“… Earth Pony culture. But not just from before the unification, you surely have something that’s more up to date!?”
I could try to give you a more general overview on Earth Pony culture and social structure.
“Sounds good to me.”
Accessing database storage eta 2.08.14-A to 2.08.14-D … Access granted.
Compiling information … procedure concluded.
…
Please be aware that the following descriptions are based on averages. There will always be Earth Ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi that deviate from what can be considered normal or average behavior. Don’t think of anything I say as a fundamental law or rule, as with all social observations there are tons of exceptions.
Ok, with that out of the way, let’s start.
To understand the cultural background of most Earth Ponies you first have to understand that they have a vastly different social dynamic than ponies of other tribes. A Pegasus tends to be more or less competitive and therefore, most of the time, quickly forms rivalries and bonds of comradery with other Pegasi around him- or herself. Unicorns on the other hand almost always try to excel, be it in a field of personal interest or in comparison to other ponies in general. Earth Ponies are rather reserved by comparison.
It is common knowledge that Earth Ponies tend to have extremely strong bonds towards family and friends. What most other ponies don’t realize however is that those bonds are either based on a very personal and shared background or that they are cultivated and nurtured over long periods of time.
In pre Equestrian history Earth Ponies spend almost their entire life with their family. Parents, grandparents, siblings, etc. were the primary social circle and therefore formed the basis of Earth Pony society. Neighbors, most of the time families who befriended one’s own family generations prior, formed the secondary social circle. It is believed that, since the aforementioned primary and secondary social circle of the average Earth Pony consisted entirely of other Earth Ponies, over time a subconscious trust towards specimen of their own tribe evolved. Therefore the tertiary social circle finally was formed by essentially all other Earth Ponies.
Based on their experience before the founding of Equestria and the rule of the royal sisters Earth Ponies tended to be more cautious towards beings from outside their social circles. Since Unicorns and Pegasi are more common in Earth Ponies social circles these days and the last hostility between tribes dates a couple thousand years back it is rather uncommon for Earth ponies to refuse to offer hospitality and friendship to other ponies. The most common exception to that is when the individual in question has personal negative experience and refuses social interaction on base of that experience.
Still, compared to other ponies, Earth Ponies tend to take their time in forming friendships. An individual will have to slowly work their way inwards from the outer social circles.
If we assume that you are from outside even the tertiary social circle of an Earth Pony you first have to introduce yourself. It is generally expected of an individual from outside the tertiary social circle to be professional and straight to the point when they have business with the Earth Pony in question. I would advise you to refrain from making small talk or ask question about their family, at this stage that would be considered nosy and you would, at best, get a rather dodgy answer. Earth Ponies who don’t know you most likely won’t think any less of you if you just walk up to them, state your name and what business you have with them, do said business, say good bye and head off. If you stick to this polite yet professional way of doing things, over time you will be seen as a hardworking and down to earth pony. No pun intended.
After your new Earth Pony neighbors took their time to judge your character, they will likely approach you in one way or another to let you know that you successfully managed to enter their tertiary social circle. This will likely take the form of them offering you to call them by their first name or a nickname of sorts.
At this point the social dynamic experiences a rather extreme change of pace. Your, soon to be, Earth Pony friend will start to ask you questions about yourself, do a little small talk and in general be more open towards you. You are completely free to ask them questions about themselves and common accomplices. It is still considered somewhat rude to ask questions about the Earth Pony’s family, except for family members who you already know to some degree. They will slowly introduce you to other members of their social circles and will then observe your interactions if them. They will also continue to examine you and your work on a general basis.
Earth Ponies have a tendency to try and form a tightly knit circle of friends. After you entered their tertiary social circle they will start to try and draw you in closer, so to speak. You will be asked for favors from time to time, mostly work related ones and if you ever need help you are free to ask for it. Over time, especially if you manage to befriend an Earth Pony’s friends, you will advance into the secondary social circle and will officially be called a friend.
If you are introduced into an Earth Ponies secondary social circle and they call you a friend you essentially have a friend for life. If you ever need help you know where to find it. You won’t get invitations to their parties because you are always invited, unless explicitly stated otherwise. You can ask any question about any family member and friend of theirs and they will likely answer, though they will respect other ponies privacy and will let you know when you should rather ask the pony in question personally.
