We have a top down view of consciousness that is biased by its own point of view, so why not go back to square one?

As mobile, intentional organisms, fauna, we experience our world as flashes of perception, which we automatically sort and judge, as a necessary function of existing in and navigating our environment. Then we tell stories to one another and build civilizations out of the accumulated knowledge.

For one thing, we have a narrative view of time, as the point of the present, moving past to future. Physics even codifies it as measures of duration.

Yet what should be an overwhelming obvious fact is that change turns future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this physical state, as events form and dissolve, go future to past.

There is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform and drive it, aka, causality and conservation of energy.

So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought. Basically the left, cause and effect logical hemisphere of the brain is analogous to a clock/ruler, while the right, emotional, intuitive side is to a thermostat/barometer.

What drives the process is “energy.” Which is “conserved,” thus always and only present, basically because its changing configuration creates the effect of time, so there is no physical past for it to recede into, or future from which it arrives.

So this dynamic process goes past to future configurations, as these patterns rise and fall, like so many waves, future to past.

Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past. As lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.

So consciousness functions as an energy and process, while thoughts are the forms and patterns being generated by it.

Consider that galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass/form coalesces in.

We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with the central nervous system to sort and order the forms precipitating out, as well as referee the emotions bubbling up.

Thus the traditional notion of the heart and gut as the seat of the emotions driving us, with the head basically doing the steering.

The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement.

Then with these narrative based civilizations, we think life is about the ideal as the point of the story, the pot of gold at the end of the narrative arc. Which defines everything from religion to economics, as we distill everything down to some purest form, whether gods, or money. Yet the yin is missing its yang, as we loose sight of the context giving these nodes of consolidation meaning and continuity.

It’s not about the path to the goal, as it is cycles of expansion and consolidation. Youth and age, liberal and conservative.

Then our social codes and moral systems are based around good and bad as some cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but they are actually the biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 from which life rises, not an ideal state it should seek. There is no more an ideal good, than there is an ideal yes. Even bacteria know this.

When we act on this, both sides of every debate will naturally see themselves as good and the other side as bad and anyone trying to study the nuances is weak, or a toadie for the other side. Overlooking the fact that all of life is shades of grey, between the poles of black and white, or colors between light and dark. We mistake the ideal for the absolute.

The real tension, as Ipointed out, is between the multiplicity of desires and the need to sort and order them. Natural selection, as practiced by humanity.

I could go on, but this is just the short rant.