Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - A Good Start (Winter Wrap Up) · 4:10am Mar 24th, 2021
One of the central themes of the early seasons was stewardship. Ponies need nature. Nature needs them. And ponies need each other. In order to successfully maintain the basic needs of the ecosystem and of the community, everypony has to labor together harmoniously.
This delicate relationship is more than just a silly little novelty for the viewer. It's fundamental to the Equestrian way of life, and to the general ethic of the series itself.
Winter Wrap Up. Running of the Leaves. Hurricanes for siphoning water up to the clouds. This is real work - communal work - that requires a culture of friendship to maintain. Too much in fighting (Fall Weather Friends), not enough participation (Hurricane Fluttershy)? Disunity of any kind threatens the balance of the whole operation, which, in turn, threatens the even more delicate balance that Ponyvilleians maintain with the natural world around them.
It makes me think that Equestria's cultural values of friendship must have developed as an evolutionary trait. Given that their entire civilization was founded on Hearth's Warming, (when the existential threat of the windigo imposed a literal "share or die" scenario upon them), it's not hard to imagine how this came to be.
Working together is - and has always been - Equestria's key to survival, and its path to prosperity.
So it is with humans too.
You hear a lot of people talk about "survival of the fittest." It's been evoked to justify massive political atrocities, and to excuse horrifically selfish behavior. It's been weaponized to paint societal injustices as somehow in accordance with natural law, and to lionize the most ruthless among us as grand inheritors chosen by an imagined biological and moral order.
But here's the thing: not only has Social Darwinism been completely debunked, but the very concept of "survival of the fittest" is only a small part of the evolutionary picture. When Charles Darwin penned Origin of Species in 1859, it was a groundbreaking work, but he was still guilty of viewing the natural world through the lens of his own culture - a highly competitive one. A lot has been built on his theories over the last 160 years.
Survival. Thriving. These are community affairs. Human beings, believe it or not, are rather a lot like the ponies of Equestria. We grew as a species because of our unparalleled capacity to communicate complex ideas - to coordinate - to work together. To help one another.
When Spring rolled around this year, I found myself humming "Winter Wrap Up," and reflecting on what a fantastic job the episode had done of capturing that community spirit - that sense of responsibility that ponies have to nature, and to one another.
This is the burning task facing the world we live in today - to rediscover that potential in ourselves, and to organize around it. To cast aside the ridiculous and outdated notion of "human nature" that we carry around like chains. It may sound a little silly at first, but stop and think about it for a second - really think. Have you ever, in your whole life, heard anybody use the term "human nature" to describe a cultural or behavioral trait that wasn't negative? Why is our capacity for war, and greed viewed as part of our "nature," but our capacity for love and selflessness and community written off as mere exceptions to the rule?
Our world can become a better place if we build it.
My Little Pony is, at the end of the day, just a television show. It obviously doesn't hold the answers to all of our geopolitical problems. However, I think the reason it has resonated so deeply with so many people - the reason that it's had such a profoundly transformative effect on so many lives - is that a lot of us deeply long for a better world.
That's actually a pretty good start.
-Sprocket
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Ah, that episode, and its song. I, too, have very much appreciate how much Harmony, within the community and environment, is on display there, and still think that the song is at least a good candidate for best in the series, even with how still some of the competition is, due to that. :)
"Why is our capacity for war, and greed viewed as part of our "nature," but our capacity for love and selflessness and community written off as mere exceptions to the rule?"
...Huh. Are there a lot of people who think that way? You sound like you've run into that a fair bit. Personally, it seems fairly clear to me, from the evidence, that all of that is part of human nature. Certainly, war, cruelty, greed, etc. crop up so regularly in history that I doubt we could be rid of them without ceasing to be human, but the same is true for many traits in the latter category as well.
"However, I think the reason it has resonated so deeply with so many people - the reason that it's had such a profoundly transformative effect on so many lives - is that a lot of us deeply long for a better world."
Aye. A lot of people got a lot of different things out of it, I think, and not all of them much of that -- but I do agree that that was likely at least a significant part of it overall.
And thank you, as usual, for your thoughts!
Words of wisdom indeed. Here's hoping many people carry them forward, whether they realize it or not.
I hadn't realized Charles Darwin's observations were tilted like that.
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To be clear, Charles Darwin was very much against social Darwinism. He was a humanitarian who was actually hesitant to publish his findings at first for fear of their social implications.
His scientific findings were also sound. Natural selection and competition are 100% valid.
That being said, it was another generation or two before scientists really started to study the role of symbiosis and herd social dynamics in evolution, building on his findings. We all view our world through the lens of the culture we are surrounded by. We are finding new cultural biases in how we interpret scientific findings all the time.
Charles Darwin was a great man, and deserves credit for theories that have held up for 160+ years, but it was also impossible for him to imagine every single future development in the field of evolutionary science. I don't believe we should fault him for his bias, but I do think it worthy of note that the most individualistic, competitive culture in the history of mankind produced thinkers who noticed and emphasized competition in nature before social cohesion.
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I didn't bring it up like I was disappointed or disillusioned with Charles Darwin. It was just a neutral bias I hadn't considered before, but it makes total sense when I read it.
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When I posted this essay on my Facebook, somepony misinterpreted my intentions, and rushed to defend Darwin's honor. I've been a little paranoid ever since - fearful that I had not been clear in the original essay.
I'm relieved of your neutrality and glad that that seems to have been an isolated incident.