The problem is 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 as the present moving past to future.

It is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and history. Science codifies it as measures of duration.

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

It's like seeing the heavens moving east to west, though it is the earth turning west to east. Then concocting endless theories why.

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.

It is like a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.

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. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't confuse them with space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions as sequence is to thought.

Energy, as presence, goes past to future, because the patterns generated 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. Suggesting consciousness manifests as energy.

Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, the nervous system sorting the patterns, signals from the noise and the circulation system as feedback in the middle.

Which would make the nervous system, with the brain as its central focus, more the referee of the sentience bubbling up as all the conflicting emotions, desires, interests, etc., than its source. The focal point, the decider.

The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Motor and steering.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.....