how do we measure the emergence of this consciousness? and is it even possible? surely, physical genes don't comprehend or hold the capacity to measure the consciousness they've built

and just like we have a whole spectrum of gene consciousness (amoeba -- earthworm -- mammal -- us), meme consciousness will probably also emerge the same way?

and where do you think AI fits in this? isn't the internet enough to facilitate meme consciousness?

just like genes don't "understand" they are part of a bigger conscious structure, maybe we don't realize how our memes are already part of a bigger conscious structure?

there is no going back from the dangerous idea that design (purpose or what something is for) might not need a designer

Dennett believes there is little or no principled difference between the naturally generated products of evolution and the man-made artifacts of human creativity and culture

Dennett supports using the notion of memes to better understand cultural evolution. He also believes even human creativity might operate by the Darwinian mechanism

Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles Darwin, so that they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains

Just as genes can work together to form co-adapted gene complexes, so groups of memes acting together form co-adapted meme complexes or memeplexes

Like genes, memes are selfish replicators and have causal efficacy; in other words, their properties influence their chances of being copied and passed on

Memetics is a theory of the evolution of culture based on Darwinian principles with the meme as the unit of culture