system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are the ideas of individuality and separatism taught to us, or are we born with the truth of that we are separate beings?

I hope I worded this correctly. 

I’ve been thinking on the truths and mechanisms we are born with universally, opposed to which are taught to us socially. 

I assume that some truths are instinctually apart of us, regardless of social learning. Such as momentary fear as a response towards self preservation, the drive to self preserve and to avoid pain, the sexual urges to reproduction, and our recognition of water for drinking. 

However, I feel that individuality is greatly taught via words. If we had no words to identify ourselves as individuals, how would our lives be? Would we see each other as separate beings, or as a functioning part of a greater being or organism? 

I ask this question because I believe that separatism causes a lot of problems in our lives and society. We see a lot of religions and spiritual practice gravitate towards human “connection” and reform with the universal harmony of nature and all beings. We know that separatism and individuality is a foundation for comparison; and therefor discrimination. 

This also challenges the ideas of persona and ego. If we did not have a learned “self”, would we be driven by ego and presented with persona? 

Without a learned truth of “self”, would we have a need for a linear time perception if the ideas of birth and death were irrelevant?
gpt
I'd say the current prevailing thought in infant development is that we don't start out with an understanding of ourselves as separate beings, but that it's something we necessarily learn over the first year of life as we learn to distinguish between the parts of our experience that are directly responsive to our thoughts (e.g., body movement, voice) and the parts that are not not (e.g., other people).

The values of communalism vs. individualism represent a different question, though.  That does seem to be taught as evidenced by culture-to-culture variation in the phenomenon.