"I tore these out of your symbol and they turned into paper..."

I was pleasantly surprised to find, when watching an episode of "The Unusuals" (which isn't, sadly, a very good show, but which I rather enjoy none the less), an extended reference to Cat's Cradle. This happens to be my favorite novel of all time, though I've been accused on at least one occasion of picking it purely because of the author's first name. The core concept of the book that the episode analyzes is the karass. It is explained as such:

Captain Baldguy: "You know, that's a pretty good book. It seems like its about the end of the world, but its really about how your family isn't your family."
Detective Brain Tumor: "Then what are they?"
Captain Baldguy: "Well, technically, they're your family. But your real family..."

...is the karass. Which is kind of true, but the group the episode goes on to describe (using a group of homicide detectives as an example) would more properly be referred to as a nakama. So what's the difference?

If you've watched much anime, you've probably heard at least one lecture on the Power of Friendship (indeed, its a running joke in Yugi-Gi-Og: The Abridged Series). "Nakama" is the Japanese word they're actually talking about in the original version; the English word 'friends' doesn't have the same weight of connotations, and would be better translated as 'comrades' or 'teammates'. In Japanese RPGs, the group of player-characters (in English, the 'party') is referred to as a nakama. The best (non-weeaboo) example I have comes from Firefly:

Simon: "Captain, why did you come back for us?"
Mal: "You're on my crew."
Simon: "Yeah, but you don't even like me. Why'd you come back?"
Mal: "You're on my crew. Why are we still talking about this?"

A nakama is a group of people who can depend on each other in a crisis. As Cap'n Reynolds has shown, they don't need to like each other, but they do need to trust each other (likely the reason for his extreme reaction when Jayne double-crosses them). In this way, they are like a family: not every family gets along, or even enjoys one another's company, but a family is (or should be) united by a common interest in one another's well-being.

The karass, on the other hand, is a group of people united by a purpose of which they themselves are unaware. According to Bokononism, the main religon in Cat's Cradle (it is at one point revealed that every main character is, sometimes without their knowledge, a bokononist), every human being is part of a small group selected to carry out a specific task by God. They are not told what this task is, and may never know who the other members of the karass are, but the share a common spiritual destiny. As a rule of thumb, if you unexpectedly find your life tangled up with someone else's, that person may well be a member of your karass.

Nakama is an appealing concept because it describes a relationship that is purely based on trust, without the complications of romance or selfish motivations. The appeal of the karass is that, from a spiritual perspective, you can recognize the significance of the people close to you. Naturally, there is some overlap: Members of a nakama are inherently entangled, and the actions of the group lead towards a particular, but not always obvious, destination.

If you're in a nakama (and not everyone is), you already know who the other members of it are. Guessing the other members of your karass, on the other hand, (and everyone has a karass) is an interesting exercise, but keep in mind the core teaching of Bokonon:

"[one religous woman he mentions] was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he knows what God is doing."

Next Time: The Greatest Board Game Ever