The obstacle seems to be time.

As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate. So our experience of time is of the present going past to future. Which is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and history, so foundational to our process of accumulating knowledge.

The evident reality though, is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual.

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.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past.

Implying that energy does manifest as a form of energy. The digestive system processes the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise, with the circulation system as feedback in the middle.

Science does tend to have the same problem with energy, as with consciousness, in that it can only be defined and described in terms of the forms it expresses. Thus the tendency to view information and information processing as fundamental. Such as the idea that given enough processing capacity, computers would become sentient.

Given consciousness as energy, it would definitely be causal and the act of determination can only occur as the present, yet we do tend to get caught up in feedback loops with no circuit breakers, as the signals our minds naturally select are what resonates and synchronizes with prior systems and beliefs. So further knowledge is what supports and enforces those prior beliefs, rather than questioning them. Given this applies to cultures as well, those grains of sand at the center of the pearls of culture go back thousands of years. Since the larger the group, the more basic the denominators required to encompass them, some of those Bronze Age tribalisms are still a potent force, irrespective of how in control we might think we are.

When it's millions and billions of people, it's more biology and physics, than culture and politics.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Our little blue dot is about in the middle, where the feedback is most complex.