A Brony Manifesto
Or “Why ‘love’ and ‘tolerance’ are more than just words”
Written by Luke (GabuEx)
In many ways, the fandom behind My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has been quite unique since its initial inception. This is most immediately evident in terms of its rapid growth and expansion since its origins – in only a few short months it became the #1 most popular meme of all time on KnowYourMeme.com. It’s also immediately evident in terms of the dissonance between expectation and reality in terms of its demographics: My Little Pony is traditionally associated with young girls and little else (save tortured parents who got dragged along by their daughters), yet this generation has gained a massive internet following that is predominantly composed of adult males.
However, the uniqueness of the fandom behind this show doesn’t end there. There are many intangible unique factors as well that are not immediately evident, and which only come to light when one becomes immersed in and experiences that fandom firsthand. I’ve been part of several fan communities over the years and have been on the internet for well over a decade now, and in short, the fan community behind My Little Pony is in my opinion also unique in terms of its sheer positivity, inclusiveness, and camaraderie experienced between members solely because of who they are. The community is the most open one I’ve ever been a part of, and every day I’m struck by the sheer joy and welcoming nature exuded by many of its members – in large part induced, in many cases, by the show’s consummate amount of joy and happiness.
It’s appropriate, then, that the premier meme associated with the fandom surrounding the show is the phrase “love and tolerance”. Initially, this phrase arose as a response to those who did not exactly like the show as much as its fans, in the form of the image macro statement, “I’m gonna tolerate and love the shit outta you.” However, over time it’s become co-opted by the fandom as something more than a simple act of defiance against trolls and other internet ne’er-do-wells, and has grown for some into something more approaching a statement of purpose – perhaps even of being.
This has been received by many as a very healthy and positive development – the world can always use more love and tolerance, they say – but at the same time it’s also attracted either the ire or the concern of other assorted members of the population. Some take issue with the notion itself of universal love and tolerance. Others find issue, instead, with the concept of adults who learn life lessons from a show that is at first glance a children’s cartoon, thinking that those who do so much be emotionally or mentally underdeveloped if they can glean morality from such a location.
These criticisms are ordinarily simply ignored or scoffed by the vast majority of fans, but I believe that they contain valid points that are more than worthy of a philosophical discussion and counterpoint. As such, I’ve written this article in an attempt to provide such a discussion, in the hopes of providing critics of the brony community food for thought on exactly what this show is, what it means to so many people, and why it ought to be acceptable to react in such a way to it; and also in the hopes of providing members of the brony community a cohesive response to these criticisms such that it may be used, if necessary, as a starting point or as a reference guide when one is inevitably confronted with these sorts of criticism, concern, or contempt.
Before we can begin to discuss what this phrase means in a philosophical sense, we first need to discuss what this phrase means in a practical sense – in other words, what it even semantically means to refer to “love and tolerance”. In the interest of brevity, this section will be focusing on the first word – “love” – and not so much on the “tolerance” aspect of the phrase. The reason for this is not solely for brevity, however: as this article will shortly explain, it’s also my belief that the “tolerance” aspect is largely redundant, as well – if you love another, then it naturally follows that you’ll tolerate (when appropriate) that person as well.
So, to start this discussion, let’s pose a very simple question: what is love? That’s a popular song by Haddaway, of course, but it’s also a very serious and earnest philosophical question. Going by the dictionary or by a common understanding of the term, it can refer to any number of concepts:
By all means, the above list could keep going, but by this time you likely get the idea. The word “love” can mean many things, and as such, in order to first discuss it in terms of its context of the brony community, it’s first necessary to establish what it means to that group when they use it. I’ve finally arrived at the following definition, which I believe sufficiently approximates what the brony community at large means when they refer to loving another person:
Love is a sustained emotion felt towards another person that is manifest by a meaningful, sincere sense of concern for that person’s well-being, such that one who loves that person is capable of deriving happiness solely from the other’s happiness, even in the absence of any material reward, compensation, or other reciprocation for anything that one might do in order to facilitate that person’s happiness, and even in the presence of antagonism towards oneself created or maintained by that person.
(It should be stated at this point that this refers to genuine, lasting happiness – a sustained state of serenity and contentment in life – not a momentary amount of pleasure that even a serial killer or a drug addict might attain.)
In other words, if you love another, you’ll be ready and willing to do what is necessary to help that person improve and become happier. If you love another, you’ll never hold a grudge, and you’ll always be ready to forgive in the face of sincere repentance. If you love another, in short, your destiny becomes linked to that person – making that person genuinely happy makes you happy as well, thereby creating a sustained happiness unconstrained by limited resources or by the distribution thereof.
In further words, love is also unconditional. It is very, very easy to “love” someone who is good to you, who can provide for you, and who can give you material or emotional things that make you happy. However, I would argue that that is not love in its true and genuine sense. After all, who wouldn’t hold fond emotions towards one who did such things? On the other hand, it’s much, much harder to maintain this emotional feeling towards one who has nothing to offer, or to one who is actively acting in an antagonistic fashion towards you – yet, this author would argue that such love is indeed the true, genuine love that bronies speak of. After all, there is little other way to reconcile the way in which the term is used towards those who attempt to troll bronies on the internet.
