Meme literacy

Understanding memes is basic to scientific literacy in the modern world - where memes are ubiquitous. However, due to a turbulent and muddy history, knowledge of memes and memetics is currently largely confined to a scientific elite. Large numbers of people are confused about the issue of how culture evolves - even though we are over 150 years since Darwin's landmark publication.

Because an understanding of memes is so important, I propose that we should have a term to refer to knowledge and understanding of what memes are - and how they evolve. "Meme literacy" is my proposal.

Those with a reasonable understanding of memes are meme literate. The term meme illeterate sounds a bit insulting - so maybe we could call the world's meme sceptics and critics meme challenged.