Very true. Not only do we have to sort through and distill information in order to function, signal from the noise, but this process is integral to life. Natural selection. Nature is always throwing up lots of potential life and it is constantly being reduced down, as more is thrown up, so there is this dynamic between the organic energy growing up, as structural forms coalesce in.
Look at galaxies; energy radiating out, as mass/form coalesces in.
We are the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing this energy driving us on, along with that nervous system to sort through the forms, desires, emotions and select which to encourage and which to discourage.
As society is the organic energies pushing out, as civil and cultural forms coalesce in. Youth and age, liberal and conservative.
These two will be in constant tension and the relationship with fluctuate around and through and over any tipping point, because as soon as some clear distinction appears, it becomes fought over.
A good author on the origins of western culture is Gilbert Murray. In particular his; The Five Stages of Greek Religion. It largely pertains to the pagan origins of Christianity. One of the primary observations is the Trinity came from the Greek Year Gods, which died and were replaced every spring. Thus Father, Son and Holy Ghost were an analogy for past, present and future. Now the Catholic Church viewed itself as the eternal institution, so they did their best to obscure this premise of resetting, no matter how integral it was to the story of Jesus. So Martin Luther had to come along and try to reset Christianity, as Jesus had tried to do with Judaism.
The simple fact is a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, rather than an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More that desire bubbling up, than the forms into which it coalesces. But religion is not so much about spirituality and logic, as it is about culture and social order, so the top down father figure is mythologized, rather than further encouraging that anarchy of hope and desire that truly drives us.
Yet because that impulse naturally hardens, it becomes another shell the energy seeks to break through. As I tell kids on occasion, growing up is like grass pushing through the concrete and then one day, you wake up and you’re the concrete and there is this damn grass trying to push you out of the way.
Thus the reset is fundamental to the process. Without the ups and downs, it would be a flatline, so there will always be the fluctuations.
Part of the problem is that we view time narratively, as the point of the present, moving past to future, but it is change, turning future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Potential is nearly infinite, while actual is a tiny fraction of that and the residual, of memory and history, an even tinier fraction of that. So since we are the only life to escape the present, through our story telling, we obsess over the possibilities of hope and remembrance, not accepting they are simple effects of change. The apple from the tree of knowledge. The ideal is the cake we want to both have and eat.
We are more the light shining through the film, than the images on it, but those images are the construct of our reality.
The process(light) goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts 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 and expelling product.
The feedback is the patterns define and direct the process. The images tell their stories.
