"on humans and humanity" or "have you met my friend, Miss Anne Thropy?" · 9:07am Jan 5th, 2012
I'm a bit cheesed off right now, so I will probably regret it later, but what's life without spice, hmm?
I want to write about misanthropy, hating humanity, and why. This is once again to do with TCB stories, which I've been writing the shit out of lately, and also reading a lot of. One theme which rings through time and time again is the biggest complaint against the whole damn subgenre, and that is how misanthropic they are. To be honest, a lot (maybe most) of these accusations ring true - but in some cases, ringing true is unfortunate because humanity is actually a pretty shitty species.
One author in particular writes starkly dark humanity, with some seriously fucked up individuals and (this is the important bit!) equally some seriously good, wonderful and kind people. The thing is, in I think every single case, every major or minor character which is definably "good" is turned into a pony, whilst every definably "bad" human gets their comeuppance, whether that is death, death, torture or torture and death. Her world speaks of massive slums, impoverished slum-dwellers with no way out of the hellhole they are in, forced to fight to survive, even to kill and maim. It is a world where companies run roughshod over health and safety, where the rich are privileged beyond their station, where the divide between the haves and have-nots is palpable and clear-cut.
It is also, to me, an all-too-real world.
I'm a relatively privileged class. I'm working class, part of the slave-class called the working poor. I'm a few paychecks from bankruptcy. You're probably like me.
The thing is, a couple of years ago, I had to go to India. It was the trip of a lifetime, and there is much to be amazed at in that country. It is vast, but it is not unspoiled. One of the things that stood out to me were the slums. Right up against glittering high-rise palaces of steel and glass were barbed-wire-fenced off favela's full to overflowing with malnourished, under-educated wretches. They washed their clothes and themselves in river water which was blue. Not the beautiful blue of the sky or the sea, but bright bilious blue. The blue of detergent and chemical waste. Even next to the glittering palaces, there were deep trenches filled with refuse, garbage, dead animals. That country, clearly, is a boiling dichotomy between the promise of progress and the cost of it.
The thing that stood out the most, though, was my last day. My plane had been delayed, so I was sent to a four-star hotel. It was chic, expensive, beyond anything I could normally afford. The room probably cost as much as the flight home. I hated it, after a week of curry I was ready to go home to get food which tasted normal. So I sulked. Eventually I went up to the roof, where they had a private swimming pool and sun-loungers. It was nice to get into the sun and just relax having spent the last week experiencing Benguluru through the windows of a taxi.
At one point, I pulled myself out of the pool and stood on the side of this glittering monolith to wealth and power, and looked down.
There, in the shade of this four-star hotel, was a single-room shack. It was nothing more than a pile of bricks with a corrugated tin lid. Outside of it was a woman, bent low over her chores as she washed her own and other peoples' clothes. After hanging up a good quantity of these clothes, she shouted at her child, and threw him in the bucket, where she washed him in the dirty washing-water before getting him (or her, it WAS a long way down) dressed. Then she went back inside her shack, with the one hole instead of a window, no glass, the one doorway (no door), no power and no running water.
And then it dawned on me: she was one of the lucky ones.
And I, one of the more generally-unfortunate wage-slave serfs from a foreign country, looking down at her from luxury she couldn't afford in a year, from my ivory tower of plenty, had it so much better, and was still filled with discontent.
This is the reality in which we live, people. This is the promised land of plenty, where 5% of the population own about 33% of the wealth. Where 10% own 66% of the wealth. Where 20% own over 80% of the wealth. Where the bottom 80% of the population own something less than 20% of the wealth.
If you're angry at this stark reality - albeit magnified - being shown to you through a filter and a philtre, depicting a sugar-bowl world with no sickness, no poverty, friendship and magic then fuck you. That's that nasty little voice inside you which is privileged enough to not live in a slum, that has education, food, a house, something of a future, and which knows that so many more are living that hell depicted in the more deftly-painted worlds from capable authors.
