" energy, as the present, versus the forms being manifest.

The energy, as process, goes past to future, while the forms/information goes future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while perceptions go future to past.

Consider that the energy is what drives the wave, while we sense the undulations, fluctuations of the forms created. The frequencies and amplitudes.

As these organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us onward, while the central nervous system sorts through the forms precipitating out.

Which are only fully formed and clarified by the waves cresting. Frequencies and amplitudes of color and sound. So the mental impression of the present as a point.

Thus this convection cycle of energy radiating out, while forms coalesce in. Like galaxies, energy radiating to infinity, while form coalesces toward equilibrium. Both entropic.

Society is that dichotomy of essential organic energies and desires driving it on, as civil and cultural forms coalesce to give it structure and definition. Youth and age, liberal and conservative.

Each then setting the stage for the next cycle.