your question and coming to a realization that, essentially, we are not a product and we are timeless.

However, you have to look carefully into concepts and beliefs, how they are influenced and formed and the essence of our awareness of them as a process of consciousness itself.

As a linguist what language is and you will get nothing much. Is it a means of communication, (modern) or an expression of thought, (more classic)? Can language itself be defined by language without a meta-capacity?

Watch out. Thinking through those things will either bore you until something else distracts you from it, or it will draw you in like a tornado. I'm not sure which option is best.

We have to exist in the world around us, and what we do in it makes us who we are. Most of the memes in our heads get put there before we are even aware of them, and we are like fish that cannot see the water we are swimming in.

we're still not aware of.

I am the product of the ideas, actions, and genetics of generations. Is our time simply our lifespan? Or several generations of out ancestors? or the millions of generations from which we have evolved? We are the product of the earth and the universe itself where all thoughts and functions become both the whole of humanity and totally meaningless. We are a product of everything for this very singular moment.

BTW, I guarantee that at the center of a tornado we would definitely find peace

How influenced do you have to be by this time period to be a product of it?

In an extreme example, would a little boy raised by wolves with 0 human contact (suspend your disbelief for a moment) be a product of our time? How so? Just by being born in this time period? Is cultural influence necessary?

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

is how we manifest destiny but, time constraints are a given, the human body is a given, etc.