The strangest thing about personal identity and subjective psychological experience is that, at core, it consists solely of internalised references to an external world of images, ideas, idioms, languages and conventions. This “external” world is only ever the substantive collection and dynamic aggregate of all of those other individual nodes, similarly empty, and swimming in an ocean of such profoundly enigmatic emptiness that no one ever really seems to notice the paradox here. We are all sleepwalking, hypnotised by an illusion of self that in part is you (or me) and in whole is culture, technology and civilisation.
Daedelus Kite 
2 replies on “A Cultural Vacuum of Self”
Are you saying then that we (our selves) are basically encoded copies of one of many different cultural narratives along with a smattering of snippets of filtered perceptions of our local environments? It makes a lot of sense to me. Incidentally, are you in harm’s way with the fires raging around you? Stay safe, Mike!
LikeLiked by 1 person
We are each the microcosm, the encoded fragment from which a whole cultural operating system might be reconstructed. Holographic information storage – it’s a thing. 🙂
The fires. Yes. We had months of smoke here. It is much better now. It remains to be seen how the rest of this fire season plays out.
LikeLike