Essays Are Magic II: The Problem Called Siblinghood, the Solution Called Friendship · 4:49pm Feb 24th, 2014
Essays Are Magic II: The Problem Called Siblinghood, the Solution Called Friendship
In many cases the machine philosophique, at least in its Western configuration and tradition, operates on the basis of problematizing the ordinary. “What is true, what is beautiful, what is justice?” These questions are prime examples of the classic Socratic/Platonic thought, and funny as it is, we still find them troubling us, even after 2500 years.
In this essay, I am going to problematize friendship in the context of MLP: FIM. I shall start from the very beginning of the show, from the very first episode of the very first season, and from the very first instance of a problem we encounter there. I’m talking, of course, about the Rise after the Fall, about the events of the first two episodes that I will be treating as a singular whole, as a unity divided in two. Indeed, much of what I’m going to say has something to do with halves, with differences, with similarities and dissimilarities that somehow ordain themselves into a system of progress.
But first, let us say a few choice words about myths. And about politics.
Ever since the dawn of speech, allegories, analogies, mythologies have shared a profound connection to the realm of the political; examples of this are numerous and easy to come up with. Plato, in The Republic, presented us with the myth of noble metals as a way to justify the absolute hierarchy of the ideal society, and the ancient Greeks in general were fond of expressing political sentiments through theatrical narratives. Thomas Hobbes, in a less obvious way, invoked the myth of a beastial human nature that justified the transition of power from the people to the sovereign. In our modern days, the myths of political significance, contrary to the tradition of enlightenment (which might also be depicted as a kind of a myth, a fable of pure reason), keep on painting our imagination and directing our behaviour and understanding of society through religion, human rights, and representation. (More about these, check: Stamos 2013, Pollak, Batora, Mokre, Sigalas, and Smolenski 2009)
Keeping this background in mind, isn’t it obvious that, if we wish to analyse the political realities and aspects of Equestria, we ought to direct our gaze at the central myths of the ponydom?
The myth of the Fall, in the Equestrian version, shares similarities to a bunch of other myths concerning the breakdown of society; practically every mythology includes some kind of a variation of the schism we find erupting between the divine sister during the first minutes of the show’s very first episode. Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Apollo and Artemis… Siblings are turning against one another everywhere. The split in a bloodline is a fundamental part of any serious downfall story, most likely because a conflict inside a family has traditionally carried such an ill mark in ancient, tribal cultures.
Like all myths, the one including Princess Celestia and Princess Luna is a patchwork of different stories and fables, and thus it shares a likeness to many of them. It’s good to be aware of this, but not to dwell too deep on these etymological and genealogical roots, for they are not the focus of this essay. Rather, what intrigues us here is the subtle transition we witness in the first twin episodes of the show; the leap between two forms of relationship. The first of the pair, the thesis, was hinted at already; it’s the siblinghood, the link forged from blood. The antithesis, or the successor of this fundamental connection, is friendship.
Friendship overrules siblinghood as the primary relationship of the equine society, right in the first episode of the show.
There are varieties of analogies we might use to illuminate this thought a bit, but the most revealing, I think, is the dichotomy coined by the german sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies; the theoretical separation between a Gemeinschaft and a Gesellschaft. Now, in nutshell, the difference between the two goes as follows: “Gemeinschaft”, or “community”, is the realm of personal relationships, family ties, and tribal obligations, whereas “Gesellschaft”, or “society”, refers to the civic life and plane, to work and the official political institutions and arenas. Now, my claim is that in the aforementioned episode, the divine sisterhood stands down in the face of another type of social relationship, which is to become the new moral foundation of the Equestrian society.
What does this mean?
To answer that, we need to take a closer look at the two pieces of this dialectical transaction, on the one hoof, to siblinghood, and on the other, to friendship. Moreover, we need to study how the two differ in this kind of a political context. And, naturally, at some point we need to address the synthesis of these two opposites.
Let the thesis be the first victim to fall under our scalpel.
