Ritual of Friendship/Trust/Kinship

[DinosaurNothlit]

So, I was thinking to myself about the origins of the Andalite word shorm the other day, and something odd occurred to me.  It means a friend so trusted that they wouldn't flinch even if you held a tailblade to their throat, right?

This is, well, kind of an odd thing to base a word on.  The meaning almost seems to imply that Andalite "friends" would, more or less routinely, threaten each other with their tails just to see if they flinch.  Granted their culture is different from ours, but still this does not seem like a thing that good friends generally do to each other?

Unless . . . it was part of a ritual.  Maybe still is.  Andalites have rituals for a good number of situations (morning, evening, death, and expecting a sibling, and those are just the ones that have come up in-canon), and we already know that at least one of those (death) calls for the speaker to hold their tailblade to their own throat.  It isn't too hard to picture some kind of trust-based ritual where one Andalite holds their tail to the throat of another, with the object being not to flinch.

This is now my head-canon about where the word shorm comes from.  But, what I'd like to know is, how did the rest of the ritual go?  I'm not so good at the sort of poetic wording that would be required to come up with such a thing, so if anybody else is, please, have at it.

[NothingFromSomething]

I'm totally rusty on the specifics since my last read-through of the whole series was...well, years ago, but wasn't the concept more just like they would trust their closest friend/"shorm" if they did have their tail against their throat?  Not like it was regularly practiced, it was just that the trust was so deep that they wouldn't flinch if their blade was that close?

[DinosaurNothlit]

Well, yes, what you said is generally how the books have phrased it.  There's really nothing much to imply that this ritual ever existed, it's only my own personal thought on the matter.

My point was just that it's a very odd thing to be on somebody's mind, unless it's a thing that really happened at some point.  It's a little like, I dunno, how the word "Thursday" originally came from "Thor's day," which wouldn't fully make sense unless Thor had, at one point in human history, been a much more important figure than he is today.  I'm trying to think of other examples, but I'm not familiar with the meanings behind most English words, so it's hard to explain what I'm talking about.

It's really more about the ways words evolve, than what they mean today.  Words don't generally come about because people were thinking "hey, wouldn't it be interesting if," but rather "this is what is."  Words have to have an agreed-upon meaning that is widely known to everyone, and hypothetical situations don't generally fit the bill.  If you can find me an English counterexample to this, a word that is based only on a hypothetical situation and not something that ever really happened, let me know.

In any case, the more I think about it, the more I think that this ritual, if it existed, has almost certainly faded away from Andalite history over time.  With the various shorms that we see, the ritual probably would have come up at some point in the series if it was still practiced.  No, I think it's probably long gone, leaving the word shorm as its only legacy.

[Shenmue654]

is, well, kind of an odd thing to base a word on.  The meaning almost seems to imply that Andalite "friends" would, more or less routinely, threaten each other with their tails just to see if they flinch.  Granted their culture is different from ours, but still this does not seem like a thing that good friends generally do to each other?

 I don't think it's quite as odd as you might expect. Perhaps because there is an ancient, ancient tradition even in human cultures of friends basically being people who wouldn't shoot you in the face. The word companion actually means "Somebody you share bread with," which in ancient times was a universal way of saying you wouldn't kill them. A handshake is a gesture that evolved out of two people showing they were empty-handed (I.E. Not carrying swords). The principle of hospitality is based not just around love but alliances in war.

This is expanded on even further by someone without empathy stating point-blank that a lover is a person who, if you threaten them, immediately assumes you're coming up with some kind of devious plan rather than trying to kill them. I think.....that good friends who cannot point a tail blade at the other's throat, to some extent, are not best friends.

A good friend bails you out of prison. Your best friend is in the cell with you going, "Man did we totally **** that up."

[DinosaurNothlit]

Very interesting point there.  If anything, though, your thoughts make me like my original idea of a "Ritual of Trust" even better, since if you're right then it wouldn't just be some meaningless formality, but a ritualized way of making sure you knew who your allies were.

I don't think it's ever mentioned in the books that Andalites have ever been at war with other Andalites, but it's definitely plausible, given how loooooong Andalite history is, and how aggressive they can be if pressed.  So, yeah, I can see them being in historical situations where distrust would drive them to think about ways to test friendships.

A good friend bails you out of prison. Your best friend is in the cell with you going, "Man did we totally **** that up."

For some reason I'm picturing Arbron as the 'best friend' talking to Elfangor. 

