Self-identity is a Cultural Genome

Those small fragments of recombinatory information through which we understand and define ourselves and each other are nothing more or less than a patterned instance of the local, national and global cultures we inhabit and that, equally, inhabit us.

In this way we are no different than the diverse and essentially narcissistic artefacts, entities and social, political or ideological systems that surround us. As instances of autonomously self-propagating information-processing and encoding in endlessly self-replicating symmetries of accidental self-interest, the main difference between each of us and the world we inhabit is that we possess experience.

Reflexive self-awareness is what distinguishes intelligence from material complexity but I do wonder if even this apparent interior experience is really also only just so much complex material memory and ultimately unknowing existence.