Note: the creation of this topic was inspired by a conversation in the thread about Yeerks stealing hosts, although this is actually something I've been pondering for some time.
What are your opinions on Yeerk personality and culture? Namely, what do you think typifies the Yeerk 'mindset' if there is one, and why are they that way?
I, personally, tend to see Yeerks as being very self-interested, at least on average (Visser Two is a rather notable exception). They focus on their own survival first and foremost, everything (and everyone) else being secondary. This leads to a lack of empathy for others, most notably other species.
I also tend to think that all of this is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the societal norms implied by their own biology. Every Yeerk is an orphan. Their parents are dead by the time they are born. But that's okay, at least from an evolutionary perspective, because Yeerks don't really need parents when they're born. They're surrounded by their own food, so they don't need a provider/caregiver to supply them with nourishment. And while they may be helpless to defend themselves from threats, they're no more helpless than adult Yeerks are, so they don't really have any use for parental protection either.
Point being, Yeerk society had no reason to invent a replacement for the parent-child dynamic that most species have, so my guess is that they simply do not have an equivalent. Even their siblings don't really have an opportunity to become close, because there are so many of them (again, there's exceptions here, but Aftran and Esplin are the only Yeerks we ever see mentioning their relations with their siblings, and only Aftran seems to have had a positive experience there). The reason Yeerks focus on their own survival first and foremost, is because they've grown up knowing that nobody is there to take care of them if they don't.
This lack of a parent-child relationship, in turn, implies that all Yeerks grew up without knowing unconditional love (the function of unconditional love being primarily to foster the relationship between parent and child). If you're a Yeerk, nobody is ever going to care about you just because you exist. That, then, explains the lack of empathy. Yeerks are conditioned not to care about anyone just for existing (and probably think it's a bit weird that other species do), which means they aren't going to be inclined to try to put themselves in another person's position unless they feel that person actively deserves that kind of attention. This isn't to say that Yeerks can't care about others, it's just that that kind of respect needs to be earned, as it is never freely given. Look at Aftran and Illim, they both have respect and empathy for humans, but in both cases, it took some action on the humans' part to earn that.
Lack of empathy then plays even more into the Yeerks' self-interested focus on survival (it's easier to place all your focus on yourself if you don't care about anybody else who hasn't earned it) and vice versa.
So what do you guys think? I already know that at least one of you disagrees with this interpretation, and I'm hoping to hear more.