Most ponies never advance beyond that state of friendship with an Earth Pony, or any other pony for that matter. And, frankly, most ponies wouldn’t mind that. You essentially formed a friendship that will likely last a lifetime, what more could you ask for?
Though if you ever, by any means, prove you’re the most loyal of friends and the most dependable of ponies, you will enter the what I like to call *the inner circle* of an Earth Pony. Some ponies describe it as something mythical. They say you have to be so pure of heart that you are worthy to bear an element of harmony. Or that it’s more likely to turn into an alicorn and many more such fantastic fairytales.
But in fact it’s rather simple and much less fancy. Most Earth Ponies do anything for their family, they will put their lives on the line if need be. And if you grow close enough to them they will sooner or later entertain the thought of doing all that for you too. The only thing left to do is to show that you would do the same for them.
Granted, such deep friendships are rare, but if you ever find yourself in one you can call yourself the luckiest pony alive. You are not LIKE family; for all intends and purposes you ARE family. Only the most personal of secrets will be kept secret. You won’t need a key to their house because the door will always be open for you, by Tartarus, the door will likely not only be open but there will be a plate set for you at the table. In all honesty, I can’t really describe to which lengths an Earth Pony would go for you at this stage. All I have is an old recording from Twilight and Applejack I’d like to show you on that matter. Do you want me to play it?
“Sure, I was always curious how the infamous bearer of honesty looked and sounded like.”
“Twi? Why do ah have t’ talk into that camera there?”
“AJ, there are at least a dozen books on me, you and all the other girls individually and several hundred about our adventures as a group, but all those books have one fundamental flaw that I want to correct.”
“Shucks, ah never thought ah would hear ya’ say books aren’t perfect sugercube.”
“Well, they are great and all but even I aren’t deluded enough to assume they have no weaknesses. Anyway, what I want to do is to preserve all of us on film. A book can’t show you how a pony talked, how their voice sounded and even their look can only be shown in still images. A camera can do all that. Now, are you ready?”
“As ready as ah ever be. What do ya’ want me to do?”
“First, let’s hear what friendship means to you.”
“Shoot Twi, that’s a mighty though one. Ah think Friendship can mean a lo’ of things ya’ know. It can mean that ya’ all have to be open and honest about ya’ problems and feelins. It can also mean that ya’ just give a good fella a little extra discount on his apples. But it can also mean that ah’ am willing to kill and die for mah’ friends.”
“Wow that was dark. O…K…, let’s lighten the mood with…”
I took the liberty to end the recording here because otherwise it would likely compromise your sleep schedule. I think you get the point of how intense friendships with Earth Ponies can be.
“I’m not eight anymore, I don’t have to be in bed by ten.”
You want me to play the full recording? This one alone is 5 hours 27 minutes and 43 seconds long and after that there are also the ones with Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Moonddancer, Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Shining Armor, Princess Cadence, Discord, Steven Magnet and 487 other ponies, griffons and zebras.
“… Ok, that’s a lot of recordings. Why is there so much?”
Twilight wanted to be thorough.
“What in the name of Celestia ... can we continue with Earth Pony culture please?”
Of course, now that you got a short overview of the average Earth Pony’s social dynamic let’s get to the main point.
For extreme long periods of time Earth Ponies were very sceptic towards outsiders, and rightfully so. Before the three tribes united Unicorns and Pegasi often thought of them as dull, stupid and mundane. More often than not they made it painfully obvious that they did so. In response to that Earth Ponies mostly isolated themselves from the other tribes, preferring to stay amongst themselves.
To them, only other Earth Ponies were trustworthy. The family was the first and most important group to rely on and the friends of their family were their friends too. This concept worked so well that it took more than a millennium under the princesses’ rule to slowly but surely get Earth Ponies to break with these traditions.
Overall Earth Ponies are amongst the most traditional ponies you can imagine. If their family did something a certain way since hundreds of years they will do their best to keep it that way. They will generally try to avoid change as long as possible.
“Didn’t you say earlier, when you talked about the last pre unification war, that the Earth Ponies had an edge because they developed new technology faster than the other tribes?”
