The Unifying Factor: The Subjective Culture, What Does it Mean? (l)

What defines the self?
This question assumes that there is a self, an individual that is separate and distinct from its surroundings. But what makes one distinct?
On the most elemental level, science tells us, we are all composed of the same matter, and we know that the tree, the body, and even, the inanimate (think the stone), disintegrate to the point of no individual recognition.

Humanity often distinguishes itself from other entities, by pointing to its intelligence. But what about that intelligence make us unique? It certainly doesn't distinguish one human from another, on the fundamental.
Furthermore, as science continues its quest for understanding, it is slowly emerging that all entities on earth have a form of intelligence. Whereas we have focused our collective intelligence on technology to improve our existence, plants like the potato have focused their intelligence on diversifying their species. Not just their color, but what that color represents, immunity from a disease that wiped out the mono-crop of Ireland (the “potato famine”). We however, are just as susceptible to afflictions like the bubonic plague!
Many respond that we are unique because we have “reason”. Yet that reason has not prevented our species from acquiring the distinguishing label of “fratricide”.

Finally, some contend that what makes us unique is our subjectivity. I would agree, with the caveat that unique is not synonymous with positive, just different.

If we conclude that subjective is what enables individuality; that unique experiences makes us different, then we should also consider the ramifications of that. After all if it is this element that makes us different, how should we best utilize this differentiation's potential?

Interestingly there is a cultural relationship to subjectivity. That is, Westerners seem to embrace individuality, which as argued here is subjectivity.
We can see the practical consequences of this. Take the media and our institutions of higher education. Both have accepted, tacitly or explicitly, that subjectivity is all that there is. In the media there has been a complete rejection of the objective truth; instead our major media sources openly perpetuate one subjective ideology over another. After all it is what we are, it is inevitable and there is no alternative, let us embrace it! The university is rife with these post modernist notions of truth, or lack thereof. Thus all tradition is questioned. After all, tradition, unifies us and our experiences, and in turn undermines our own source of individuality.

Either line of reasoning leads to a number of provoking questions. For example, should we embrace subjectivity or attempt to channel it? Indeed it in “natural” to be subjective yet it is also “natural” to be passionate. Like passion and the multitude of other drives we have, subjectivity, perhaps, should be channeled.
Another question: Is the embracing of the subjective motivated by the rejection of the objective? If so is it because the objective can only stem from a universal truth, which implies a “higher power”? In other words as our society distances itself from the notion of the omnipotent should we expect more manifestations of the subjective?
Furthermore is the rejection of this “higher power” a Freudian desire to be in control? A “higher power” would seem to deprive us of that control.
Finally, is there really a contradiction between a “higher power” and free choice?

If subjectivity is the one perspective that makes us seem different, and we embrace subjectivity because we reject the “higher power”, then what is really at the root of war and death, abuse of nature, and even an unreliable media!
If revisiting the potential for a higher objective truth, real or otherwise, can unify us…