The problem is that we can only see one side of the coin at a time. Nodes and networks, individuals and communities, trees and forest, organisms and ecosystems.
Consider time; As mobile organisms with a sequential process of perception and a narrative based culture, we assume time to be the point of the present moving past to future, but it’s change, turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
So the process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past. Lives go birth to death, while life goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material, expelling product.
So the individual and the community, as network/process, not larger entity, effectively go opposite directions of time.
Another way to think of it as energy and the forms it manifests. Energy is “conserved,” always and only present, because it is what is present. Its changing configuration creates the effect of time.
As these organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through and organizes the patterns precipitating out. So while we, as physical beings, go toward the future, our minds are recording the patterns receding into the past.
The desires driving us on, while the decisions direct our actions. Consequently it isn’t one or the other, but fluctuations of what dominates.
Though we tend to get ideological about being on one side or the other, but mostly end up chasing our tail.
