Our brains are not like the brains of fish, which have short memories

At some point, these emergent patterns of activity become sufficiently complex, and curious to begin studying their own biological origins, not to mention emergence. And what we found in emergent phenomena at vastly different scales is that same remarkable characteristic as the fish displayed: That emergence doesn't require someone or something to be in charge. If the right rules are in place, and some basic conditions are met, a complex system will fall into the same habits over and over again, turning chaos into order.
That's true in the molecular pandemonium that lets your cells function, the tangled thicket of neurons that produces your thoughts and identity, your network of friends and family, all the way up to the structures and economies of our cities across the planet.