Archaeology

Look, a pony is born in freedom,

but soon becomes a slave,

in cages of convention,

from the cradle to the grave.

0 A.C.

My name is Roseluck.

Most people don’t think of me as a thoughtful pony and that’s because I don’t advertise it. When you’re introverted you simply don’t go around trying to solve philosophical mysteries with the majority of other ponies. Most of the time they don’t care, they just want to finish up their daily grind. I understand that. But it’s still frustrating when you feel like you have a legitimate query. So I took up the habit of writing to myself, discussing important things with the only person I could really connect with. Me.

My discontent began when I realized that everypony always believed in the same ideals, uttered the same responses to the same questions... And now, without anypony to have open discourse with, I’ve stumbled upon the issue that bothers me the most: our revered, benevolent, glorious, Princess Celestia.

When our liege asks something of you, there’s always that unspoken or else.

We are speaking about the eternal goddess of the sun, after all. What she is capable of doing is something that most ponies don’t dare to think about, to recognize as a fundamental truth about the nature of her power.

She has a monopoly on force and she can destroy anything in the world.

We are born into servitude, destined to participate in a societal order that has nothing to do with our chosen entry into it. I denounce the idea that a pony can make commitments for their unborn children or for future generations. I denounce the idea that Celestia, in all her power, can rightly take from those ponies who signed no social contract, taxes on anything that they do. She cannot justly levy from them their own livelihood and productiveness, to pay for any kind of road or infrastructure, school or institution of any sort. She cannot use her monopoly of force to say to somepony who wants to truly be free, in the most essential sense of the word, that they are obligated to pay out their own productiveness to anyone else. Voluntary contribution is the only moral foundational structure for any community.

The counter argument usually goes: but look at her character! Clearly, despite all of your reservations, she’s being a force for good in the world!

And I say to these ponies: look beyond your borders. Take a glance at what our ‘wonderful’ society is doing around the world! Stop listening to the Celestial-funded media that stretches its loathsome tentacles into the fabric of our lives!

It disheartens me, truly, when information is not questioned, when the same ponies with a monopoly of force have a monopoly on the distribution of information (The Royal Newspapers)

Are my peers really so blind as to accept everything fed to them without thinking about issues critically?

When Celestia claims that we need to send a surge of royal guard into the deserts of Camelia to spread Equestrian ideals, I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with the camels having their own way of life? They’re just as whole of a hoof-bearing people. As long as they aren’t hurting us, why should we hurt them?

It is fake! Fake, I say, to believe that greater good can come from the use of force against the peaceful. You must to look at who is benefitting. Are there resources there for us to take? Hey, look at that! Camelia happens to be the most coal-rich territory in the known world! Oh, well now look at this other factoid: The fastest growing industry in Equestria are these railroads, powered by that new invention, whatsit, the coal-engine.

Mention this to a common pony, though, and a blank stare appears in their face as they let relevant information go in one ear and out the other. Just as they’ve been trained, since the age of five, when they started attending mandatory public schools. And to call them schools! As if anything was truly learned after basic numbers and letters. The rest of it is useless information, things that don’t help anypony decide what they want to do to contribute to society. Knowledge and thought, creative output and constant improvement are replaced with mindless busywork. We may as well call them detention centers!

How is it, in any way, possible to breed critical thought in somepony when their entire ‘education’ is reinforced towards the teaching that violent force applied, and nothing less, is conducive towards positive social change?! Specifically, from a centralized place we know as ‘Celestial-government’. In nearly every lesson in public schools, this teaching pervades. It boggles the mind.

It does not help matters that the best and brightest pony to have graced this Equestrian soil in generations is Her most loyal and beloved of subjects (yet more inequality to digest! I cannot help but surely believe that I will grow sick with it soon!).

Twilight Sparkle, as she is named, is a prodigy. The latent magical ability that she possesses and constantly hones might even become the rival of the Princess’ one day. Of course, once this knowledge became known, the Royal Princess annexed her right to self-determination. She immediately took under her wing that true-hearted unicorn, indoctrinating and guiding her away from any free-thought at all. Recently, in fact, she arranged a marriage between her niece, Cadance and Twilight Sparkle's brother, Shining Armor, in order to tie her closer.

Oh to be in the presence of Celestia herself! It is magnificently awesome, yet intrinsically terrifying.

When I say awesome I do not mean it as it is used colloquially- to describe boots or a scarf or some structure; these things are not and cannot be awesome as the word genuinely means. It is meant to convey witlessness, to have observed something that leaves you so shell-shocked that you can’t do anything but stare on like a moron as saliva trickles dumbly out of the corner of your mouth.

But I digress. To be in the presence of Her, to recognize the power that She has: it is confounding. The aura that radiates through an entire room when she steps in, who cannot bow to that?

And that is my problem with it all. Nopony deserves that. Nopony should ever possess such raw force.

Take a look at the ‘elite’ of our culture today. They are the proponents of the current system, the ones who thrive off of it and delight in its continuity. It seems that, consistently, a pony from outside of Canterlot, when visiting, will be harassed by the so-called nobles in one form or another. Even honest Applejack, a pony well-known to be talented and dependable, when selling the tastiest apple treats in the known world, was spat upon by the arrogance of these ponies! And, unfortunately, it seems that she did not notice the root cause: that these statist, elitist, loyalist ponies are sworn to nothing but their power and the one who can keep it for them: Celestia.

Speaking of the hard-working Applejack, I am reminded of the glue that binds our realm together.

Where once they were wielded by Celestia, they are no longer. I believe it says something about the status of our ruler, that she cannot use the Elements of Harmony, for she is not representative of what she might once have been. I claim that her current benevolence is a ruse! The ponies embodying Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, and Friendship, they hold the supreme magic that can shape the reality of the universe. And they are loyal to a tyrant.

So what is harmony without freedom? Worthless, crumbling to dust between two hooves, rotting away at the essence of organic creation.

Nothing, I say. It is worth nothing.