[Shenmue654]

I don't think it's ever mentioned in the books that Andalites have ever been at war with other Andalites, but it's definitely plausible, given how loooooong Andalite history is, and how aggressive they can be if pressed.

It never is mentioned, but it would be pretty implausible for them not to be. They never describe any of the other alien species the Andalites meet as being a threat to them, yet the Andalites have about twenty different rituals involving death and war. Their entire culture around war is so ritualistic that tail-fighting still has a place in a culture with high technology. It implies that the Andalites fought Andalites for many years before leaving their world.

If anything, though, your thoughts make me like my original idea of a "Ritual of Trust" even better, since if you're right then it wouldn't just be some meaningless formality, but a ritualized way of making sure you knew who your allies were.

Good point. Initially it would have been a clever way of determining whether your friends did or didn't see you as a threat. Their baffled, "What?" reaction or terse, frightened reaction would be all you needed.

[NickDaGriff]

I imagine a ritual of that sort would be impromptu, starting just with Andalite 1 holding their tail to Andalite 2 with no prior warning.  After gauging their reaction for a short time, Andalite 1 would react one of two ways.

If they're satisfied, they'd ask forgiveness, not for the gesture itself, but for the mistrust they displayed in a nice little ritual speech.  If they're less than satisfied with the reaction, then there would be Words™ exchanged. 

I don't think it's ever mentioned in the books that Andalites have ever been at war with other Andalites, but it's definitely plausible, given how loooooong Andalite history is, and how aggressive they can be if pressed.

It never is mentioned, but it would be pretty implausible for them not to be. They never describe any of the other alien species the Andalites meet as being a threat to them, yet the Andalites have about twenty different rituals involving death and war. Their entire culture around war is so ritualistic that tail-fighting still has a place in a culture with high technology. It implies that the Andalites fought Andalites for many years before leaving their world.

With them being herd creatures that graze just by walking, which implies they'd come out of a migratory/nomadic background, it's kinda hard to imagine many needs that they'd have to fight over before becoming a high-tech society.  But I dunno.  I guess there're always the age-old standbys of territory, romance, etc.  Do you guys think they actually fought less among themselves than humans, or was Ax just propagandized into believing that by the current military atmosphere surrounding their culture due to the Yeerk war?  I'm just remembering how shocked and horrified he was by the human vs. human battles in Megamorphs #3 right now, and thinking,"Dude.  This is exactly what a military is for."

And yeah, tail-fighting would totally stick around as a sport, if nothing else.  I mean, boxing and wrestling always been a huge thing for us throughout history.  I imagine as long as they have those tails, they're going to have the instinctual want to use them.  I just don't think that it's a huge military thing, based on how Ax talked about it when he was preparing to fight Visser 3 in #18.  Kinda like how people still practice Historical European Martial Arts such as fencing with rapiers, longswords, swords w/ shields, and so on as a hobby even though our military ability is centuries beyond that.  We still teach our soldiers how to wrestle, grapple, and disable opponents with knives or bare hands, but you're not going to see a modern army learning how to use spears or greatswords for battlefield purposes.

If anything, though, your thoughts make me like my original idea of a "Ritual of Trust" even better, since if you're right then it wouldn't just be some meaningless formality, but a ritualized way of making sure you knew who your allies were.

Good point. Initially it would have been a clever way of determining whether your friends did or didn't see you as a threat. Their baffled, "What?" reaction or terse, frightened reaction would be all you needed.

Yeah, I am so borrowing this idea, hope none of y'all mind.  I'm currently trying to write up some other rituals as well (long journey, suicide mission, etc.), I'll see if I can come up with one for this scenario.

(Also, 100 posts.  )

[DinosaurNothlit]

With them being herd creatures that graze just by walking, which implies they'd come out of a migratory/nomadic background, it's kinda hard to imagine many needs that they'd have to fight over before becoming a high-tech society.

Well, as far as I know, out of the wars that have been fought in human history, very few have ever been fought over food.  So being grazing creatures would probably make little difference there.  And nomadic cultures fight each other, too, by the way.  Maybe even more so than static ones, although that might just be a case of running into one another more often.

Do you guys think they actually fought less among themselves than humans, or was Ax just propagandized into believing that by the current military atmosphere surrounding their culture due to the Yeerk war?  I'm just remembering how shocked and horrified he was by the human vs. human battles in Megamorphs #3 right now, and thinking,"Dude.  This is exactly what a military is for."

