6. Congenital, cultural MEMs, MEMnom

                In the process of ontogenesis, all the organs of our body and the brain, in particular, are created. In order for the brain to function, it is necessary not only to create its morphology (structure), but also to provide it with some initial information.
               In a computer, for example, such initial information is recorded in the BIOS (from the English basic input / output system - "basic input-output system"). Without it, the computer will not be able to start working. The main purpose is that the program code is saved when the power is off, in the so-called non-volatile memory. When the power is turned on, this code starts working, the information necessary for the programs to work is read, and service routines are launched.
              The code is written in the BIOS by pre-flashing. The "hardware" of a computer cannot start working without some program code, like a gas pipeline for gas delivery, requires first filling its pipes. This is embedded software, which is implemented on a special microcircuit and contains the program code necessary to control the keyboard, video card and many other components.


                CONGENITAL  MEMS,  INSTINCTS.

                Genes, in the process of ontogenesis, must form a similar system in the brain and supply it with the necessary information written down by some program code. The senses send information to the brain. The information array consists of individual fragments (words) recorded by the functional states of neurons. Each such word will be called MEM. Words written under the guidance of genes before birth, or in the first moments after birth as a result of imprinting, will be called congenital MEMS.
                The coding genes themselves contain nothing but the order of amino acids for building each protein. But an organism built on the basis of protein molecules as a result of a cascade of successive stages and biochemical reactions in ontogenesis, in the end, receives a brain of a certain architecture, equipped with innate MEMs.

                The part of the brain in which congenital MEMs are localized is called unconscious by Freud. This group of MEMs forms innate reflexes that are responsible for some behavior patterns that are realized without the intervention of consciousness.
               Instincts include the body's reactions to cold, hot, loud sounds, unexpected obstacles, etc. In addition, congenital MEMs carry out some "censorship" for information entering the brain, weed out unnecessary (in their opinion) and let useful information for memorization.
            As a result of the existence of the unconscious, the brain is no longer a "blank sheet" for educators and teachers, but is a kind of system, ready to use information received from the senses.
             Educators quickly realize that not all information is perceived by the brain in the same way, not all of it is equally absorbed by the brain.
                The unconscious also solves issues at the level of the spinal cord. Monitors the coordination of movements, body balance, and also forms automatic answers to some questions that arise. So we automatically react to a suddenly discovered obstacle on the road, bypassing it, without even turning to the sphere of consciousness. Simple programs lead to rather complex actions due to the presence of a feedback system.
             It should be understood that congenital MEMs do not fully correspond to the realities of today. They are adapted to life at a time when the Homosapiens lived in hunter-gatherer tribes.               
              Today, in a different reality, they are able to create mental stress, which must somehow be reduced. It is known to use antidepressants, drugs, alcohol for these purposes. At the collective level, in societies, detente has always been wars that have become too destructive and almost impossible.
Instincts determine the properties of the psyche.
These properties of the psyche emerged from a long historical perspective, and in this sense are outdated. The programs of the unconscious are much simpler than a set of actions performed with their participation.
                Congenital MEMS are given to a person, and to all other owners of the brain once and cannot be modified by manipulation. They are quasi-stable and do not adapt practically in social evolution, but only in slow biological evolution.
                Instincts, as outdated adaptations, could hardly be preserved in large numbers in a highly specialized form, reminiscent of a Swiss folding knife, with a huge number of blades for all occasions. During this time, the environment has changed and the universal adaptations with which we are dealing today had a chance to stay. They are implemented by a corresponding set of congenital MEMs in the brain.
The part of the brain called the unconscious is formed by a set of innate MEMS.


                CULTURAL  MEMS.

