Special Afterthoughts Edition · 4:20pm Nov 14th, 2016
I am terribly behind in a lot of things. I have yet to write my Afterthoughts for the Season Six finale, “To Where and Back Again.” I have a ton of things that I want to read and haven’t. (I’m still tragically several chapters behind on the amazing The Hooves of Fate – something I intend to rectify soon.) Dishonored 2 just came out and I have yet to finish Deux Ex: Mankind Divided (much less Fallout 4). And I am so far behind in reading the MLP comics that I only got around to reading issues #30 – 31, the “Ponyville Days” arc, in the last four days.
I know the comics are not canon, but they can still have meaningful stories that are worth a read. And when reading “Ponyville Days”, I was struck by the serendipitous timeliness. So I am going to give the two-issue tale its own special Afterthoughts blog. I hope you find something of value in it, even if the MLP comics aren’t your thing.
“Ponyville Days” centers around a conflict that threatens to tear Ponyville apart. What was going to be a celebration of Ponyville is thrown into chaos as the town becomes divided into two camps. On the surface, the fight may seem silly, but when you look beneath the cartoonishness, you quickly realize that the fight is over the founding values and ideologies of Ponyville. People do not agree about what made Ponyville great.
The conflict erupts into protests and cartoon violence. There is even, comically, talks of succession. And when the ponies come to their senses, it is with a sense of weariness and disunity. In truth, there is no hope of making Ponyville great again if half the town cannot agree about what made it great in the first place. And so the majority just give up, deciding that Ponyville isn’t worth celebrating.
It isn’t hard to understand why. There are a lot of problems with Ponyville, and they stem from the fact that ponies themselves can be deeply flawed. In the canon show, we have seen plenty of darkness lurking behind the town’s utopian façade: fear, prejudice, elitism…
If we only looked at the dark side, or gave it disproportionate attention, it would be easy for us to lose sight of what makes Ponyville wonderful.
We, as bronies, were brought together by the good and virtuous and uplifting things we saw in Ponyville. We built our own community, one which unironically adopted the initially ironic call to “love and tolerate”, from our mutual admiration and enjoyment of the Ponyville community and the ponies within it.
Twilight returns, having talked up how wonderful Ponyville is, only to find her town at war with itself. Now, as ponies from all across Equestria are coming to Ponyville to see what makes it great, to discover what it has to offer. The whole world is turning its eyes to Ponyville. How can the community find its way again?
This is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The answer is to put aside differences, come together and help each other. The answer, of course, is harmony.
But in true fashion, the answer isn’t reached until the stubborn, the weary and the jaded ponies try other solutions that are bound for failure. Everyone agreeing to pitch in and work towards the same general goal, but refusing to work together and carrying on their resentments, succeeds absolutely as not at all as does in real life. Putting faith in one leader to fix all the problems and make everything great again is a recipe for bitter disappointment. No one person is going to swoop in and make everything better.
Instead, fixing things requires compromise… and not them compromising to meet you, but you compromising to meet them. It requires willingness to cooperate. And it requires a whole lot of hard work on everybody’s part. But most of all, it requires remembering that Ponyville is wonderful and is worth the effort, even if you don’t agree on what makes Ponyville wonderful. It requires deciding that there is value in the community after all, even if you don’t agree with everyone in it.
Naturally, being a comic based on what is ostensibly a cartoon for younger audiences, the solutions are simplified and the ponies not only reach the right conclusion but implement it easily in a classical MLP rushed ending. In the real world, such severe encampments do not break down so easily and differences are harder to overcome.
Moreso, there are elements that are never properly addressed. Some behavior is simply not acceptable. Devolving into violence is not a protest, it is a crime. And as I have said before, “love and tolerate” is a call to embrace diversity and differences of opinion, not deplorable behavior. Some things should never, ever be tolerated.
Now in my blog “Pep Rallies”, I made clear my disdain for misplaced pride and self-aggrandizement through association, whether it be school pride, nationalism or racial supremacy. (It isn’t that I refuse to listen to the arguments for these stances, but that after listening and considering, I have come to the conclusion that they are built on an unrectifiably flawed foundation.) But finding value and pride in a community – one which you participate in by choice – is entirely another matter. As I said in that same blog, I am proud to be a brony. And by that same measure, there is cause for ponies to be proud of Ponyville.
