Feedback

Feedback loops are everywhere in nature, especially when it comes to consciousness and the incentive structures that regulate our behavior in a society.

The quintessential book on the subject, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid makes the case that feedback loops are the key to understanding mathematics, art, and consciousness. A free online course from MIT is available to help get the most out of this seminal work that, more than any other book, forms the groundwork understanding metaculture.

Self-reference and recursion, at the heart of the feedback loop, is also the central principle of the fractal.

Given is centrality to the understanding of metaculture, you should at least read and understand the Feedback Wikipedia page, and if you really want to understand it then read Godel, Escher, Bach.