As a side note, it is now likely evident why I consider “tolerance” redundant in the face of this definition of love – any reasons why one would tolerate another would surely be encapsulated by the above definition of love.
So, now that we’ve established what love is, we’re now prepared to talk about it on a higher, more philosophical level. The next question to ask is: why should you love? As above, it’s very easy to love one who can and does consistently do good by you. However, it’s much less immediately obvious what the benefit is to loving one who has nothing to offer, and it’s even less obvious why you would ever love one who wishes ill upon you. This section will discuss these matters in detail.
Before that, however, one topic that must be touched upon in order to sufficiently address these concerns is the topic of what makes a human being who he or she is. It’s tempting and seems eminently reasonable to point a finger at one who does an evil deed, such as murder, rape, grand theft, or so forth and call that person an evil person, full stop. Doing so does certainly seem to undermine the assertion that one ought to love even such people as these – if they are evil, rotten, and with no redeeming qualities, then why would one love such a person? Would one love their spouse’s murderer? Would one love a human who committed genocide? At face value, such a concept is at best laughable and absurd, and at worse vile and offensive, as it would seem to trivialize the pain suffered by the victims or their loved ones, and instead to focus care undeservedly on the criminal who caused that pain.
However, such assertions about criminals necessarily go against the fundamental framework of the universe, that being cause and effect – whatever is today was caused by something that preceded it. Humans are as much a part of the universe as anything else located therein, and as such, much as some try to avoid it, we are as much the product of cause and effect as anything else. What we are today we were made into by yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and every day since we were born – and even the days before that, considering that we are here only because our parents were here.
Many react to the above suggestion with a mixture of apprehension and derision. If who we are today is nothing more than a product of the past, then who are we? Can one not choose what one does in life? What meaning or purpose could life ever have if this were the case? I maintain, however, that there is nothing depressing or fatalistic about this notion. We still exist the same as we always have; we still experience life as we always have; and we still love and feel pain as we always have. Nothing in the above suggestion changes anything about our lives or the way in which we live. Its only effect is put a fundamental separation between each action undertaken and the one performing the action – one that, in my view, is fundamentally necessary to understand before one can truly love another human being. We can act on what we want to do, but we are fundamentally not in control of what it is we want to do.
The above is further borne out through the examples throughout history of those who have had epiphanies in life that fundamentally changed them as a human being. To give one famous example, Frank Abagnale, Jr., the subject of the story Catch Me If You Can, was a con artist whose job today is to help prevent people from being taken in by schemes like those he perpetrated earlier in life. A local example here is a baker who makes a very popular brand of bread; prior to this job, he had been a drug addict and a con man – yet today he is a respectable, productive member of society. A historical example is that of the Biblical figure Paul, who had previously dedicated his life to the persecution of the religious Christian minority, but who then became one of its most prominent advocates. There are countless instances throughout history of people whose lives fundamentally changed between birth and death, all of whom bear witness to the fundamentally malleable nature of the heart in response to external stimuli.
This is something that I believe many in the brony community, whether they know it or not, intuitively understand, know, and feel in their hearts. If the above is true – and all evidence says that it is – then there are no evil people. Rather, there are merely those whose paths in life have led them to commit unfortunate and hurtful actions. They do these things not because they are evil, but because their course in life has led them to the conclusion that it is the best option based on what they wish to achieve – which in turn is based on what they value in life.
Viewed in this light, the question of “Why love?” scarcely even becomes a question at all. Rather, the question is, “How could you not love?” If one accepts the above, then it’s necessarily the case that, rather than being vile, reprehensible individuals who deserve retribution, those who cause pain for others are among the most pitiable individuals in the world. After all, their path in life – through no true fault of their own – has lead them down a dark, sinister trail, one that has filled their heart with anger, hatred, or fear, three of the most toxic emotions that exist in all the world. Some people may be so far gone, or may have had such severe mental trauma, that they will be unreachable until the day they die – yet, for those who are reachable in their lifetimes, the only thing that can possibly reach them is love.
Furthermore, there’s also the effect to consider that one’s actions have on oneself, let alone on others. Holding on to contempt, anger, or hatred for another for any reason, even such a reason as this that seems eminently reasonable, only brings one closer to the brink, and inches one closer to becoming that which one hates. Such emotions poison one’s very being, and an immediate recognition of this fact is necessary to prevent oneself from meeting this fate. As such, loving another person isn’t even purely a selfless act – one’s actions towards others have a very real effect on one’s own heart, one’s own state of mind, and one’s own level of happiness. Dwelling too long in negativity inevitably makes one negative, which can very quickly become a vicious cycle – misery loves company, after all – that becomes increasingly difficult to escape the longer one resides in it.
