ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Culture and History act to influence and define Meaning and how they can also present the individual with the Absurd. How the interactions of Self and World take place in the present is a product of an individual’s Development and the unique Culture and History that they inhabit. Culture and History determine Being for the individual by locating them in very large groups of Human Beings called Superorganisms. The chapter discusses in Existential terms the ways in which Culture and History influence an individual’s judgments of Meaning and Absurdity. This includes the way that present social forces, their history, and long-term societal structures and values that impact the individual and, through Development, shape who they are and what they value. Up until recently, Existential relationships with World could be left unspecified—there was only the world outside of the Self to be considered. It has been shown that the Microbiome exerts a macro influence on the Self.
