We were taking a break in a small clearing off the side of the path. Between the swimming and the walkin in general, we’d worked up an appetite, and Aegis had suggested we stop for a bit and have something resembling a dinner. It wasn’t much, mostly a hodgepodge of healthy-ish foods that didn’t need silverware, but after all that exercise, it was definitely filling. Unfortunately, Aegis’s last-minute decision with the cookies and frosting almost reversed that.
“What do you think?” Aegis asked, holding up the frosting-and-chocolate-chip-cookie sandwich. “That look good?”
I gagged. “No, Aegis. It’s one of the most frigging disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.” I punched some of the trash deeper into the bag I was collecting it in. “I can feel my heart seizing up already.”
Aegis raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like cold water, and you call me a wuss. You don’t like my sandwich, so does this mean I get to call you a wuss?”
“If it makes you feel better,” I said. I almost looked away at that point. “Just go ahead and eat it so I don’t have to look at it anymore, okay?”
“Fine.” Aegis popped the monstrosity into his mouth and began chewing. “Wuff,” he said around the cookie.
“Diabetic.”
“No’ ye’!” Aegis swallowed. “You know, if just this hurts you this much, it might not hurt you to get a thicker skin.” He pulled some more frosting from the can with his magic and spread it on another cookie. “You’re good about handling stuff you don’t like, but if you react like that, you’ll need to learn to tolerate a bit better.”
Ooh, boy. I could see where this was going. I agreed with it, but decided to lead Aegis on a bit, just to see how react. “Oh, come on,” I snorted as I dropped onto a fallen log. “I’m supposed to tolerate that?”
“Of course!” Aegis stuck another cookie on top of the frosting. “A little tolerance never hurt anypony.”
“So tolerance is always good?”
Aegis stuffed the sandwich in his mouth (ugh), started chewing, and rolled his eyes. “Yeff. Dah’s wha’ I’fe be’ sayih.”
“Then you’ll have to tolerate my intolerance.”
Aegis froze and looked at me like I’d said something weird. “Wha’?” he asked.
“My intolerance. You’ll have to tolerate it.”
He swallowed and frowned up at the sky. He pointed limply at some point on the ground, like he was trying to spatially organize his thoughts. “Tolerate…” he mumbled. He looked in another direction and pointed in yet another.
I grinned a little. “My intolerance, yes.”
“Your… intolerance…” he mumbled. He switched looking and pointing directions again. “But… that… uh… huh?” He blinked and banged himself on the forehead. “Sweet Sisters, was that a brain fart,” he said. “Tolerating intolerance.”
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “You have to, if you’re tolerating everything, because otherwise, you’re intolerant.”
“I know,” said Aegis. He rubbed his forehead. “I mean, just, wow. That’s oxymoronic if anything was.”
“Of course, there’s an easy way out,” I said. I smirked a little and slurped up some water. “But I’m not telling you. Guess.”
Aegis hmmed and hahed for a moment as thought. Eventually, he said, “Well, you shouldn’t tolerate everything, right? If Tirek goes and tries to destroy Equestria, it won’t do much good to tsk at him and say, ‘Now, I don’t like your tantrum, but I’ll tolerate it because it makes you happy.’ Tolerance doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff that’s wrong.”
“Ding ding ding,” I said. I flicked the tip of my hoof back and forth, like I was ringing a bell. “There’s just some things where you can’t, in all honesty, tolerate them and say you’re doing something good.”
“Like setting fire to the puppy orphanage while the widows with cancer are visiting?”
“Well, yeah. Sure, that’s an extreme case, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?”
“Huh. I guess.” Aegis sounded more thoughtful than skeptical. He flicked his ears back and forth as thought. “So what’re the extreme kinds of things we should and shouldn’t tolerate?”
“Yeah… that’s the hard part. You’ve got all these…” I waved a hoof around. “Schools of philosophy and stuff trying to answer that questions for centuries and no one seems to agree that.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Aegis. “And schools within those schools, and blah de blah de blah. My philosophy classes were terrible.”
“It’s weird,” I said. “You’d think they’d have some common ground. But even when they say murder is wrong, they can’t agree on why it’s wrong!”
“Hmm.” Aegis looked at the half-empty cookie box for a moment. “…Which section do you think frosting cookie sandwiches would go in?”
I almost gagged at the thought, but said, “Tolerate. I think they’re disgusting, but you’re not really hurting anyone but yourself, and you’re even exercising to stay fit, so no matter how terrible I find them, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to eat them.”
“The same way you tolerate me not being able to stand cold water?”
“Close enough.” I looked up at the sky. It was slowly beginning to orange, but sunset was still a ways off. “So that would kind of imply something that doesn’t hurt others isn’t wrong… Which, in turn, would imply helping others isn’t wrong-”
“Eh, I, I don’t know,” said Aegis quietly. “In the right circumstances, altruism can be… it can get pretty bad.”
“Really,” I said flatly, looking back at Aegis. “Helping others is bad.”
Aegis rubbed the back of his neck. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I mean, yeah, overall, I like altruism, but if you take it far enough, you get the claim that, if you’re doing something for somepony else, it’s good.”
He didn’t continue, but I could tell he wanted to. I guess he was waiting for me to say something else, but I couldn’t think of what. “And the catch is…?” I asked.
Aegis took a deep breath and said, “…Regardless of what that something you’re doing is.”
It took me a few seconds to get it, but when I did, I cringed. “Yeesh. Scary. Ends justifying means through rose-colored glasses.”
“Yep,” said Aegis. “When we were covering this in my philosophy class, my professor kept describing increasingly creepy things, then adding, ‘But I’m doing it for your own good, so that makes it all okay!’ That burned the idea into my mind like nothing else.”
“Yeah. I can see that.” I looked up at the sky again. “So scratch helping others automatically being good.” Philosophy was hard.
“You know, that’s actually the kind of altruism Ayn Reind was arguing against in Objectivism. Where-”
I twitched. “No. Just, please, don’t talk to me about Objectivism. Just, don’t.”
Aegis flicked his tail. “…I, I’m not one, just so you know.”
“That’s suspiciously specific.”
“It’s Objectivism!” Aegis waved his hooves around. “The branch of philosophy pretty much guaranteed to get ponies up in arms, and I was just about to defend a part of it! I just- I didn’t want you to think- Gah!” He folded his ears back and looked away. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
I twitched again. Not the way I wanted that to go. “Well, if you were one,” I said softly, “I’d tolerate it.”
He turned back to me and grinned halfheartedly. It soon grew to three-quarters-heartedly. “But I’m not,” he said, “so you don’t have to.”
“And I’m very happy about that,” I said. I smiled back. “Even if I could tolerate it, I don’t think you’d be you if you were an Objectivist. Or a Different Philosophy Than Whatever You Are Nowist. And we’re here because you’re you and I’m me, so we probably wouldn’t be together at all, anyway.”
“No. Probably not.” Then Aegis frowned. “Well, that got derailed fast,” he said.
I nodded. “Yep.” After a moment, I said, “So… if helping ponies isn’t always good, does that mean hurting ponies isn’t always bad? Like, if they were going to hurt somepony else worse?”
“I guess. I dunno.”
Silence.
“I hate philosophy,” I said.
“Me, too.”