Memory drives humans to do and say certain things. We might have experienced, seen, or heard something in the past. And those are transformed into thoughts in the form of memory. Thoughts become words, actions, habits, characters, and destiny. In other words, memory might manifest itself as recurring thought patterns or behavioral patterns that might influence the character and destiny of humans. Of course, different humans can interpret the same memory in different ways. This means that human agency can also influence its character and destiny.

Culture itself is the collective memory of an aggregation of people. We often associate it with people in a certain geographical location and at a certain time period. Culture also manifests itself as recurring thought patterns or behavioral patterns that might influence the character and destiny of said society. Traditional clothes, indigenous music, and common sayings are all part of the culture (or, more specifically, the manifestation of said culture).

Obviously, culture is not one single consistent entity. A certain subset of the population might have one pattern, and another subset can have the opposite pattern. I call this cultural strain and this exists naturally because people’s memories differ from one another and even those with the same memory can have different ways of interpreting it. However, cultural strain is not unique. While there are many memories and many interpretations, if you have a big enough population, then each strain will be shared by multiple people. While 10 people can result in 10 different colors, 1 million people will have less than 1 million colors.

This mental model of viewing humans and culture as built from memories and interpretations can inform us on why things are and how to make things better.