Chaff in My Head Cannon: Herd Mentality in Equestria · 4:26am Jul 12th, 2016
Bare with me here, this is probably going to get weird.
Ponies, and horses in general, are herd animals by nature. They follow similar dynamics to wolf packs, though it's a much more fluid arrangement. Whereas wolf packs tend to be linear, pony herds are more like tiers of dominance, with more than one pony able to be at any one tier.
And what we've got in FiM is largely *not* herd based. All our main characters are equals, but they're also highly independent. When we do see herd mentality in the show, it's always in the background. The townsponies of Ponyville panic together, cheer together, complain together - they're the herd.
Our main characters, and several of our side characters, appear to be exceptional ponies not only because of the greatness they're able to achieve, but also because they *aren't* part of the herd. They've broken free of that and have become leaders because of it.
Trixie is actually a great example of this. She's bossy, self-centered, rude, and likes to belittle and insult her audience, yet when we first meet her she's still managed to draw a big crowd to watch her show. She's broken free of the herd, but uses the herd mentality in everybody else to fill up the seats.
Same thing for Flim and Flam.
This would also explain why everybody was so quick to accept Luna back from her banishment or accept Twilight as a princess - the herd leader, Celestia, told them to.
She, like a lot of the characters that get focused on, isn't part of the herd, but she uses the herd mentality to get her ponies to live in peace and harmony.
In the recent episode Spice Up Your Life, we see that the herd mentality has been used to make all the restaurants the same - one dominant pony knocking the others into line. What gets them to all snap out of it is even more dominant ponies (Pinkie Pie and Rarity) telling them to do their own thing. And it works. Not one pony decides to stick with the hoity toity restaurant setup.
It's like the Life of Brian, "You are all individuals!" "Yes! We are all individuals!" "I'm not."
You have the herd, you have the small portion of the population that has broken free of the herd, and you have those who are teetering between the two.
And the ones doing the most to get ponies to teeter away from the herd are? Our main characters.
So, does that mean that Celestia, the Elements of Harmony, and the Cutie Map are all just trying to get the ponies of Equestria to break free of the herd? The whole of MLP's friendship magic is that it gives you the freedom to be yourself?
It is interesting to note that all the ponies that have broken free of the herd excel to greater heights than any within the herd. The goal is, therefore, to give the ponies their mental freedom so that they can reach their highest potentials. And friendship is the path to that.
And funny thing is, that actually works in the real world too. What gets better results? The most dominant person makes every decision they want to, the next most dominant makes the decision that they want to out of what's left, and so on down the line, or, everybody chooses things for themselves and they all work together to help each other succeed?
Structure and hierarchy aren't the enemies here - it's the enforcement of those structures and hierarchies being put upon others without them choosing to join - the enemy is a restriction of freedom of choice.
So!
The big conclusion to all of this falderal and fiddle dee dee is that the ponies of Equestria are such loyal subjects because of the herd mentality, but that Celestia wants them to achieve the best they can and have the freedom to do so, so she's sent out her agents (Twilight and Co.) into the world to get ponies to be free from their own genetic predispositions.
... or, the Mane 6 are Celestia's chosen second tier, through which she seeks to bring the herd back in line after a thousand years of gradual straying...
Nice post!
4086185 I actually kinda like that. The whole thing teeters on which way Celestia is moving things.