A thought I have had for a long time seems speculative, but worth writing down.
Before I encountered the concept of the 'Meme', I used the concept of
the 'Mindset'. This is because thoughts seem to come in natural groupings.
In my learning, I would look at different facts and as I came to
understand them, I would see underlying patterns that brought all the
different facts together.
Well, the curious thing about this is that it takes time to process any
thought or fragment of a pattern. Once the pattern, thought, relationship,
mindset, etc. is understood, though it is composed of many facts, the
pattern and its parts can be thought of in about the same amount of time
as the individual parts can be.
It's like once all the parts are collected they can be put into a pattern
and order that is near the same size thought as are the parts that make it
up, in terms of the human brain processing the thoughts. We can think of a
complicated thought/meme/mindset in about the same amount of time as we
can think about the parts that make up the meme/mindset. It's like we
have managed to fit a bunch of unconnected individual puzzle pieces together
(in the right natural order and sequence) into a single organized puzzle that
the human brain can evaluate just as easily (perhaps more so) as the pieces.
This may be a logical order or an order and pattern dictated by the evolution
and function of the brain.
The underlying external pattern dictates the relationship of the facts and
then they are assembled in particular orders based on logic and/or brain
structure.