Patterns and processes.

We are mobile organisms, so we perceive reality as a sequence of impressions, which we are constantly sorting and judging, in order to navigate. So we model time narratively, as the point of the present moving past to future.

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. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.

Energy is “conserved,” because it is always and only present, since its changing configurations create the effect of time, just like temperature, pressure, color, sound, etc. are effects of this activity. Frequencies and amplitudes.

So the process, the energy, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

As with a wave, the energy driving it goes onto further waves, while the particular wave rises and falls.

As consciousness goes past to future, while the patterns generated, the thoughts and feelings, go future to past. Or life is constantly moving onto the next generation, shedding the old, as individual lives come and go.

In a factory, the products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

Even galaxies are energy radiating out, towards infinity, while form coalesces in, toward equilibrium. Both entropic directions, diametrically opposed.

Yet because we are these linear, goal oriented creatures, we think it should be all about some ideal essence at the end of the rainbow, but keep finding ourselves chasing our tail, like a puppy.

Meaning is signal in the noise, but the noise is context for the signal. When we search for meaning through reductionism, it’s like boiling a body down to its skeleton and assuming we’ve found the seed. Forms describe, they don’t explain.