Others, true, suck. Being told "earth is shit and so is humanity" is awful. I could name names - the original was very guilty of that (maybe unintentionally, but it was). One has a trainwreck of a character which is so cardboard it's painful and it's almost bad enough for me to delete everything and disavow any knowledge of having ever contributed to this subgenre. This is because non-realistic telling instead of showing just doesn't fucking work.
When it does, it brings the characters and the world so much more alive.
The good author I am talking about here is Chatoyance - the bad ones shall remain nameless. You don't know who you are, because even when you've been told you don't listen, so I don't need to try harder.
Chatoyance has written, so far, about five stories in a series she calls "lost in the herd". The first story is the most misanthropic, if you ask me. Why, you ask? It has relatively privileged people - kids - doing kiddy things until one of them ponifies. The later stories she wrote has slums, murder, rape, thievery, betrayal and torture, so, why, Midnight, you ask, is the one about videogames and two kids becoming ponies the one you like the least?
Well, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain. The humans in that story represent everything we currently glorify about ourselves. They trivialize murder, use foul language, consume, destroy and take. Then one of them becomes a pony. He's changed, completely. He no longer swears, he uses cutesy phrases like 'yuppers' instead of 'yup'. He's a kind, thoughtful, friendly, selfless saint of an individual. He's pony gandhi, that's what. What he is is a castrated wet sop of a creature, a teddy bear with four hooves and a bright smile. His friend is, understandably, aghast. The lively individual he knew is gone, to be replaced with a kindly zombie, brains scooped out and replaced with cotton candy. After stumbling through this brightly-coloured hell of a post-human paradise, our main protagonist decides to get himself mentally castrated too and he joins the smiling horde of cute.
He's happy, it's true. He really IS happy, because the sad thing is that the world he joined is paradise. Nopony is sick, nopony suffers, everypony is accepted and loved and there is peace and plenty forever. This is the thing - the fantasy world really is that good (at least if you stay out of the grittier areas like the everfree). That's the point, if the fantasy world wasn't better than the alternative, then why would anybody want to go? But the price... it's frightful, in a way.
Later stories are simply that much better. We have conflicted, complicated and interesting humans, whether they are kind and generous like Pastern or Caprice or Alexi, or not, them becoming a pony doesn't leave them a happy, castrated saccharine zombie. If Chatoyance's later stories present a dark, rotten slum-filled hell wherein the last dregs of humanity see their last best hope of a future is to emigrate and pay the price of loss of thumbs, then understand that this world she presents, on both sides of the bubble are far more real. That world she is showing you exists right, fucking now. That's not misanthropic, pretending that sort of crap doesn't exist quite probably is.
Be aware that greed is good. Greed, scratch that, is god. It has been the driving force of our civilization, but it is also poison. It has taken our world to the brink of disaster and economic and biological collapse - make no mistakes, the current age of humanity is ending one way or another. In these stories, it ends because the 'good' humans take to the hoof. In the real world, it may be our greed and avarice which takes us to the stars. I hope it would be something nobler, but I'm under no illusions that it probably won't be.
I don't hate humans, I don't even particularly hate humanity, but I don't kid myself. We're dangerous, murderous vicious animals with a very, very thin veneer of civilisation on top. Pretending we're fallen angels is retarded and self-defeating.
Very interesting blog (read it twice so it could sink in better) and I have to agree with you on most every point. Your experiences in India are not even a step away from what has been written by the talented artists here and that is a credit to them in showing us ourselves ;humanity I mean. You said it best yourself,
"That world she is showing you exists right, fucking now. That's not misanthropic, pretending that sort of crap doesn't exist quite probably is."
Unfortunately Midnight, I'm going to have to disagree with you on one thing, I do think she over does it with mega corporation dystopian future thing. Do I agree that what she is portraying exists in today's world? yes. Do I think it will ever pervade to the level she portrays in her stories? no. The TCB universe is innately kinda misanthropic because almost every story has the majority of humanity converting either because the world just plain fucking sucks or the world's being consumed by Equestria, or both.
also, I do think humanity's ultimate destiny lies among the stars. an enormous space filled with tons of resources and million upon millions of worlds for us to expand and conquer? it's like we were designed to go and spread out through the cosmos. (economics is the only realistic reason humans will ever reach the stars though)
3755
I do think she over does it with mega corporation dystopian future thing.