Heh, I've also been thinking about MM#3 since the subject of Andalite wars came up.  I just didn't want to bring it up since I think that Ax was probably wrong, in that Andalites would probably have fought one another at some point.

As to why Ax is wrong, it's probably a combination of modern Andalites having fought one another much less recently than humans have, plus some propaganda for good measure.  The main thing that I keep thinking about is, as I pointed out before, Andalite history is looooooong.  Humans have been around for, what, a million years?  That's even counting cave-people, mind you.  If the timeline put forth in the Ellimist Chronicles is right, then Andalites have been around for at least seventy-five million years.  That's seventy-five times all of human history.

That's long enough to have dozens of long-forgotten wars, each one perhaps only recorded in ancient history books that have long-since withered away to nothing in the meantime.  Or, well, you know, sometimes history changes in the telling.  Call it one part propaganda, one part selective memory, one part did-I-mention-how-long-Andalite-history-is-because-it's-really-freaking-long-okay.

Yeah, I am so borrowing this idea, hope none of y'all mind.  I'm currently trying to write up some other rituals as well (long journey, suicide mission, etc.), I'll see if I can come up with one for this scenario.

Dude, go for it!  I was totally hoping somebody would pick this up and run with it! 

Let me know what you come up with.  I'm kinda interested to hear about some of those other rituals, too (although, wouldn't 'suicide mission' be covered by the Ritual of Death?).

[NickDaGriff]

Well, what I was saying was, they probably don't really have to fight over much if 70% of all their needs are taken care of by simply running.  Even territory might not be that big of an issue.  You don't really see Earth herbivores slaughtering each other over petty stuff.  And with a human nomadic culture, a lot more fights really would be about gaining food and other resources than anything else.  Maybe full wars weren't fought over it, but I'll bet there have been loads of tribes and villages throughout history that were wiped out because another was on the brink of starving. 

I was thinking suicide mission and long journey wrapped up in one.  Here's one I'm using later.  Still working on it.

<We do what we must, no less.  In a time of need, this we pledge.  Before the rising sun and fading moons, our course is set, our minds clear, our tails sharp.>

[...]

<Our journey may last, with no hope for return. [...] We do this not for our sake, but for the sake of the many.  In this, setting aside ourselves, we may take peace.  I, [name], am a servant of the people.  A new day begins.>

Say, while we're taliking about Andalite mentality, I kinda want to share an awesome insight by a dude named Cannoli on the CinnamonBunzuh review for book #18.  People were wondering about why all the andalites on the Ascalin were so okay with ritual suicide, and even Ax wanted to go along with it, so he posted this:

Andalite honor insight - Andalites are grazing herd animals at heart. Thus their society is far more collectivist than ordinary humans, and they have less individualistic tendencies. Honor is the means by which people are judged capable and cooperative members of society in the absence of effective government or law enforcement (that's why barbarians and aristocrats make a bigger deal about honor - there are fewer laws to restrain them, so they use honor to govern themselves). Therefore, in a collectivist, herd-oriented social species, honor would be all about group mentality. Andalites are already inclined to put the general welfare ahead of their individual safety, so their honor is not like ours, which is needed to compell selfish greedy monkeys to share and to put our asses on the line for the greater good. A human gains honor by proving he is willing to stand up and risk his life. Andalites are already about that, so their honor has a different focus.

Ax is dishonored in his confrontations with Visser Three because he failed to eliminate a threat to the group. Visser Three retains honor, because he retreated against superior numbers, rather than get into a pissing contest when no advantage to the herd will accrue. Predators hunt herd animals by singling out an individual and getting him away from the group to take down as a pack or pride. For herd animals, getting outnumbered is a grave mistake, and evading such a circumstance is more useful to the group than fighting and falling (and in nature, that means you are strengthening the predators with a meal, and depriving the herd of your help).

For individualistic species like humans, honor overcomes our self-preservation instincts to encourage cooperation and benefit the group. For more socially-oriented species, like those descended from herd grazers (or pack hunters), honor would serve the role of shoring up their weak point - individual initiative. That's why they place so much emphasis on individual reputations and heroism, such as the lionization of Elfangor, whereas for humans, even though we admire and respect individual achievement and success, we reserve "honor" for self-sacrificing actions. Andalites don't need a code of honor to encourage self-sacrifice, they do that automatically. They need honor to encourage them to stand up and go the extra mile and show initiative, because it is through such efforts that the group progresses.

