Without the ups and downs, it would just be a flatline.

I think the concept you are looking is feedback and circularity. Western thought tends toward a monist idealism, but nature is more a polarity of opposites. Yin and yang.

Even “matter” is more the tension between positive and negative, than any actual substance.

The process of thought cycles/fluctuates between reductionism and contextualization. Though we tend to focus on the focus of reductionism, while context is an afterthought.

A primary dichotomy is between energy and the forms it manifests. Consider that galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in, in what amounts to a cosmic convection cycle.

As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with a central nervous system to sort through the forms/information precipitating out, as well as referee the emotions and impulses bubbling up.

As societies are the raw organic energies bubbling up, while civil and cultural forms coalesce in. Youth and age, liberal and conservative. Anarchy versus tyranny.

The result is not so much balance, as the tension between the irresistible force of desire and the immovable object of judgement. The heart and the head.

As these mobile, intentional organisms, with a narrative based culture, we naturally experience time as the point of the present flowing past to future, but the reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. There is no “dimension” of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it, aka, causality and conservation of energy.

Time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one calls them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of perception necessary to navigate.

The left, linear, 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.

The current physics dilemma is a bit like geocentric cosmology and trying to explain why the sun and stars go east to west, before realizing it’s the earth turning west to east. The math of epicycles was brilliant and complex, but the physics was lousy.

So the “present” is simply whatever forms the energy is manifesting. Consequently the process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Verbs/nouns.

Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past.

Lives go birth to death, while life moves 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 are the patterns defining and directing the process. as thought affect our actions, or the success of products affects future production. Motor and steering.

The three dimensions of space are really just the xyz coordinate system and are a mapping device. They are no more fundamental to space, than longitude, latitude and altitude are fundamental to the surface of this planet.

If we remove all physical properties from space, it still has the non-physical qualities of infinity and equilibrium. Infinity, as there is nothing to bound it and equilibrium is implicit in General Relativity. As the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The absolute zero of unmoving space. So space is the absolute and the infinite.

What fills space is energy and the forms it manifests. The energy radiates towards infinity, or until it is absorbed, or fades, back towards equilibrium. The forms coalesce until everything cancels out and the energy radiates back out. Black holes.

Meanwhile humanity chases after its ideals, be it God, gold, pleasure, power, etc.

Yet the ideal is not the absolute, because an ideal presumably still has form, while the absolute has none. For instance, a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell.

When we mistake the ideal for the absolute, we spiral into an absolutist narcissism, where the most brutal, fundamentalist and reductionist cultural desires dominate everything else. The node overwhelms the network.

The irony of our individualist culture is that it results in an atomized society, that is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by parasitic financial circulation systems. Networks matter.

For instance, we treat money as both medium of exchange and store of value, yet a medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. So what’s it with money?

As a medium, money is a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt. Yet we experience it as quantified hope and try to save and store it, like a commodity. So in order to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be created.

For one thing, this creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center of the community, if not creating it. While negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. As finance and money serve as the value circulation mechanism of th community, like blood and arteries in the body, this is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don’t need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. Then to compensate for the resulting clogged arteries, blood pressure increases, aka, quantive easing of the money supply.

Another effect is that government has become the debtor of last resort. Where would those trillions go otherwise, given the markets are already flooded with excess capital? So we blow up other countries, as a consequence of trying to sustain surplus notational value. Ha. Ha. Ha.

To make a long story shorter, we need to store value directly in what we presumably save money for. The safety and security of stronger communities and healthier environments.

Just my two cents. In a few hundred million years, the last ten thousand years and the next ten thousand years are going to be a few inches of coal. Nature either balances it out, or fades it out.