This is where I agree with you - but that, I think (by her own admittance, and the way it is presented) is on purpose.
One of the tropes which is rather common is the crapsack world. The failed reality, where everything has gone to shit. I think that the world she portrays is deliberately a crapsack world. Not because she hates humanity, but as a literary device. In the same way, Equestria is depicted as a sugarbowl world, the precise opposite.
This is the difference between her and other, lesser authors who write what is often called the trope of all humans are bastards. Her world is believable - sure it is magnified to the absurd, a magnifying glass taken to our own pretty cruddy in places world to show up these flaws in crystal clarity - but it is believable.
At least to me.
Do I think it's likely? Well, it's far more likely to be like that than to actually have Equestria pop out of the sea. The interesting thing is, if you read her stuff and examine it, that crapsack world gets better and that sugarbowl world gets worse. By "the taste of grass", our heroic ex-humans in all their humanity have built something better than the "real thing", and in the face of sedition and betrayal by a "perfect" pony.
I like reading about her world, because it is logical, self-consistent and powerful - sure, it's dark, it's set in disadvantaged places, but that to me makes it interesting. If I have to place in my head that this is a close-up of an entire world, where it's just the bits she's showing which are full of suck, then so be it.
Personally, if she stubbornly insisted that the entire world was like the single pieces she is showing us, then I would turn my back on it, because it clearly is not.
I similarly think that the stubborn insistence by her detractors that the colourful, awful earth and the wonderful, colourful equestria she shows is all there is to her world is similarly short-sighted, and that's what gets my goat.
I could try to write a happy story about happy humans being happy as they happily go to become ponies, but where's the catch? the draw? Conflict - be it external or internal - drives a story. Writing about those with zero problems or drives to go pony is inherently boring.
All I have to add here is a quote from my favorite book series of all time. It's only tangentially related, but I think it fits with the overall theme of what you're saying.
As a whole, people suck, but a person can be extraordinary.
A very interesting read Midnight, going to have to come back to it later once my brain wakes up more
For the most part ( if not all of it ) you bring up very valueable points, and i will admit that your expriances in India are frightening and very close to something i witness, both in my Backward Economic country ( Greece ) and a trip i spent in Israel.
The TCB universe is amazingly interesting yet i cannot pinpoint one of the reason why it is so. Still even with that i find it particulary sad that most writers just start writing about humanity as a Nietzche wannabe ( probably because the writers are themself 18 year old cynical Nietzche wannabes bronies ). Writing for the TCB universe in any meaningful way is hard. Both because you are dealing with a worldwide event and because you are dealing with the nature of Humanity. To understand the nature of humanity you need historical, biological ( psychology, physiological ) Sociopolitical knowledge with a PhD in Philosophical Antrhopology/ butt loads of expirances with people, coupled by the fact that you need to do that in the future, which for all intents and purposes, is so mindblowingly unpredictable that it could end for the better. I don't want to give the impression that you need to be Douglas Hofstadter/ Dostoyevsky hybrid but i find it alarming that i ( personally ) can count the all of good TCB writers with 1 hand.
It all goes back to the problem of storytelling today. Everyone wants to tell a "story" but they lack the knowledge or, scratch that, expiriance that qualifies them to write interesting stories. The mind of the product is the mind of the creator. If you are an interesting person ( a cross between Knowledge and expiriance ) than what you write will be interesting. If you spent 8 hours of your fucking day sitting around broswing the internet while pwning some noobs in Counter Strike and maybe have read one book ( Lord of the rings ) or watched one movie ( Alliens ) in all your entire life, then your product will be garbage.
