What if we think of reality in terms of energy and information?

As these biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts, orders, measures, judges the information and patterns precipitaing out

One radiates out, while the other coalesces in. Like galaxies.

Think of anything physical; what if there was no energy manifesting it, wouldn't it just collapse into a black hole?

Yet all energy will express some form, even if just the fluctuations of waves, rising and falling.

Energy is conserved, which means it is always and only present, as none is left in the past, nor arrives from the future.

Given that, it seems evident the dynamic of this energy creates time. It's not so much the present moving past to future, as change, turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present. Cause becomes effect.

So we just have this physical state of energy expressing form. Though the energy moves onto the future, as the forms fade into the past.

Consciousness and life moves onto the future, as thoughts and lives fade into the past.

It is just that as these mobile organisms, our experience of reality is a sequence of perceptions, so we experience this narrative flow and build our cultures around it. When the narrative breaks down, breaks up, goes sideways, we try steering it back on course, even if it means war, or finding another narrative, revolution, competing narratives, civil war.

Maybe, at some point, we need to realize there is no grand narrative, just lots of thermodynamic swirls and feedback loops.

Then we can ride the waves up and down, not insist on marching off the highest cliffs.

Nature's rules. Nature rules.