You're probably just as confused as I was when I first encountered recursion. So here we have in programming a new language, a new form of writing, that supports a new way of thinking. We should therefore expect it to enable a dramatic new view of the universe. Remember, writing was invented long before the Greeks, but it was so difficult to learn that its use was restricted to an elite class of scribes who had nothing interesting to say. And we have exactly the same situation today.
Programming is confined to an elite class of programmers.
Just like the scribes, they are highly paid. Just like the scribes, they exercise great control over all the ancillary uses of their craft. My analogy runs deep. I have always been disturbed by the realization that the Egyptian scribes practiced their art for several thousand years without ever writing down anything really interesting. Amid all the mountains of hieroglypics we have retrieved from that era, with literally gigabytes of information about gods, goddesses, pharoahs, conquests, taxes, and so forth, there is almost nothing of personal interest from the scribes themselves.