Four dimensional spacetime is not an objective description of space and time.
Points, lines and planes supposedly have a zero dimension, but 1×0=0. What they really have is a virtual dimension, not zero dimension. While a point can presumably be dimensionless, it is still a specific point of reference. The real zero for geometry would be empty space. It is the potential for any point, not a specific one. Also, three dimensions are the coordinate system of the point these lines cross, not space itself. Any number of coordinate systems, starting from any point, can be used to define the same space. You might say the Israelis and the Arabs use different coordinate systems to define the same land.
Time has two directions. The observer goes from past events to future events. On the other hand, these events go from being in the future to being in the past. To the hands of the clock, the face is going counterclockwise. The three dimensional frame of reference is not moving along an additional dimension. This subjective coordinate system is interacting with other such frames.
If we were to build a clock-like device to characterize non-linear motion, say of molecules in water, or people in a crowd, it would have many hands, going in both directions and the cumulative action would cancel out in a general equilibrium. With the concept of time, most of these hands are combined into the face, with a few going in one direction as coordinates for the reference point. Time is a measure of linear process, not a dimensional basis for motion.
The unit of time goes from beginning to end, while the process of time is going toward the next, leaving the old. The hour on the clock starts in the future and the hand passes from its beginning to its end and then moves on to the next, leaving the previous hour in the past. Days go from dawn to dusk, as the sun moves from east to west, but it is the earth that is rotating west to east and the sunlight is moving through the time zones. Consider a factory. The product moves from start to finish, but the production line is facing the other way, consuming raw material and expelling finished product. This relationship of the process and the unit is one of perspective. A unit at one level is a process at another and vice versa.
Our individual lives are units of time going from birth to death, while the process of living goes on to the next generation, shedding the old like dead skin.
The reason time seems like a series of instants is because most motion is effectively at the speed of light and our mind is a process of consuming information and creating conceptual units, called thoughts, otherwise everything would be a blur.
Reality consists of energy recording information. As the amount of energy remains the same, old information is erased as new is recorded. Objective reality is the energy. Time is a function of the subjective information, as past and future do not physically exist because the energy to manifest them is currently tied up in the present. To the photon, there is no time. It contains no record of its past and only has physical direction. It is energy that exists as now. It doesn’t exist in the past, or in the future. The concept of time only starts to arise when you attempt to record what these particles do and where they have been. Time cannot be reversed, but it exists as a function of the information being recorded, not of the energy doing the recording.
Time is not so much a projection out from the present event, as it is a coming together of factors to define what is present. The past being those influences which define current order and the future is determined by the energy to motivate that order. Evolution is when order is an open set and absorbs fresh energy, defining it and adapting to it, so that the future is a continuation of the past. Revolution is when order is a closed set, so the energy accumulates elsewhere and the future becomes a reaction to the past. While the past informs us, it also recedes at a rapid rate.
Even though we have come to understand there is no preferred frame of reference, when we define space as a three dimensional coordinate system, with a linear graph of motion as a fourth dimension, we are using the perspective of the generic point as the basis for explaining reality, but a more objective description requires understanding how many such points interact. How should we go about considering objective reality, when the very concept of perspective implies a point of reference? Our fundamental process of thought is inherently reductionistic and linear, so how do we reconcile it with a reality that is neither? Temperature is how we conceive of non-linear motion. It is a statistical measure that begins to lose meaning at the molecular level, as individual molecules are moving along particular trajectories and at specific velocities. At the human level, government statistics are a form of temperature reading of economic activity. To the individual, motion is experienced as the linear procession of events, thus our assumption that time is the basis of motion, but to the larger group there is no preferred frame of reference. It is the concept of temperature, the level of activity and energy, that describes non-linear motion.
As politics is the process of organizing and refereeing competing perspectives, it has more in common with the mass motion of temperature then the linear motion of time. While particular movements have their own historical perspective, consideration of the past and concern for the future don’t resonate across a fractured and fractious political landscape.
