Hey guys,
So, in the last few month I have been reading a lot of "fallout: equestria" stories (the original included) and one of the things I noted was how the whole "harmony" and "friendship" elements are central in pony society, as put in most of those stories, and that got me thinking. Do we humans have something like a central set of values and virtues that define human individuals and society like the ponies do? And if we do, what would those elements/virtues be?

The First thing that came to mind when I started thinking about this were the classical cristian/western values, but then I realized that those ideas do not speak for all of humanity (not even the majority if I'm not mistaken), because of that I decided to eliminate all kinds of individual cultural set of rules and values, instead I tried to search for common things on all of them. In all our existance there were some things that most human societies had in common like crimes (all humans know it's wrong to steal and murder, even if they do it themselves), leadership, some sort of economy, territory and conflict, but we can't really make elements out of those things (are we supposed to have the element of socialism and the element of democracy being saved by the element of austerlitz?) .

At this point I got really confused, no matter how hard I tried all I could see was the massive diversity and conflict that existed in humanity, and for some time I even tried to see them as some sort of central element but I still couldn't be 100% sure. I decided that, since I still couldn't find many things in common on human cultures, goverments and civilizantion, I should, instead, try to understand why modern and past societies have/had the values and virtues they did/do; After a very long analysis I was able to set a basic rule on how diferent human societies would evolve, most times we had a group "X" and a group "Y" who would come in some sort of culture shock, from that shock either one of them would prevail and expand or a new group "Z" would emerge and survive until the next shock.

Survive and Adapt, those 2 words are always showing up on humanity, either against nature or other civilizations, that is when it hit me, the common factor that you can find on all humans is the will to survive, adapt and expand, all human civilizations are somehow bound by those factors, all of them rise, survive and, at some point, fall to another, not always better, but more adapted civilization. The modern democratic and capitalist society doesn't exist because it's a perfect model, but because it's the one that survived so far, same goes to most other past societies.

The central elements and virtues of humanity are (in my opinion) the human will to survive, adapt and expand, all humans can have diferent values, goverments and cultures, but we all have the will to protect and expand our individual and social aspects. So I ask you all, do you agree with this? If not, what do you think could be seen as a central group of elements of all humans?

PS: when I say survival, I mean more of a human will to go forward, on all fields, not just the whole "man vs wild" thing.

2401304

Do we humans have something like a central set of values and virtues that define human individuals and society like the ponies do? And if we do, what would those elements/virtues be?

While things in MLP take a more literal sense, the ponies are, for the most part, human. The values that apply to them apply to us.

The message of the show is that kindness, generosity, honesty, laughter, loyalty are the great virtues of humanity and friendship makes us greater than we are alone.

Of course, Fallout considers sacrifice to be the greatest of virtues.

As for survival. Is it a virtue? Not really. I don't think surviving is inherently virtuous or un-virtuous. It just seems neutral to me.

Does it define humanity? No. It defines life.

Surviving adapting, all life does that. The organisms that live today are alive not because they are better, but because they survived.

2401304 Well survive, adapt and expand are generally traits of all living things, so it's not clear how these are actually going to define human individuals vis-a-vis animals.

I think on a macro level human society is basically a quest for power - power over humans and over nature. In a sense this is different from merely "surviving and adapting" because survival is generally done out of self-preservation, e.g. if you don't survive, then you die. I see power as more of a luxury - something that you don't really need to survive, but you really want. (Of course you could point to animals exercising power in the case of lions and their prides, etc.)

2401535
MLP was created by humans, so yes, the whole show is based on humans values and minds, what I'm asking here is: is there a single idea/virtue, or group of ideas that are common on all humans? something more or less the way every pony we see in the show, and in fallout: equestria is to their elements?

And well, when I say survival, what I mean is more of a human will to go forward, not just in simple "man vs wild" survival but on other things like economic expansion, expanding civilizations, knowledge, science, and others. And I also didn't mean as being something exclusive of human life, but as something fundamental to us.

2401720

MLP was created by humans, so yes, the whole show is based on humans values and minds, what I'm asking here is: is there a single idea/virtue, or group of ideas that are common on all humans?

Maybe that is what it is.

Kindness, generosity, honesty, laughter, loyalty and friendship exist in all human societies. We kinda have to have them in order to be able to work together.

2401720

things like economic expansion, expanding civilizations, knowledge, science, and others.

I don't know about that. Even today hunter gathering societies exist, remaining virtually unchanged for thousands of years.

2401828
True, they are very strong, but we don't define ourselves based on them, and those virtues alone are not able to support human society.

2401828

Today those societies are a very small fraction of humanity and most of them only exist because goverments and organizations protect them, as far as we know they will eventually cease to exist.

2401535

The organisms that live today are alive not because they are better, but because they survived.

Actualy you are mistaken here. The organisms that live today are alive because they survived BUT they survived because they were better. That's how natural selection works, the better species (more adapted) survive and the otehrs don't. What you said is the exact opposite of how survival works.

2403518
I'm afraid you are incorrect.

You see, you are correct when you state that the species that are better adapted to their environment are the ones that survive. But you are wrong when you say "better" is a synonym for "more adapted".

"Better" is not scientific terminology. It is a subjective statement of value.

If you want to say that a tiny, furry rodent is better than a velociraptor cause one survived and the other went extinct, that is your prerogative, but forgive me if I don't subscribe to it.

Velociraptors are incredibly awesome and rodents are lame. Therefore velociraptors are better.

See? My statement has as much value as yours. Because we are using different standards upon which we judge the value of each species. I use one standard, that matters the most to me. You use a different standard that matters more to you.

"Most adapted" however is objective. An the rodent was more well adapted, at least to the environment post meteorite impact.

PS. It is entirely possible that rodent is incorrect terminology to refer to the mammals that existed at the time or that velociraptors were already extinct by the time the meteor impact happened. Just run with it.

Humans have tenancies (eg empathy) but no species wide values - not even survival (Martyrdom, extreme pacifism, etc) or adaption (Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than the building of the pyramids - the Ancient Egyptian survived for 5000 years but it is remarkable how little they advanced in that time as their society was built around stability and order) .