Thank you.
It should be a bit of a inherent stumbling block, as our thought process is this flow of one thought into the next, but we are that relationship between the thoughts and the awareness processing them. Think in terms of a movie projector, where the frames go in front of the projector light flashing through them. Our thoughts are the frames, while our consciousness is the light illuminating them. So while the light goes one frame to the next, past to future, the frames go future to past. Since the light exists as the present, it is the frames flowing by it, like tomorrow becoming yesterday.
The deeper problem is that we assume this sequence is a fundamental flow of time, but the flow is casuality. Energy transitioning through the configurations, while we only perceive flashes of events and try making sense of them.
The fact is that yesterday doesn't cause today. The sun shining on this spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights. Yet our perception is more like the sequence of days, than the dynamic creating them.
Fauna don't have to intentionally move, though they are very much alive. So they didn't need this sequential process of perception.
Consider that our conscious state doesn't control our immediate motor functions, or we would likely be quickly killed by not reacting fast enough to danger. The function of the consciousness is to imagine all the possibilities, so our future reactions are better informed.
Our minds have no problem generating these sequences of experiences when we are asleep and the primary difference is that when we are awake, we have to constantly reset to new external information. Sometimes we actively seek new input to stimulate the mind, or we try to avoid anything disturbing this flow state.
The problem is when we create rabbit holes of our own projections and imaginations, avoiding information that might be useful, but disturbing to this flow state. While this might seem applicable to our current media fed bubbles, it pretty much goes to how we conduct all of life.
One could go from mathematicians to military strategists, laying out the rules and axioms of their games and avoiding any outside input that would interfere. Generals fighting the last war. Treating time as a geometric dimension. Pretty much the essence of your essay.
I guess in some ways, I've spent my life in enough of a bubble, that dissecting it is my hobby. Makes it more resilient, as it heals around any injuries I cause it.