That's also why the suicide scene of the whole ship plays out without protest. Andalites are naturally inclined to go down together, and probably find more visceral comfort in dying as a group than surviving alone. That's also the whole deal with vecols later on - they can't pull their weight with the group, and so are cast out, and yet it is phrased by Andalites as if it is done for the benefit of vecol, rather than the group. To Andalites, being unable to carry your share must be horribly embarassing, because they are all about group first.

We are selfish & greedy, so when we put ourselves in a cripple's shoes, we think "I would want more for myself in that situation," and will sometimes give it if we can. Andalites are selfless and value the group so when they put themselves in the place of a guy with a missing tailblade, all they can think is "I would be so embarrassed at not being fully function in that situation, that I would not want to be around people."

There's some food for thought, huh?  It's pretty much shaped how I see the Andalites as a people.

[NothingFromSomething]

Pretty cool stuff.  I always loved those eastern samurai-esque vibes with the Andalites.  Cool angle, thinking it stems from from the herd mentality.

[NickDaGriff]

Heh, yeah, same here.  It's a neat culture concept, shame we don't get to see more of it up close.

There were some follow-up comments he did as well, on the reviews for #38 and #40.

And regarding the psychotic decisions of the Andalite military, my explanation is: Herd Animals. Large, grazing, herd grouping herbivores are some of the most vicious and dangerous animals in the world. Three of the legendary Big Five most dangerous big game animals in Africa are herbivores, the Elephant, the Rhino & the Cape Buffalo. They are all known to attack on little provocation, to engage in premeditated stalking and killing of victims, and to act on revenge. And these are animals that kill without the excuse of food.

Meanwhile, military historians such as John Keegan, have noted the most natural military societies are not hunters or farmers or urban communities, but pastoral nomads, whose lifestyle of herding large groups of animals gives them practice in group tactics and subordination to a common goal, and makes them very casual about killing. Hunters, like Indians and whatnot, have all sorts of rituals about killing a deer, but the Mongols or the Arabs were just like *whack* - dead cow or horse, let's eat. They were very pragmatic & unsentimental about life, and these were the guys who made huge piles of skulls, and tore cities to the ground and killed every last child of their enemies' population.

Andalites are evolved from big dangerous grazing animals (by Andalite homeworld standards, anyway), and their lifestyle is influenced by herd mentalities like the pastoral nomads to some extent. That's why they can do the group suicide thing we saw back in book 18. Ax's survivor guilt manifests DURING his escape. IIRC, humans don't suffer survivor guilt until they are safe and have the luxury of second-guessing themselves, but Ax was bummed that he was not being allowed to go off the cliff with the lemmings at the time.

Andalites operate in groupthink. Ax's moral condemnation to Estrid is "the people would not approve." Think about that for a minute: "You cannot carry out this action. It will not be popular." W.T.F.? In the finale we will see another example of this when Ax & Alloran try to stop the Andalites from wasting Earth. This also explains why Ax is so adamant about needing a prince to follow, and why the Andalites are both so hung up on deviations, like the disgrace of breaking Seerow's Kindness (endangering the herd), or vecols(more on that in two weeks), and on lionizing heroes like Elfangor. He's a kind of propaganda alpha male they use to encourage/inspire the rest of the herd.

I think I may have explained elsewhere why Ax felt he was in disgrace for not killing Visser 3, but V3 was able to "retreat with honor." For a herd animal, falling to predators means giving sustenance to those who threaten the herd. By living to fight another day, V3 helped his group, while Ax was disgraced for failing to eliminate a threat to his own group, despite having advantageous numbers. He had to go after V3 in his first book, because he was basically the calf cut off from the herd and dead meat on his own. They were encouraging him to throw away his life, because by their perspective he was a dead man walking. Ax was able to change up and break out of that mindset by attaching himself to a new "herd," and after that, his actions and honor are measured (in his mind) by his service to this new herd.

At least that's my guess. IDK, probably overthinking.

[...]

All in all, I'd say the Andalite prejudice against cripples is understandable, if not morally acceptable. For that matter, you don't see Andalites citing morality very often (hence their dickishness). Rather, they are always going on about honor or the greater good. Functionally speaking, honor is a system by which individuals are induced to do their part for society, so honor is just another way of saying "Greater Good." We help cripples because we can put ourselves in their shoes and say "If I were in that position, I would want help." We are instinctively selfish scavengers, so when we work at being nice to people we think of what we would want. Andalites are more selfless, so when Ax puts himself in Mertil's shoes (well for one thing, it might explain his hostility to Rachel in his last book), he isn't thinking "I would want help" or "I would want company" he is instead thinking "I would be so embarrassed at not being able to help my friends."

