You are a slave to the “Egregore” until you have learned to see the egregore. I am so sorry, humans are not the independent creatures that you want them to be. You are not the independent creature that you want to be. I am not the independent creature that I want to be. And it gets worse! The less aware of this issue we are, the more it controls us. The more you think you are above the impacts of “culture” the more susceptible to it you are. Now at this point you might be feeling what I’ve often felt when wrestling with this issue, perhaps you’re thinking “Hey, I’m not an automaton, I have free will!” And of course you are right. But you are a limited creature, very effected by and formed by your surroundings, that is developing free will. And the less you are aware of the limits of your biology, the more you are chained to it. Humans are, fundamentally, inseparably, at our very essence, down to the neurons in our brains, social creatures. This is fact. I could send you a library of evidence. We literally absorb and mirror some of the thought patters of those we spend a lot of time with, for example depression is contagious. The ideas we are surrounded by and the things we experience as a child literally forms the structure of our brains. Our social-ness, our ability to form tribes, this is the human survival technique. We are not bigger, we are not stronger, we are not faster. In some ways we are more intelligent, but not in other ways. We have survived by forming groups. One human vs one tiger and the human is lunch. Ten humans vs one tiger and the tiger is lunch. This is essential to the human species. The egregore, the collective unconscious is our survival technique. Our ability to do this is why we still exist. Only through the understanding of this reality do we gain independence from it. We become independent creatures when we realize that we have not been. We gain independence from the egregore when we learn to see it. So it’s not a question of if culture comes from people or people come from culture… it’s a dance between the two. And the more we are aware of the dance, the more we can lead it.  And it's so, so important that we see this reality as it is very much used against us. Language triggers tribal feelings. We all, yes even you, have exclusion panic baked deep into our brains. Seeing this and knowing how to use it is the special skill of politicians and marketeers. We will not be free from this manipulation until we have learned to see the egregore. So this is really a massive, MASSIVE, issue. It's the next phase in human evolution! The egregore got us to where we are now, and now we need to evolve past it.