Several points on peeling away the layers wrapped around the center;
The fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through, than any images on the screen. The consciousness seeking knowledge, than any formulation or brand of it.
The problem then for Western thought, is that we do focus so intently on the the details, from politics to science, rather than the source giving rise to them. Artificial Intelligence, for instance, assumes thinking, as in the processing of information, gives rise to consciousness, not the other way around.
One way to peel this system apart is to consider reality in terms of energy and the forms/information it manifests. For example, galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass/form coalesces in.
As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with the central nervous system, to sort through all the information generated, in order to chart our course in life. Basically motor and steering.
As experiments show, our subconscious reactions precede consciousness, but the function of the consciousness is not to respond directly. Rather to process all the input, so that future responses are better informed. The structure of thought, emerging from the impulse of emotion.
Much of this is mirrored in society, such as with government, as the executive and regulatory function, is the central nervous system, while finance, as the value circulation mechanism, amounts to the heart and arteries. Currently having its Marie Antionette moment, but that’s another story.
Our primary conceptual mistake is that having built civilization up out of the collective knowledge of narrative, we think of time as the point of the present “moving” past to future, but it is change turning future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Even physics incorporates it as measures of duration, but duration is this physical state, as configurations coalesce and dissolve. The past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Causality and conservation of energy.
As such, time is an effect of this dynamic, like temperature, pressure, color etc. All fundamental to the reality of life, just not directly reflected in the narrational sequencing of thought.
So this reality is as much about thermodynamic feedback loops, as narrative events. Processes and patterns.
Just as galaxies are a cosmic convection cycle of energy expanding out, as form precipitates in, society is a function of the organic social energies pushing out, as the cultural and civil forms coalesce in. Liberal growth, vs. conservative structure.
It is the feedback between them, as the patterns affect the direction of the process.
For example, as products in a factory go from start to finish, future to past, the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. As with life, individuals go birth to death, while the species goes onto the next generation, shedding the old. Patterns giving form and direction to the process.
The point, in a nutshell, is that after a hundred thousand years of this linear, ideals based culture, where if a little is good, more must better, we are reaching the edge of the petri dish and need a more cyclical, reciprocal paradigm.
