The Ponies are Evil... Or Amoral · 7:23am Sep 7th, 2013
A response to Digibrony's Thoroughly Analyzing The Return of Harmony/Free Will
In his video, Digibrony separates the universe of Equestria in two groups, best represented on the alignment chart as Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil. He states that in Equestria, upholding harmony is morally good, and working against harmony, even against society at large is inherently evil.
The obvious implications aside (I'm looking at you, Hobbes), this is simply absurd. If one bases their moral system on such a simple dichotomy, then grievous injustices can be committed to countless thousands and millions and it would still be morally acceptable.
Under such a simple system, it is morally right to kill or imprison anybody who wants any sort of change to the social order. Indeed, a democratic system, when compared to the Diarchy of Equestria, is evil, because it creates chaos that wouldn't be present in a dictatorship.
Likewise, any action taken against dissenters is morally right. "They were creating chaos, thus we are right in killing them."
Such a system has no moral limits. It's like a sort of philosophical hedonism, where the goal is to make the entire world happy. The easiest solution is to kill everyone that is unhappy, meaning that the whole world is now happy.
If you shuddered at that sentence, or realized the implication of a lawful-chaotic only scale for morality and judgement, you're probably a normal person.
This in itself is heinous enough, but in Digi's worldview, there is no free will. Not just the concept of destiny in Equestria, I mean, it's a TV show, no matter how messed up that is, it's fiction. Harmless folly. No no, he believes, or rather has made himself out to believe, that there is no choice. You have no free will, no moral agency, no semblance of any sort of mind. You are a machine, a computer program simply running it's course.
That is not a world I want to live in, and if it is true, what use have I? All moral and ethical theories are bankrupt, they have no power. People cannot choose between good and evil, indeed, good and evil become meaningless. A man, having killed hundreds of children during a school shooting has not committed an evil action, or any action at all.
He has not acted, because he has no choice in the matter.
That is an inherently amoral world, reminiscent of Chatoyance's take on The Conversion Bureau. No matter how good they are made out to be by Chatoyance, the only good characters in any of her fics are human, as ironic as it seems, because they have the capacity for moral choice, the ponies do not, the ponies aren't even sapient! They are merely acting on nature, on instinct, rather than on reason. The only exceptions are alicorns, who do have moral choice, and repeatedly commit evil actions, but no, Chatoyance has proclaimed divine infallibility for them.
Ever hear that before? The humans are a threat to the Equestrian social order, therefore they must be destroyed? The ponies have no capacity for moral choice?
As horrible as this is, it came to me over the course of Digi's video that the ponies are lawful evil, even as their opponents are chaotic evil.
They have committed or have threatened to commit what I consider to be the most heinous of actions, that is, robbing somebody of their moral choice.
Reformation spell, anyone? Taste the rainbow, anyone?
Under the simplistic order=good, chaos=evil that Digibrony has presented us, Discord's action of mind control in the maze are evil. Now, they are indeed evil, the vilest evil possible, but if the reformation spell was used, it would be morally right in such a worldview, despite doing the same thing: mind control.
I suppose I should go on another tangent here. In the movie, Olympus has Fallen, the villain, a terrorist committed to bringing down the US government, tortures the nuclear launch codes out of several government officials, as well as killing hundreds of people to get to that position. The hero must stop him by fighting his way through the White House, killing dozens of terrorist troops.
This, in most people's minds can be justified, but what he does next cannot be. He is ordered by the Speaker of the House to rescue the president. To obtain his location, he captures two of the enemy guards and interrogates them. When one becomes smart with him, he slits the defenseless man's throat, killing him immediately. When the second man goes completely at the sigh of what could have been a good friend's death, he stops making any noise at all. When he doesn't answer the questions of the hero, he is slowly and brutally tortured to death.
Both the hero and the villain used the same tactics to achieve their goals. Both disregarded the moral qualms of their actions, and both kill and torture to get what the want.
In short, they are both morally reprehensible, but neither of them even hold a candle to Discord or the ponies.
Nightmare Moon was forcibly converted to good, a destruction of moral choice. Even if it was a counter conversion, as she had been forcefully tuned evil by whatever turned Luna into Nightmare, it is still a horrible act.
What's worse is the end of the video, where he says anything that doesn't accept the pony worldview is forced to through magic, or is imprisoned.
I wonder then, what would they do to any human that walked on their land? Oh, you prefer a democratic government? Life imprisonment or forced conversion. Oh, your religious beliefs are different from the rest of society? Life imprisonment or forced conversion. Oh, your sexuality offends many people, or doesn't contribute to society? Life imprisonment or forced conversion.
If free will does not exist, then morality is meaningless anyways. If it does exist and harmony does equal good, and chaos evil, then I suggest reading Thomas Hobbes. He hit the nail right on the head with that one.
Lastly, if free will exists, and morality is independent of order or chaos, then the ponies have committed unjustifiable atrocities.
And there goes the television show, lost into a puddle of clockwork universes and repressive governments. It was fun while it lasted, but I...
I need a drink.
Your not the only one that needs a drink...