I don't know, maybe its something in the setting that compells people to write about it or maybe what they can do with it. I mean, the conflict which is presented here is astronomically interesting. You have a setting where you are already dwelve into the nature of humanity and the moral choices it has to make from the very start. Millions of people are flocking in CBs for hopes of a better future, millions others takes arms where due to religious beliefs or because they are alarmed of the rate of conversions happening, and then you have the middle ground where they arent so sure of conversion or respect equestria but want to remain human to see the species get better. Personally through i always thought of the conflicting spectrum as more of a 2 dimensional graph. On the Y axis you have the scale of Misanthropy versus Humanism and on the X axis you have ''Willingness to convert'' versus
''Willingness to remain human''. Maybe we can have another dimension for where the human/pony in question is good or not but the nature of morality is 2 dimensional too, so doing that we would escape to 4 dimensional graphs. Then again considering how random humanity can be its jarring that people just portay the issue as, you want to be HLF or poniefied/PER. I guess its this conflict that creates so much interest in the story.
In the end the setting is wonderful but reality sometimes has to crush in. While it would be nice to have paradise appear on Earth with all of use invited for the opening party, its unfortunatly not fiasable. I sometimes suggest ( to the horror and shock of some people ) that the journey to reach a goal, whether that is a truth or a better world, is more important than the goal it self. Here, the most treasured things we all want to have is given to us, free of charge and the consequences are shown through the actions of humanity. I can tell you that if TCB was about humanity's stragle to reach equestria and to be more like them, sacrificing a lot in the process just to reach equestria and to set up the CBs then you would see some change on how humanity acts.
Finally should make it clear that i have no illusions about myself. I am (probably) a shitty young writter thats about to post his first story. I cannot even concieve writing a story set in the TCB universe because that would require more knowledge and expiriance that i can possible think off. These are my 2 cents on the matter, and i tried to keep the discussion of human nature out of this because it would probably be here all day.
I'll say I've been attracted to TCB stories mainly because the idea of an "evolutionary reboot" for humanity is...fascinating. Chatoyance's Lost in the Herd stories stand out to me because she explores that side of it. She goes into excellent detail of the Newfoals' exploration of their own bodies and their bodies' effect on their mentality, emotions, and behavior. They live the pony way, now. The monkey is gone.
At the same time, I see this with my own set of lenses, as does anyone else. I grew up in an inner-city neighborhood. I saw shootings on a monthly basis. It took my entire childhood for my parents to save up enough to move us to the suburbs. Now that I'm on my own, I live better than that thanks to my education. It's nowhere near the stark contrast in other countries, but I've seen people murdered for turning down the wrong street and I've seen an entire community throw a surprise party to celebrate a neighbor's son becoming an Eagle Scout. I don't think Humanity sucks, I just think we could do better. My dream is that purging the solitary, opportunistic Monkey and swapping for the communal Pony would help with that. Thus, TCB grabs my eyes and heart.
3775
That soundsUbermertch a lot like Nietzche's Ubermensch idea. To purge the loving self and the morality of moralities, to ignore those believers of the good faith, to reach a point in which the earth itselfis pleased without wellbeing.
Or maybe some variation on that. I never thought about it but the state of the Ubermensch can be achieved through tehcnhology and the transhumanist movement. I mean we are reaching a point where all of this can happen in our life times. The baby boomers had the era of Vietnam and the hippie movement in Cold-War America where they had the finger on the nuclear strike botton. Generation NES had to deal with a Post-Soviet Eurasia and the changing sociopolitical uncertainties of the future with the need of mass disarmament. The Nirvana Generation ( most teenagers today as well as me ) have to deal with the Economical failings of the capitalistic system with the the ever increasing wealth gap, aswell as a failed War on Terror. I think that our kids, aswell as us, will have to deal with the introduction of the Transhumanistic movement and the raging social war between people that want to remain human and not "Play god" and the people who modify their bodies to the point where they can outclass other people, often to unfair advantages.
Kinda like what happens in Dues Ex: Human Revolution.
3777
Writing about human nature isn't something I can do with great certainty. All I can try to do is write what I see and infer.
