Rikki,
Love your essay. If I may offer up a few possible answers, I would start with the last; What is our purpose on earth? Looking at it in simple biological fractals, as the earth evolves into ever more of a singular organism, it develops a central nervous system, the medium of which appears to be humanity. Given that we are currently top predators in a collapsing ecosystem, getting there from here will take serious doing. Typically the development of complex nervous systems is energy expensive. Well we are certainly that. What is our function once we are there? For one thing, the purpose of a central nervous system is primarily the integrated survival of the organism and the perpetuation of it as a species. This may involve seeding other planets, or it may involve something of a far more spiritual nature, but we are not to that point anyway.
As for information, hanging around physicists, I'm getting a little sick of the term. Frankly most are craftsmen obsessed with the craft, not visionaries looking beyond it. Information naturally creates endless self referential feedback loops.
Energy manifests information and information defines energy. At best, information is just subjective, reductionistic framing. In my entry, I make the point that we are looking at time backward. By treating it as a measure, physics focuses on the effect of time, the sequence, not its cause, action. It is not a linear progression from past events to future ones, but the changing configuration that collapses potential into actual and replaces it with the next, ie. the future becoming past. Not the earth traveling the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates. This makes time an effect of action, rather than a foundation of action. It is similar to temperature. Time is rate of change, while temperature is level of activity. Change the level of activity, as happens to quantum processes in gravitational fields, or in accelerated frames, and the rate of change is affected accordingly. The twin in the accelerated frame simply ages faster. It isn't traveling into the future faster, but the past faster.
The sequence of change is information, while the dynamic reality of the present is energy. As the energy is constantly evolving, it goes from past to future events. These events, being configuration states, are information and they go from being in the future, to being manifest, to being past.
Since our living brain is composed of energy, it goes from past to future events, while our mind, as the processing of that information, is a recording of those events receding into the past.
Think of it in terms of a factory; The products go from initiation to completion, while the production line points the other direction, consuming raw material and expelling finished product. Our brains process the input of raw information and quantize it as singular thoughts, which then are replaced by the next and recede into the past.
When we treat time as a progression from past events to future ones, it becomes a singular narrative, but when we think of it as a sea of interaction, these threads of individual motion are parts of a larger tapestry that is not going anywhere, since it is the only reality.
Quantum mechanics uses an external timeline and ends up in multiworlds, which makes sense, when you go from a determined past into a probabilistic future, where the only solution is to presume all possibilities must happen. On the other hand, if we view time as emerging as a consequence of action, the fate of the cat is determined by events. Future probabilities collapse into actualities. To use a real world example, prior to a race, there are multiple possible winners, but after it, there is only one actual winner.
We cannot fully know the future, even if the laws deciding its outcome are deterministic, because the lightcone of input doesn't exist prior to the occurrence.
As animate organisms, our bodies even have separate systems to process information and energy. While the central nervous system handles information, the respiratory, digestive and circulatory systems process energy.
It should also be noted that the two hemispheres of the brain, the left, linear logical and the right, intuitive, non-linear are at their primal core, a clock and a thermostat. The right brain perceives the multiple energetic actions in the environment, while the left, linear side navigates a singular, sequential path through that environment, making judgements and decisions in order to do so.
Keep in mind that only the measure of time is regular motion. Without the irregular motion, there would be no arrow, just a constant cycle.
Cause and effect is energy transfer, not sequence. Yesterday didn't cause today, any more than one rung on a ladder causes the next. It is the sun shining on a rotating planet which causes this sequence of events called "days." Thus the "events" can seem disconnected and random.
The problem with our current preferred religious model, monotheism, is the absolute is basis, not apex, so a spiritual absolute would be the raw essence of awareness from which we rise, not an intellectual and moral ideal from which we fell. Good and bad are the biological binary code of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken, yet there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins. It is just a constant cycle of building and crashing complexity.
Even monism is problematic, since a universal state would be neutral, ie. zero, not one. While form requires dichotomous comparisons; expansion/contraction, positive/negative, up/down, conservative/liberal, youth/age, etc. Knowledge is a function of subjective framing. We can't see both sides of the coin at once and combining multiple perspectives results in loss of detail. Universal theories are reductionistic and generic, while attention to detail requires ignoring other information.
One and oneness are not the same. Oneness is connectivity, while one is a set. There is necessary connection, as one frequently slides into the other, much as an entangled state condenses into bits of information, or liberalizing social policies congeal into political fiefdoms. Energy expands, while mass contracts.
Obviously you have asked some very broad questions and hopefully I've given you food for thought, but I better shut myself up for the moment.