That might also why Mertil does not take Marco up on his offer - he doesn't want to waste the time of these warriors who are holding the line and defending their home planet and his current world of residence against their mutual enemies.

I think the Yeerks might not want Mertil because an Andalite is a bit conspicuous in a stealth invasion, without the combat potential of a Hork-Bajir. Also, a tall quadruped is probably not compatible with spaces, equipment and furniture designed for bipeds and crawling worms. And maybe the attitude toward vecols has leaked across from Alloran, and with Visser Three being the big Andalite expert, no one is going to contradict him when he rejects these guys as useless.

I love how this theory accounts for SO MUCH odd (from our perspective) Andalite behavior throughout the series.  Makes me wonder if Applegate was actually taking that into account.

[DinosaurNothlit]

That is a really cool idea, I like it.  It definitely helps put Ax's thoughts in book #40 in a much more positive light, basically, he isn't just being a dick, he's looking out for his herd.

I see that the guy mentions Seerow's Kindness, I was just about to bring that up myself as I was reading this.  This idea, of Andalites having this herd-comes-first mentality, goes a long way towards explaining why the Andalite race vilified poor Seerow so much.  His crime was that he helped the Yeerks, which in turn ended up being a threatening, predatory-like race, one that posed a danger to the 'herd' (which is in this case the entire Andalite race).  It doesn't matter to them that he had only wanted to do a good thing, because the race he was helping was in no way connected to the Andalites' own well-being.  Alloran's thoughts on the matter, telling Seerow from the outset that "they're parasites and can't be trusted," sort of goes to show that most other Andalites probably didn't even understand why Seerow wanted to help the Yeerks in the first place.

[Shenmue654]

Alloran's thoughts on the matter, telling Seerow from the outset that "they're parasites and can't be trusted," sort of goes to show that most other Andalites probably didn't even understand why Seerow wanted to help the Yeerks in the first place.

To be perfectly fair to humans, it's basically only in Western culture that the opposite mentality even exists. Doing the right thing if it wounds your group is rarely glorified. In our culture, it is glorified when it either benefits the group later or is somehow consistent with the person's sense of right and wrong. But this is baffling logic in a situation where trusting the wrong people can literally cause your entire group to end up dead. We think this way precisely because in our individualist capitalist society, the only other people you can screw over are usually your own family members.

Not so in a lot of other societies. Let's just say that if Mulan hadn't saved the Emperor in that Disney movie, she would have received no accolades at all. Not only that but even though she successfully saved him, in real mainland China she'd still be seen as unmarriageable and wild.

[NickDaGriff]

Even the way they use "Seerow's Kindness" as an ironic name for what they consider one of the worst acts in recent history shows that general attitude (and it shows that Andalites do have some grasp of sarcasm, I think Ax is just slow in that regard).

It also makes Menderash's case especially sad.  Seeing as he was the sole survivor under Ax's command, he's gonna be going through massive survivor guilt, on top of his people basically pressuring him to give up his life because he has nothing left to live for (just like they did with Ax) and even his own body.  He's an outcast on almost every front, and all he has is The Rachel.  He's going through all the carp Tobias and Ax went through at the same time.  He's gotta be miserable.

Heck, you could probably even stretch this theory over Tobias too, if you wanted, but I don't want to get into a million-page post about that at the moment (had to forcibly stop myself from typing up a full analysis just now).  I always liked the idea that he somehow inherited some stuff from Elfangor, even if it doesn't make complete biological sense.

Back to the original topic, I'm thinking that such a ritual as a test would totally be something they'd come up with as a society.

There was a quiet moment between us as I sized him up.  He turned an eyestalk back toward me, curious, but apparently not alarmed.  His tail didn't make the slightest movement toward me, nor did he even pause in his typing.  <Yes?> came his perfectly calm thoughtspeak.

I sighed and removed my tailblade from his neck, stepping back as I spread my arms wide and raised my chin.  <All is now clear, the doubt erased.  Your trust has outshone my own, and I am disgraced for it.>  My blade went to my own throat.  <I offer all I truly can, my shorm, and humbly claim forgiveness.> 

<Nah, we cool bruh.  S'all good.>