What if both determinism and free will are logically flawed?

We are mobile organisms, so our experience of our situation is a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate our world. The consequence is that we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future. Culture arises from the cumulative narrative and even physics codifies it as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present as the events coalesce and dissolve.

The premise of determinism is there is this narrative flow and cause invariably leads to effect, so the future is already determined by the past course of events.

Yet that linear dimension of time does not exist. The past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it, Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect. So the act of determination can only occur as the present, of which we are part.

Free will is an oxymoron, as the premise of will is to affect and without cause, there is no effect.

The problem is that our cognitive functions are not directly in control of our immediate motor functions, as they would be too slow. If our response time was an indicator of free will, then flies would apparently have more free will than people.

The cognitive function is to sort through experience and learn, so that our future reactions are better informed.

As for meaning, it is from what we give in life, not what we get, but our culture is all about what we get, not what we give.

A functioning society is based on responsibilities, with rights as reward, but when ours was first being imagined, the irresponsible were likely to stave, so the debate was over allocating rights.

Now we have a society where rights are considered universal, while responsibilities are optional, but the consequence is the Tragedy of the Commons.