kata/karate as 'meme'

I've not heard of the word 'meme' before. Guess I have some reading to do.

Fascinating idea, kata as meme.

Wanted to give a 'heads up', and hope it's okay with the mods to point to another forum.

http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39876

Girl you are deep & Dawkins full of it, but he is entitle to make his idea. Katas are the essence of a style it doesn't mimmick anything but the system methods, and that's not selfish. Maybe I took his explaination wrong.

Well...I tend to think of kata as a cultural 'zip file'...and am curious as to the parameters of this 'meme' concept.

I see the correlation.
The last e-budo poster said "That is why direct concious manipulation of core kata in a system is so dangerous, as you start tampering with primary memetic constructs". Dangerous? Not if you know what you're doing. Look at how much various styles vary the same kata, but the MEME is the same. It's like your hair gene may say blond and curly, while mine says dark and wavy, but they both "work".

Quote:

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Well...I tend to think of kata as a cultural 'zip file'...and am curious as to the parameters of this 'meme'
concept.

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Culture= patterns of human activity

Zip file= smaller archive?
or

a single file that is actually a package of a set of files

So kata is an example of a pattern of human activity that is compressed?

Kata = techniques and principles of fighting.

The old now meets the new.

And this meme concept?

Jude