There is reason to love Ponyville, despite its flaws, and to constantly strive to make it a better place, just as we should constantly strive to become better people ourselves.
This couldn't have come at a better time. Thank you for this.
The comics aren't my thing, but I do stop to listen to the reviews as I hear the comics are good.
Very well said.
A lot of good thoughts there. There is a dire need for cooperation and willingness to compromise, no matter what side you're on or what community you've chosen for yourself.
As for the National and School pride (or any other), I'd like to discuss this further. I want to undestand what exactly did you mean by saying that you disdain them? I see nothing bad with feeling proud for your country/town/*insert_name_of_the_community_that_you_became_a_part_of_by_being_born*, loving it and feeling patriotic. Same goes with wishing for it to be better as it is and better than the other countries. Being prejudiced about it and turning your pride into hate towards the others is, on the other hand, is an extremely negative feeling which brings people conflicts and hate. But the same is true towards every single thing you may love or any community when taken to the extreme. Even for ponies and Ponyville.
At the same time, if you live in Ponyville (let's continues this analogy) but don't want to consider yourself a Ponyvillian and follow its laws (which are always there), should your thoughts and feelings matter there? Clearly not, I think. Citizenship is not a choice, but a responsibility. You may not like it, you may not like people who like it (because they have tendency to become too obsessed about it), but you still need to follow the word of the law even in your disagreement. Otherwise, you can pack your things and join the community (= go to the other country) which suits you better. In the end, the world doesn't revolve around one single pony.
So, does your disdain cover any sense of pride or only the negative extreme supremacism which is pretty much always bad? This a theme where one can express a lot of thoughts from different points of view.
P.S. Also, if anything, I'm not touching the subject of the physical attributes which you're born with and can not affect in any way. One thing is being proud of the fit body (which you can affect), another thing is being proud of your skin color (which you can't affect).
My main issue this time around isn't what issues people have chosen to decide by, it is the abundance of disinformation and propaganda that has infected the populace.
Each side so convinced of it's righteousness, so desperate to win that reason must be brushed aside for persuasion. The journalists who should have been keeping this in check instead fed it for ever-higher ratings.
I sympathize with your disdain for school pride and racial supremacy. I share it. I find your arguments on not taking others' accomplishments as your own to be very compelling.
... but I'll do it anyway when it comes to nationalism. It has helped me define virtues and values that keep me in the Good Fight, and I won't pretend that I've miraculously stumbled on some absolutist truth here. I've been influenced by my predecessors just as they were.
All in all I don't think nationalism is so bad, but it can and has been misused. I trust myself to stay above that. I may fail. Challenge accepted.
Racial supremacy has a clear and bloody history of failure. Misinformation was a huge problem with that one, too. Not much else to say, though I'd argue that racial communities remain a very powerful definer of virtues for many people. Perhaps "racial supremacy" isn't the term that defines how race-as-a-community is practiced today.
On school spirit, though I said I sympathize I actually disagree. I feel the same way you do: that it is a pointless construction, attempting to create unity where there is none. I consider it harmless though, and I object to the idea that we should reject it simply because it doesn't fit our preferences. If it's a genuine attempt to create community for a constructive purpose, why not?
4302102 You listen to my viewpoint, comprehend the argument, and even understand that it has merit. You respect my stance, even though you do not agree; and you chose not to agree based on your own experience and values. I find that truly admirable
, and I think you serve as an example to the rest of us in how to approach and deal with alternate viewpoints. Thank you!
4302101 Check out my blog "Pep Rallies" for the answer. As usual, my blog here offers a link directly to the blog mentioned. (I like leaving links for readers to easily follow up on references.)
4302118
Interesting one too. I can agree with quite a lot of things there, as well, but not with all of them.
As long as we'd like for the world to judge us individually by our own deeds and misdeeds, it doesn't work this way. Striving for utopia or for the ideals is good and honorable, even romantic I daresay. At the same time I don't see a point in judging people for having no desire to live up to the ephemeral standards no matter how good they are.