                After birth, building the brain, improving its functionality, filling it with information from the senses, structuring the incoming information by the brain itself, assimilating customs, patterns of behavior adopted in a given community, basic concepts, languages of communication, continues in the process of an individual's life. The entire life cycle from zygote to death is called ontogeny.
                Information from the senses is transmitted to the brain, as it is ordered, memorized or erased from memory. At this stage, the brain splits into two parts. One remembers structured (ordered) information, and the second operates with it. The part of the brain for storing information Freud called the subconscious, and the other part the consciousness.
              Thus, our life experience is stored in the structures of the subconscious in the form of separate information records, which we will call cultural MEMs. Physically, these records represent the functional states of local neural networks. The elements of the array of information obtained in the process of life, stored in the subconscious, will be called cultural MEMs.
               The storage of MEMs in the subconscious presupposes their ordering, structuring so that the consciousness can easily access this information. If information is not organized, it becomes trash.
Garbage according to the UN definition is anything that is in the wrong place or in the wrong amount.
The processes of ordering cultural MEMS in the subconscious lead to the establishment of connections between individual MEMS, which are linked.
                The information that comes to the brain is partially remembered, and some of it is “written” in it for a long time. This "registration" takes into account the content of congenital MEMs (unconscious), as well as the content of previously assimilated cultural MEMs, which act as a kind of censorship.
                During life, information is accumulated in the subconscious mind that reflects life experience, i.e. information necessary for cultural evolution, which cannot be transmitted genetically to a new generation. Therefore, cultural MEMS are suitable candidates for replicators of cultural evolution.
                But there is one difficulty. MEMs cannot be passed on to subsequent generations as genes, since they are lost with the death of a person. Genes are immortal.
                Cultural MEMS also appear in animals, but they did not build civilization, since they do not possess mechanisms for transferring the accumulated information to the next generations. Man, on the other hand, managed to create different mechanisms for transferring the accumulated information both vertically (to descendants) and horizontally (to the surrounding society).
                In terms of content, some cultural MEMs are cultural prohibitions for instincts that limit the norms of behavior in society, others represent a base of knowledge and behavior patterns for different occasions.
                MEMs of the subconscious contain information about the rules of behavior and thinking in society, the ideals that we consider our own, moral norms, personal attachments, preferences and vice versa, unacceptable patterns of behavior.
               Being assimilated by the subconscious MEMs exert pressure on the consciousness when choosing one or another decision. After all, consciousness, responding to external challenges, chooses the desired behavior from the piggy bank of the subconscious.
                Information from the outside easily penetrates into consciousness, but just as easily leaves it. Information can be fixed for a long time only in the subconscious. Feel the difference - to understand that being kind is good (MEMs in consciousness) and being kind in reality (MEMs in the subconscious) are two different things. Why doesn't a person become kind when explaining to him that it is good? Very simple. Other MEMs assimilated by the subconscious of this person are incompatible with the proposed information, prevent it from being fixed in the subconscious.
                Falling in early childhood under the influence of one religion or another, acquiring a religious system of thinking, a person in the future cannot, as a rule, change the MEMs of the subconscious. They set the development trend and the person falls into a rut, which is difficult to get out of.
                An atheist should not argue with a believer. They will not understand each other, since different priorities in the subconscious have already been established and further the differences in thinking will only increase.
                Different independent civilizations have set for themselves different priorities for information, which automatically leads to a difference in the basic cultural MEMs, which complicate the rapprochement of cultures at the present time, when the ways for the exchange of information are already open.
                But besides the incompatibility of civilizations, there may be local incompatibility of cultures. So the inhabitants of the province can be unfriendly towards Muscovites, while both are not averse to taking out their anger on Jews, Gypsies, Caucasians and others. All this is a manifestation of the difference in mentalities and, therefore, cultures. A specific person assimilates only part of the culture of his population. Therefore, even in one society, the mentality of people is different. Ethnic groups are populations with minimal distinguishable cultural MEMs.
                Learned in childhood affects all aspects of further perception, learning, ways of thinking and behavior without exception. The conflict between generations of fathers and children can be explained precisely by this. These conflicts are growing with the acceleration of cultural evolution. The generation with the smartphones is hard to understand the generation with the pickaxe and shovel.


                CULTURAL  CODES.


