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, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid makes the case that feedback loops are the key to understanding mathematics, art, and consciousness. More on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems here.
Self-reference and recursion, at the heart of the feedback loop, is also the central principle of the fractal.
Since feedback and recursion are necessary prerequisites to understanding metaculture, you should at least familiarize yourself with the concepts on the Feedback Wikipedia page, and if you really want to understand it then read Godel, Escher, Bach.