The experience of time is the progression of change.
As I already proposed before, Time in its totality is nothing more than the eternalization of the image of an imagined static universe. That is, Time as a whole is to be considered the assemblage of the final state of the universe, led by moments, singular units of time that when superposed create this image.
What is, though, a singular unit of time? It is not a mathematical duration (i.e., 1 second), nor is it an set moment defined by eventuality. Time is an expression of how much things can change. Time, in the context and perspective of a certain object, is what can be made out of that object at any given moment. The possibility of change is what makes the capability of time to exist, and the experience of time emanates from this capability. It is irrelevant to say whether or not things are always changing, because always is a measure of the experience of time, it is frequency measured within time. The experience of time can only be expressed through change.
Then the question that arises is “what is change”? Change is, functionally, creation. There is no pure creation, creation cannot be done out of nothing. Even the creation of an opposite, of something to arise in opposition to that which exists, needs something to oppose itself to. Change is simply movement of a thing towards a new state, a state of new characteristics. Change cannot, though, be regarded as simply a transformative experience. Change is at the same time conservation and transformation.
Take, as an analogy, an artist. One day, this artist makes a drawing of a woman. The next day, he decides that this drawing is not good enough; and he redraws it, perhaps in the same pose, with new colours and added or trashed characteristics. Essentially, this is change, it’s transformation, but it is still in a sense conservation. He is simply reproducing something already done through a series of steps. It does not matter if he redraws it the exact same way or if he changes pose, colours and shapes: it is still a conservation, a reproduction of the initial stage of the thing. In this analysis, the first drawing surely still exists, but the image, the aspect of the representation done in the image evolves. The artist might even then start drawing this same character over and over, adding background and other characters, and then drop the characters altogether and start drawing and developing the background. The initial condition was the creation of the drawing, and the background was, through steps of transformation, led to become something by itself. It could not, though, do so without the initial condition.
The substance of everything that exists is transformation. It is differentiation, distinctiveness. Any given thing that exists does so for the simple reason that it can be set apart from other things that exist. It does not matter if that “thing” is a concept or a material reality, what defines existence is the capacity of something to exist by itself without being confounded with something else. You might think that every coins “looks” the same, but the fact that you can put two of them, side by side, and identify them as differing from each other is what makes them into two distinct things. Even a perfect copy of an object (a thing which cannot exist) would still be different not ontologically but situationally, that is, the fact that they are in two different positions in space makes them different.
Let’s go back to the analogy of the artist, though. As the adage goes, ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing can be created from nothing, evoked from beyond, but it must come from the things which exist. So how can “new things” be created? How was the artist able to draw the image of a woman, create it? He, of course, made it from the several observations of women he’s had, the idea he formed of what a “woman” should be regarded as. Women also did not come from nothing, but through evolutionary processes, started and led by various chemical reactions etc.
The fact that things can be created seems to clash with the idea that there is no pure creation. The fact is that there still is no creation, but only discovery. Everything that exists sets the conditions for everything that can exist from them. The artist could draw the woman because this drawing of a woman could exist; it was a potential immanent in the universe, stemming from the things already existing within it. Everything that can exist thus exists as potential, and must not be created but discovered. The experience of the progression of time is simply the process of the discovery of the potential things that exist.
Creation is transformation insofar every thing goes through a process that translates it into something that is not itself but at the same time conserves the original characteristics. Essentially, creation is an eternal process of transformation.
Transformation can be gradually, expressed as the transmuting advancement of something towards a new thing, that implying the process of conservation and transformation, in which what is the actor of transformation eventually becomes what is conserved in order to create transformation. It’s an almost cyclical process, in which the evolution of a thing creates the potential for the evolution of its own evolution. There can be an abruptness in transformation though, a transformation in which a break mostly negates conservation. This often is expressed as the creation of opposition in relation to something. That which is created directly in opposition is an abrupt break, because the conservation of the characteristics of what it opposes itself to is expressed an inversion of them.
The experience of time is complexifying. The more things are discovered, the more things can be discovered. If you have cake ingredients, you can make out of them a cake, or cupcakes, or other desserts. Upon making a cake, though, you now not only have everything you can make with the initial ingredients of that cake, but everything that can be done with that cake, and everything that can be done with the product of what is done with that cake. Potentiality is infinite as it expands forever, as (rather tautologically) the more potential there is, the more potentiality exists, in an eternal positive feedback loop.
Conservation of red -> Transformation to red-purple -> conservation of purple -> transformation to purple-blue - - - - -> virtual transformation [red - > blue]
The transformation from “red” to “blue” was something potential. The fact that such a transformation could occur results of the properties and characteristics of the initial conditions.
Ex distinctione, omnia fit.