Yes I did and that’s the thing. Earth Ponies will hold onto their traditions as long as they can, but if they face a problem they can’t fix with their traditional methods and tools they will abandon said methods and develop a new, simple and, most importantly, working solution.
The cultural identity of Earth Ponies is a strange mixture of traditionalism, pragmatism and practicality. As long as something works there is no need to repair it and if something needs repairing, they do it in the simplest way they can. Thanks to this mindset, Earth Ponies rarely become scientists, but Equestria’s engineering corps is made up of Earth Ponies almost exclusively.
A little anecdote: A Unicorn scientist tried to study the composition of the upper atmosphere to develop more accurate models to simulate influences on Pegasi weather schedules. Since quill and ink didn’t work well in the extreme thin air at high altitudes, they came up with a special ball point pen that held the ink inside under high pressure. An Earth Pony engineer suggested using a lead pencil instead.
Granted this may or may not the entirely accurate, but it nevertheless captures the mindset of most Earth Ponies perfectly.
In general Earth Ponies tend to prefer the more practical kind of work. Hard physical work is seen as the most preferable kind of work. It’s often assumed that hard work is seen as a method to build a pony’s character. It is still unknown if the fact that the average Earth Pony’s life expectancy is about 20 years higher than that of Pegasi or Unicorns relates to their more physical active life style. Alternative theories attribute the longer life span to an Earth Pony’s natural magic, which also gives them greater than average strength and tenacity.
If you want to summarize Earth Pony culture it comes down to long standing and almost sacred traditions and hard work. Be it that work has to be done a certain way or that festivities need to be celebrated in a specific manner. Traditions are part of their heritage and to most Earth Ponies their heritage is of utmost importance. The Apples for example, to this day, tend to the orchard of Sweet Apple Acres the way they always did. The fields are still plowed by the eldest Stallion with Big Macintosh’s old yoke and plow instead of a tractor. Their infamous Zap Apple Jam is still made the same way that Granny Smith once laid down. An Apple still bucks each tree one by one and their apples are still carried to Ponyville’s market in massive wooden crates and sold at the ancient booth Applejack build, with a smile and the most southern accent you ever listened to. And, as far as I heard, their apples are still the juiciest and tastiest in all of Equestria.
“The Apples still work like that at Sweet Apple Acres? But Sweet Apple Acres is by far the largest single orchard in Equestria. I heard the main orchard alone is about 25 square miles and that there are dozens of other Apple orchards all over Equestria. They are one of the richest families of Equestria. Estimations put their cash assets between 5 and 30 billion bits, property not included of course.”
All your information is correct, but to answer your question, they indeed still work like that. I personally think Applejack would have their hide if they ever changed that.
Do you want me to continue my summary?
“Yes Spike … please do so.”
But to any Earth Pony worthwhile their friends and family are far more important than their traditions. They will be rather impersonal towards you if they don’t know you and nopony they hold in high regards vouches for you and their rather clinical business attitude might seem rude at first, but if they finally consider you a friend you have a friend for life. I think not many friendships go as deep and are as strong as when an Earth Pony names you an honorary family member.
And finally they are a deeply practical people. If something works, great. If it doesn’t, you have to fix it immediately and as simple as you can. The simplest solution is often the most elegant, isn’t it?
The only thing that changed about Earth Pony society, culture and social structure in the past two millennia is that they, for the most part, lost their aversion against non-Earth Ponies. In this day and age Pegasi, Unicorns, Zebras and Griffons can and often will find Earth Ponies as nice and hospitable as if they were family.
Terminating connection to database storage eta 2.08.14-A to 2.08.14-D … procedure concluded.
Do you want me to compile a list of suggested topics again?
“Yeah, sure, what would be good to go on with?”
Recommended topics to proceed from here are:
- Pegasi culture
- Pre unification Unicorn culture
- Equestrian unified culture a.k.a. how three tribes became one people
- Earth Pony battle doctrine
- Earth Pony magic
- Earth Pony biology
- The long winter
- The Wendigo war
- The great exodus
We could also, once again, go on with an unrelated topic. How would you like to proceed?
“Next give me…”