All of these: political, national and school pride seem stupid and pointless if you have a choice about participation. In some way, you had a luxury of being able to choose whom to be, what to be interested in and what communities to be a part of. Not everyone has a chance to build wall between themselves and politics, lives of many people are strongly affected by them. People due to the need get interested, participate in the way they can, they feel joy for the community the never chose and to whose success they never contributed and so on.
Here is an example, this time without analogies:
I never wanted to care about politics. Yet Russia, the country where I live, is directly affected by the voting results in USA. Out of fear for my future and future of the country I live in, I decided to learn more about the candidates, voting system, views on Russia etc. So after reading a lot of information, I understood that the only candidate willing to have a dialogue with Russia was much hated for his bluster and rudeness Mr. Donald Trump and Mrs. Hillary Clinton who was quite corrupt herself and wanted more confrontation (and quite possibly war which is the worst outcome at any times, especially so in the age of nuclear weapons) for the political reasons only. So I started supporting Mr. Trump for obvious reasons. Since then I've regularly read a lot of documents, articles, opinions of the common people and people from the media to learn in details about everything surrounding Mr. Trump, Mrs. Hillary and Election itself. At the end of the voting it all accumulated to about a year of studying and analyzing. So I cheered, felt happy and proud for my country and for Mr. Trump.
Thus, I became involved in politics, felt proud for the person to whose success I never contributed and was glad for my country personally.
I perfectly know that in reality I did nothing to affect these elections or to help my country, yet I dedicated enough time and emotions to this matter to consider myself a person who haven't done anything at all.
So now I ask you:
Do you really think the sense of participation is not enough to justify the proud in something? Same, actually, goes for the sports where people support their favourite teams and feel proud for them even though they (fans) are not the ones playing. Though, I have to admit, sport teams are the communities which we join be desire, not by force or circumstances.
P.S. Thanks in advance for reading this wall of text which didn't come out quite the way I imagined it to be, so I had to edit it for 2 hours, heh. I'm quite interested in your opinion on the matter.
4302118
Aw, thanks!
That's a really nice thing to say. Your writing and arguments always get me thinking! Your work is of an impeccable quality that helps me avoid falling into fact-linking and self-righteousness. I've found those aren't very persuasive!
I really do have faith that even an entire overhaul of the federal government won't divide Americans meaningfully. The media atmosphere says different, but I'm inclined to think they're too biased to take seriously.
The fear being created around all this is real, but the rhetoric and persuasion crafted to create that fear are as false as the pep rallies you disdain. Keep Calm, Carry On.
4302244 I have taken this to PMs as it is a bit off-topic.
First on f4... yeah, just save yourself some drive space, time, and the final load of disappointment Kkat, and just uninstall. I was nearly in tears by the end, and not in the Fallout Equestria way
On the first one, can you blame them? They live in a society where the Diarchy's sealed evil in a ziploc bag or crisis of the millenium could pop their respective barely held corks at any moment.
Prejudice... ehh... well, kinda sorta, yeah I can see that. But they didn't look down or think themselves superior to Zecora, they were terrified of her, and she did she ever think to like, you know, talk to the mayor or maybe knock on a door rather then just digging in the dirt? And once they learned she wasn't their for some of that sweet stallion flank and robbing them of their man folk, they warmed up to her almost at once!
and elitism... they live in a country run by nobles and Royalty, so.... eh.
As for the comic... I... I can't do it. i am drained, okay? THIS IS HOW BAD ITS GOTTEN FOLKS! This was veiled commentary on things, at least to me, and I just DON'T have the heart anymore.
And how much does one need to surrender, to compromise, Kkat? What must one give up to fix things, what compromises in ones life must one make to merely draw together?
Hello Connor and AC3
Cooperation can be difficult or impossible when the sides in the argument want to move in completely different directions: where progress towards one goal inherently means a loss for the other.
Unless, perhaps, both sides can get what they want in a way: but sometimes even that is seen as an unacceptable compromise.
Despite or because of this I think civility in arguments is crucial, and I always try to be civil with those I disagree with.
It two parties completely disagree on something but at least keep their disagreement civil, they will have an easier time understanding each other and potentially reaching an agreeable compromise.
When disagreement escalates into hostility and bitterness, there isn't much room left for any conversation.
I'm sorry for rambling, but I guess my point is that sometimes compromise isn't really possible barring a major change in the mindset of one or both parties: but we should be civil in disagreement anyway.