What is friendship? How should it be written? · 11:13pm Jul 6th, 2017
Friendship is the emotion that a person feels towards another for their virtues. Your feeling of friendship is part of an exchange of value with the other person. You admire the good qualities in each other. It makes you happy to be with a good friend, because they are so awesome in a certain way. They provide a good example for you of a virtue lived out in a person, and vice versa. Friendship is a mutually-beneficial arrangement. You help make your friends better by giving them advice, knowledge, and new perspectives, and they do the same for you.
Below is a brief example of friendship based on a recent episode involving Starlight Glimmer and Trixie. If this were a fanfic, I would reveal the following in some way. I'd do this in order to make their friendship believable. In order to make each character believable on their own. Here goes...
Starlight Glimmer is teaching Trixie how to do a new spell. "Real" magic, rather than illusions which Trixie has traditionally practiced. Trixie is gaining value from this exchange because she needs to learn a new spell. It's kind of bugged her for a while that she didn't know spells to actually teleport, or actually transfigure things... she's only known tricks to deceive ponies into thinking she did. Hence her name... TRICKsie. As early as the alicorn amulet episode, I'd argue that she felt self-conscious about needing an artifact to take on another unicorn who needed no such artifact. Obviously Trixie wouldn't duel another unicorn again, but Starlight is still helping her get over her insecurities, and improve her act with better magic.
Starlight, even in the role of teacher, is also gaining from this. Teachers get a certain sense of satisfaction when their students succeed. Especially such a willing, eager student like Trixie. Sometimes too eager, a bit ADD (which drives the conflict that you need to make the plot interesting). Nevertheless Trixie is a good quick study given how little she practices a spell like teleportation before using it like it's nothing. Additionally, for Starlight, this exchange is even more important because it involves magic. In the past, Starlight has used her knowledge and special talent of magic for evil purposes. As a reformed villain though, and now a moral pony worthy of friendship, she must still practice her special talent in some way. But maybe she feels anxiety over it. The last time she used her knowledge of magic, something bad happened. But by Starlight imparting her knowledge to another pony, to help her make her act better, she is demonstrating to herself that she can responsibly both use, and teach, magic.
The friendship between Glimmer and Trixie helps me as the writer to reveal crucial details about the characters' pasts and psyches that we hadn't seen in the story before. Characters must play off of each other, and friendship is one great way to develop the characters involved. Each character gains something by it, and they each grow.
The show's title is "Friendship is Magic." In real life and in writing, a friendship helps both parties improve... almost out of thin air. I'd argue that in a way, friendship is "magic"... or at the very least, a praiseworthy thing.
In a future blog, I will examine what friendship is NOT. Because sometimes, what a thing is NOT is just as important to establish as what it IS, to prevent misuse of the word. This is especially important to clarify in a fandom where the word "friendship" is thrown around like dollar bills at a strip club... sometimes literally in the case of many stories! Using the word too much cheapens its true meaning, and the true magic of it.
Interesting!
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Believe it or not, this is not my own idea. This is Ayn Rand's idea of friendship from her philosophy of Objectivism. This is the same author of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand, the fervent advocate for capitalism, free markets. The one who praises honest billionaires who earned their fortunes legitimately, rather than through lobbying or political favoritism a la military industrial complex, she was anti-war. She also hated scammers a la Bernie Madoff.
Most people assume when they hear Ayn Rand's name, though, that she must have been a self-absorbed A-hole. Which to give her credit, does come off a bit in her writing even though she wasn't that kind of person. Like I said, appearance is sometimes just as important as intent. And in her interviews, she just sounded like a cranky old Russian lady. Which she was. But there was more to her than what people see, or have commonly heard.
Without changing Ayn Rand's meaning, but by switching out a few of her pet phrases with words that most other people agree on definitions to, I was able to convey her ideas on friendship to a group of people. If I mentioned Rand from the start, these people might've instantly turned off due to emotions that they felt upon hearing her name. Or its association with capitalism, which they might associate with dirtbags like Bernie Madoff instead of honest inventors and entrepreneurs who provide legitimate goods and services.
Most people instantly assume that selfishness, or more correctly self-interest, is a bad trait. However all friends act in their own self-interest. But that's a good thing. If you're in a friendship, or romantic relationship, and you are giving way more than you're receiving to it, then the other person is a manipulator, not a true friend. You need something out of it too.
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Ironic given Starlight's Own Town was the exact opposite of Rapture.