As something essentially natural, siblinghood seems as the more enduring bond between two souls, be they human or humans in ponified form. “Blood is thicker than water,” right? Despite the power of the idiom, as is evident, the supposedly ideal union between the mystical sisters ended up in disaster, with the younger one tumbling into the pits of jealousy and bitterness. How did such a catastrophe come about? We do not know, for so far the canon has remained suspiciously silent of the issue. However, that conveniently leaves room for some (philosophical) speculation…
It could be argued that the divine union collapsed because its two halves were too close to each other; they were compressed into the ultimate intimacy and proximity, the love they shared was so absolute and organic that instead of illuminating, it ended up blinding them both. Why did Cain kill his brother? Because of jealousy, or so goes the cardinal explanation, but the reason behind the jealousy itself remains clandestine, at least to us outside observers – why? Because we see the relationship very differently compared to the way the two siblings, were they men or ponies, experienced it. When a bond becomes too close, too natural, even the slightest crack or a hint of asymmetry can disproportionately distort the view of its participants, especially the one’s who feels being worse off in the deal. We cannot ever truly understand Luna’s or Cain’s motives, because we do not share their intensified experiences.
But again, what does it mean to say that friendship replaces siblinghood as the prima materia of Equestria’s social reality?
As we remember the very first episode of the second season, we also recall Princess Celestia’s words: “Me and my sister are no longer connected to the Elements of Harmony.” The sceptre has changed hooves, and the fact that the ultimate symbol of Equestria's social cohesion and unity now rests on the shoulders of a group of friends and not as the burden of two sisters, speaks for the fact that some kind of a transition has indeed happened.
How about the other patient, then…
Friendship, as a philosophical concept, has roots that stretch way over to Aristotle. Thus we are forced to trim the topic a bit and bring forth this quite neat dichotomy inside a dichotomy. In his book The Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida presents two opposing sketches of friendship which he claims to have found from the Western philosophical tradition. On the other hoof, we have the friendships of Aristotle, a bond between equal (male) members of society, respecting each other with the distance they share. This is a friendship penetrated by a law, by an artificial and arbitrary encounter with a person who is not, by definition, one’s kin and family, but a friend. Indeed, the friendship of Aristotle, interpreted by Derrida, appears as a model of a contract, an agreement, or a pact. That said, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the proper form of the proverb we used earlier: "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." (Source)
Friendship is stronger than siblinghood because its a voluntary promise, a conscious commitment.
“Friendship is never a given in the present; it belongs to the experience of waiting, of promise, or of commitment. Its discourse is that of prayer and at issue there is that which responsibility open to the future.” (Derrida, The Politics of Friendship. The Journal of Philosophy, November 1988, pp.636)
This version of friendship is indeed rich with political and moral content, and thus it would seem to match the version we find from the show; or can anypony deny the evident moral/political content that the Mane 6 have attributed to the concept of friendship? While it would be difficult to deny the fundamentally rule-based essence of the friendship of FIM, it could be said that it’d be just as taxing to actually lay out the blueprints of that essence, of that law, of that morality. Surely we could count and name all the articles that the ponies have come up with during the years, but such a list would serve as a poor substitute for an analysis that strived to unveil the major characteristics of the logic behind these illustrative examples.
The other version of the bond called friendship, depicted by Derrida, is of more clandestine nature. It’s a secret, hidden, quiet type. Derrida presents Montaigne as a prime example of this type of friendship:
"If one presses me to say why I loved him, I feel that can only be expressed by responding: Because it was he; because it was me" ( Derrida’s quote from Montaigne, ibid. pp.641)
This very personal mode of friendship is invulnerable and immune to all kinds of rules that could be laid out in the form of a law or a system of moral axioms; it’s a figure of friendship that comes very close to the figure of love.
Derrida doesn’t, in his article, conclude or solve the dichotomy between these two modes of friendship, but settles for stating it as follows:
“On the one hand, friendship seems to be essentially foreign or unamenable to the res publica and thus could not found a politics. But, on the other hand, as one knows, from Plato to Montaigne, from Aristotle to Kant, from Cicero to Hegel, the great philosophical and canonical discourses on friendship (but my question goes precisely to the philosophical canon in this domain) will have linked friendship explicitly to virtue and to justice, to moral reason and to political reason. These discourses will have even set the moral and political conditions for an authentic friendship – and vice-versa.” (Ibid. pp. 642)
Okay.
So far, we have established the parameters of an evolution from a tribal siblinghood into a civil friendship as a way to interpret the events of the twin episode called “Friendship Is Magic.” Following the rules of Hegelian dialectics, we ought to complete our calculus with a synthesis of the two halves so that we might enjoy and relish the beauty of the absolute Spirit, or something like that. Alas, I’m not going that far down the road yet.
I can give you a peek, though.
The synthesis I speak of has recently grown a pair of wings.
No matter how many times I return to this, I keep on finding grammatical flaws. Sorreeh!