The transhumanist movement fascinates me, and I have formed my own opinions of it. In general, I for one hope religion dies a death (finally) and we can give up such petty and vain ideas as there being any sort of ultimate morality. Clearly there is none, and pretending that some 2000 year old manuscript written by illiterate goat herders, collected by a self-interested blood-thirsty emperor and then disseminated as true fact by those prepared to set dissenters on fire is a good thing is just... wow. Yeah. No.
And I consider that particular invisible friend one of the better ones, currently - even though a large sect of adherants have spent the last hundred years covering up behaviour which is seen as highly immoral, aiding other less-savoury types in mass genocide and propagating doctine which is mysogynistic at best and utterly reprehensible at worst.
So, when a group of people want to end humanity by becoming something better then I either have to disagree with their notion of better or embrace it. The thing is, evolution takes small steps. Lots of them, lots and lots of them. Every human being that is born has the potential to grow up to be less violent, kinder, gentler and more giving. In general, this is happening. It cannot happen fast enough.
What it means, one way or another, is the long march to extinction - because that's what evolution means. No species can remain unchanged, it's not possible. Eventually, humanity will be extinct. My hope is that it will be replaced by something better, that can trace it's lineage without fear, without prejudice, with gratitude and sadness, back to such barbaric and dark days as these, just as we look back upon crusades and wars as historical occurences that were tragedies for those involved, but data-points for us. We feel for our kith and kin that gave their lives on any sides of any conflict, but perpetuating that war of two thousand years ago is pointless. Yes, there are a number of countries which could stand to learn that lesson right now.
So in comes the Conversion Bureau universe. It's fantasy, alright? The world there really is better, unarguably so - and our world even now could not stand up against it. Is it conceit that humanity would become transhumanity by swapping hand for hoof?
I don't know, maybe. To me, you'd see a large proportion ditch everything they have - the bottom 80% that owns fuck all - leaving the top 20% to stew in their riches, which would quickly become worthless as they would no longer have a big dumb fat animal to blood-suck off. To me, newfoals are humans in pony bodies, with pony minds. They're what we want to be, so naturally that's what they would want to be.
The soft genocide, mass extinction with a happy ending. Dreams of the stars cut short for prancing through fields of plenty. I find that both tragic and alluring, so that's what I write - and read.
I believe in... not humanity, but humans. We will become better than humanity - as it now is - which by logical extensions means we won't be humanity. It's a painful pill to swallow that there can and will be something better than human. If that's misanthropic then so be it.
I was going to respond to this, but these highly philosophical comments have taken beyond my current abilities in discourse, at least of that of this manner. It is an interesting blog post; you raise good points. The comments are certainly interesting as well. Um . . . sorry.
10146
I don't think evolution has a major role to play in becoming a more peaceful species anytime soon. I'm no expert on Anthropology, but I once had a conversation with a professor of the subject. What I remember is this: If you took a Human baby from 50,000 years ago with a time machine to the future and raised it today, that baby would grow up to be just like other modern adults in whatever country you raised it in, though looking a little different from most people. I don't know how accurate that date is, since it's been a while and I forgot some of that stuff. Basically though, those cave-men (and women) are only different from modern Humans in culture. I don't believe that evolution or Transhumanism is the way to world-peace, I think it's a cultural problem. It's completely possible for Humanity to one day become better, but recorded history only goes back 8 thousand years, with the invention of writing. Maybe we're thousands of years away from a common culture of peace, or maybe it's only a few hundred years away. I don't know, but I don't think that Transhumanism would instantly solve our problems for us. It's much easier to create monsters or sheep of any kind of person than it is to make, uh, Latin something Latin.
I once read an Alternate Universe Pony fic that had a progression of Ponies from basic agriculture to bloody wars of male dominance (with warfare technology like Greek and Roman stuff) over herds to modern civilization with equality and stuff. It was some of the history of the ~verse and it didn't go over it in much detail. And it was written in Season 1, so before anything from the Hearth's Warming Eve episode. Um.... I forgot where I was going with this.