"There is only One Sith now, the Sith Order Itself."
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I haven't played Bioshock extensively. From what I have read, Rapture's main failings were due not to its initial, objectivism-like views. But rather due to the leaders straying from their own initial philosophy.
To be fair, even as an Objectivist, I will say. Most "official" Objectivists like Leonard Peikoff are way, way off the mark nowadays from:
1. What Ayn Rand would've said.
2. Common freaking sense even if Ayn Rand would've said differently. Ayn Rand had a lot of great ideas. Her core philosophy is 100% self-consistent, if incomplete and needing clarification in some areas that she did not provide. That being said, Rand does not have a monopoly on the truth. I already gave an example of how I had to edit her words slightly for consumption by people who otherwise wouldn't have even read it.
Also, even though back in the 1950's and 60's she supported homosexuality being made legal in all 50 states, a progressive view at the time... Ayn Rand was somewhat antagonistic in her writing towards homosexuals. Who knows how she truly felt about them as people, it could just be because she's a bitch to everyone and not just gays. Most modern day Objectivists, including me, have no problem with gays. Do whatever you want sexually between consenting adults, I still respect them fully as a person.
My main problem is when society
1. Gives gays special, extra "rights" and privileges that no one else has, or
2. Elevates homosexual acts above sex between a man and a woman. You know, the one form of sex which actually produces babies and continues our society. But forget sustainable birthrates, amirite?
This website, http://ariwatch.com/, gives even more examples of how the modern Ayatollahs of Organized Objectivism, AKA basically a church, have distorted Rand's views, and have distorted common sense itself. The writer of that site is also entertaining to read even if you don't agree with him. He provides information that most libertarians, or even most "objectivists," would find to be anathema. Among his views, that I share, and believe that Rand would've shared too even though they weren't issues in her time.
1. Torture is wrong, and gitmo was wrong.
2. The Iraq war was a giant mistake from the beginning. Invading Iran would be a similar blunder, but of greater proportions.
3. Israel is a bunch of backstabbing twats who we really shouln't be allies with.
4. We must secure our borders and limit immigration to secure our culture. New immigrants are not assimilating. Take Islam in Europe for one example.
Most objectivists in the official Objectivist organizations like the Ayn Rand Institute disagree with the reasonable things I just stated above. Even though the above is destroying our country and our reputation on the world stage as a rational nation.
Ah yes, the episode where Trixie invents the Rearden Teacup.
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The Rand related tags were only used because my conception of friendship is actually identical to the ideal friendship proposed by Ayn Rand. I lifted it almost verbatim from her. She deserves credit for her ideas in my blog, even if only in the form of tags.
Also, my conception of forgiveness is identical to Rand's too. My earlier blog post didn't have Rand tags on them. Maybe they should have.
4594996 It's kind of weird how Starlight Glimmer was the anti-matter version of John Galt.
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Great observation!
Starlight operated on the exact opposite premise regarding wealth (i.e. communism vs. capitalism). But also the opposite regarding special talents. Galt wanted his world to be one where everyone from ditch diggers to physicists could be the best person who they could be, within a capitalist system. We need ditch diggers. We need physicists. Neither job is "better"... although being a particle physicist requires being a more mentally fit person, while being a digger requires being more physical fitness. In our world, having the mind to be a good physicist is a lot harder skillset to acquire than digging. Thus particle physicists are paid more. That doesn't make the physicist "better" necessarily, not even in John Galt's view.
By the way, the objectivist conception of capitalism operates very similar to friendship in its ideal conception... trading value for value, except deliberately in the free market. Friendships are often subconscious to their motivations by the friends involved. You aren't collecting a dividend check that you can see, hold, or deposit in a bank. But unless a friendship is a dysfunctional relationship where one person is a clear manipulator, it'll continue even on subconscious grounds. Or purely emotional grounds of nostalgia, or fear of ditching current friends and making new, better ones.
I've kept overall low-quality friends for years just because they had a few good traits that I liked. They were reckless and manipulative, but they were smart and sometimes fun to hang out with. Two really bad traits, one really good trait, and one "meh" trait. I should've ditched them sooner, as low-quality. Because I'm a better person and deserve better friends with more to offer me. Now that doesn't mean that my old friends are bad people or can't change. I'm sure for some other low-quality friends, my old friends would've made great friends. They could've improved each other to become better people, perhaps to the point of being worth my friendship once again.