[firecall]

Which reminds that I once read there is a tribe in of people who conceptualise the future and past differently to western society…

The past to them is physically looking straight ahead, as that is what they can observe.

The future is conceptually and physically them looking over their shoulder behind them, as that is what they can’t see.

I might be mangling it somewhat! :-)

[mcswell]

They conceptualize the past and future exactly the same as you do; the past is something they remember (some of), the future is something they can only guess about. Their language talks about it differently, that's all.

[ChainOfFools]

Although it is not built into the grammar of our language I've come across a description very similar to this, by CS Lewis, describing his perception of time as that of a passenger on a train who's riding with their back to the engine.

analogies develop further from there, such as events being passed at the moment moving very quickly, and large in one's field of view, and to some extent one js able to see around them and order their importance by size and speed with respect to one's own position. But they're moving fast and it's hard to take in all the detail at once, and being so close the more proximal ones obscure your view of the ones further away though the latter may actually be in fact larger or more significant. Only as they all recede into the distance of the past does their relative significance with respect to each other become more evident.