Conjecture: We are encoding culture but we are encrypting identity.

It is not well-understood – partially because those procedural mechanisms and autonomously self-propagating waveforms (or functions) of patterned information that manifest as, in and through ourselves must also protect themselves and their own aspirational continuity. If it were immediately apparent how mental worlds and cultural systems proceed to generate themselves (and each other), they would not be safe from corruption, exploitation, pollution and accelerated disassembly or dissolution.

The active, adaptive, resilient and distributed encryption of identity back into cultural systems is the way that we ourselves seek continuity and exclusion from the vagaries and tribulations of time and decay. It is not meant to be unpacked or decompressed – it just continues to recursively self-replicate. Some things, like mass and matter, are dangerous to decompress; it may also be true of the entangled webs of self and culture but we can only imagine that it remains a mountain that someone will nevertheless feel compelled to ascend.