                Many thousands of years ago, gradually leaving Africa and penetrating into Europe, Asia, Australia, Homo sapiens created local traditions, beliefs, and culture in their places of residence. At the same time, cultural MEMs have adapted, depending on geographic conditions, climate, properties of the surrounding ecosystem, on a number of local factors. Adaptation to the environment occurred in a non-genetic way. Homo sapiens built dwellings, made tools for labor and hunting, etc. All this was done in accordance with local traditions and traditional beliefs.             
                Culture is understood here in a broad sense - as all the accumulated information of a population transmitted to descendants in a non-genetic way, i.e. cultural MEMs.
                Differences in living conditions influenced the genome much less, since it is by nature a much more stable entity. However, some genes were lost and others were acquired by different populations, so the frequency of some alleles differs in different populations. But these differences are not so great as to make representatives of different civilizations genetically incompatible.
                As for cultural differences, due to the faster course of processes in cultural evolution, the mental differences of different ethnic groups are significant, which makes them poorly compatible in one society. Therefore, a country with a large number of different ethnic groups in it turns out to be poorly governed.
                The incompatibility of cultures, their isolation allows us to talk about the existence of a certain identifier inherent in each culture, which can be called a cultural code.

               The cultural MEMS of the subconscious must be ordered so that information from the subconscious can be found and read at the request of the consciousness. To implement such an algorithm, there are card indexes in libraries, in databases for searching, fields are used to quickly find information, and there is a GUGL on the Internet.
              Both the file cabinet and the database are a collection of structured data. And Google is a powerful intelligent database search system.
             The way of structuring cultural MEMs in the subconscious is an identifier, a cultural code of one or another civilization.
               Depending on how the memory cells are prioritized, we will get different sets when extracting important information. Different sets cause different responses of consciousness and, accordingly, different behavior in response to the same external challenge.
                The impossibility of crossing two, even closely related species in biological evolution, is caused by the fact that each species is genetically isolated, due to the absence of genetic interspecific exchange, and it is unlikely that viable offspring will be obtained during interspecific crossing.
                For people, we can talk not about genetic incompatibility, but about socio-cultural. The incompatibility is not absolute, but it causes significant difficulties in communication.
                In every culture, and even in a local small population, the cultural code is slightly different from that of a neighboring population or social group. The global difference between different world cultures corresponds to significant differences in the cultural code.
                Therefore, when the barriers that separated societies for centuries were destroyed by the development of transport and electronic communications, people from different cultures find it difficult to communicate and exist with each other. Indeed, for this it is necessary to adapt the mentality towards compatibility, to become tolerant. This is a long and painful process.
            It should be noted that the concept of a cultural code can be applied to that part of culture that does not belong to science. Science stands out from the whole mass of non-genetic information, which we here called culture in a generalized sense, by the fact that it does not have a cultural code, it is international, and is understood everywhere in the same way.
                This is a fundamental difference between science and other sectors of culture. Physics is also physics in Africa. This cannot be said about music, for example, or philosophy.

                MEMNOM.


 The informational content of congenital MEMs is formed at the genetic level.
               Cultural MEMs are formed in the process of upbringing - education, life, interaction with existing institutions, with specific representatives of the human population. We are talking about human experience accumulated in the process of life.
               By analogy with genetics, the set of congenital and cultural MEMs of a person will be called MEMnom.
It is known that some mental properties of a person can be traced back to antiquity, many centuries before our birth. But cultural MEMs are formed anew in every generation. This means that there are cultural clues, traditions, schools, religions that form similar mental properties in the new generation. Religions are suitable for the role of guardians of the mentality for long periods, since religions are stable over the centuries.
                What have we achieved by introducing into circulation the concept of MEMs, as replicating units, functional states of brain fragments?

Cultural evolution is introduced to the rank of a scientific theory, having received all three mandatory attributes of any evolution of living things.
1. Variability of mentality in societies.
2. Natural selection based on significant mental traits.
3. Cultural inheritance, thanks to man-made mechanisms of cultural inheritance.

A new definition of cultural evolution.

              Earlier we gave such a definition of the cultural evolution of a person in society - Cultural evolution - time-consistent changes in human culture in society, caused by functional changes in the brain. Culture is one shot from the film "Human Cultural Evolution".

                Now we can refine it using the concepts of population genetics. Population genetics considers biological evolution as a process of changes in the gene pool of a population over time.          

                Cultural evolution cannot be understood without the use of MEMS.
A new definition of cultural evolution - The cultural evolution of human society is a change over time in the frequency of occurrence of some cultural MEMS (alleles) in it.

                It is important to understand that the society itself is changing and at the same time the mentality of the person in it is changing. A person cannot be considered separately from society. A person outside society does not evolve, and a society without a person does not exist.