Let me back up for a second and respond to some criticisms or rebuttals that I am certain many have in mind at the moment. Under no circumstances should the above be taken as an excuse for wrongdoing, or as an acceptance thereof, or as a statement that one should accept and tolerate such behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such toxic emotions in one’s heart do nothing but poison one’s soul and make one’s life unbearable – so it would necessarily follow, therefore, that one who loves another would want nothing more than to excise this toxin and restore one’s heart to a healthy state of being. There is still ample justification for the punishment of wrongdoing under one of three categories: to rehabilitate and change the heart of the one being punished; to deter others from going down the path of the one being punished; and to protect society from the one being punished. The only action that has lost its justification is the retributive punishment – the punishment that is done simply because the person “deserves it”, and because the punisher wants the person to suffer.
Nor should the above be construed as a statement that one ought to be more concerned with the well-being of the one causing pain than with the one receiving it. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, I believe that such a statement rests upon an implicit, incorrect assertion, that being that love is a limited resource that needs to be apportioned properly. It is not. The only limit on love is the amount that one is willing to give. One can very easily love both the victim and the perpetrator in very different ways – the victim, through genuine compassion and care and a willingness to work to fill the hole left by the perpetrator; and the perpetrator, through a refusal to give into anger and hatred, and through an earnest desire to do whatever one can to heal his or her heart, thereby preventing that person from desiring to hurt another person ever again.
In essence, love isn’t something you do, as though to say, “If you love someone, you will do/not do X.” Rather, love is why you do it. If you punish someone because you love them and want them to recognize that what they did was wrong, such that they might become a better person, that is worlds apart from punishing someone because you hate them and want them to suffer – even though the actual actions involved might be similar.
Naïve? Perhaps. One who follows this creed must always keep in mind and accept the fact that many people simply cannot be reached, either because they have a mental disorder or because they are simply too damaged to ever function in this life. And one must also always keep in mind that many people may take a very, very long time to finally see the light. Failure to keep these in mind will surely lead to very quick disillusionment, which may result shortly thereafter in a complete abandonment of this philosophy.
Yet, failure to try is even worse. No one’s heart was ever healed; no one ever repented of their past transgressions; and no one was ever brought to the emerald fields of genuine, lasting happiness through the application of contempt, anger, or hatred in the face of an action that that person undertook.
Now that we’ve addressed the broad topic of love in general, the next topic that needs to be covered is the relationship between that, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and the brony community. A question often asked among skeptics and detractors is one that is in two parts: Why in the world are adult men gleaning lessons about love and friendship from a cartoon about rainbow ponies? And how in the world can this possibly be healthy? This section answers these questions.
The short answer is actually pretty darn simple: they aren’t.
That short answer is probably not very satisfying, though – what in the world do I mean when I claim that people who seemingly obviously have become kinder people through watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic did not actually learn that behavior from the show?
To answer that, an analogy is probably appropriate. I’m sure everyone has had a situation where they were trying their hardest to remember something that seems as if it’s right there in their mind, but they just can’t get at it. Then, at a later time, something unrelated brings to the forefront of the mind a very, very tiny sliver of a memory that is related to what that person was previously trying to remember. Almost in an instant after that, that person will suddenly have the entire memory come flooding back to them, all because it got one single foothold in the mind and used that to fully make its way back. The impetus that brought back that tiny fraction of the memory wasn’t responsible for the memory itself – rather, it was merely the facilitator for its return to the person’s conscious mind.
I strongly believe that what we’ve seen happen with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is, in fact, very similar to this. Each and every one of us contains the capacity both for good and for evil; the ultimate differentiator is our life experiences that cause either one side or the other to manifest itself to a greater degree. And we need to face it – the world can often be a very cold, unkind place, one that can very easily lead people in the interest of self-preservation to shun the good and embrace the evil. This can come from many sources: heartache, societal pressures, financial distress, betrayal, and so on. Such influences can very easily cause one to suppress one’s desires to sincerely love others for any number of reasons – the belief that humans don’t deserve love, the belief that one’s friends will reject one if one doesn’t put up a stone-faced façade, the belief that one can’t afford to love others: all of these lead to that extremely unfortunate repression.
Yet, repressed though it might have been, it never disappeared – it was there all along, just waiting like the memory for something to give it a foothold, such that it might then surge back into the forefront of the person’s mind. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic didn’t create anything; rather, it served merely to remove the repression that had been in place so long that the person likely forgot it was even there. For those who had experienced heartache, it perhaps created a spark in their mind that convinced them that maybe not everyone was like those who had hurt them in the past. For those who buckled under societal pressures, it perhaps created a spark that convinced them that there are more important things in life than meeting the approval of those who breed and foster negativity. For those who felt as though they just couldn’t love another person, it perhaps convinced them that it’s easier to do than they had previously thought.
One would likely protest here by noting that, whatever the case may be, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic remains a children’s show, and that only developmentally challenged adults should be finding anything of moral or emotional worth from a show like that. However, this statement has problems on two fronts. First, it implicitly asserts that the value or truth of a message is affected by the messenger, which is – I would hope – sufficiently clearly false that it’s not necessary to point out why it’s false.
Second, however, it also ignores the fact outlined in the previous section, which is that humans are necessarily and fundamentally affected by everything that happens to them in life, big and small. There’s nothing either good or bad about that; that’s just the way things are. Someone who is on the tipping point of a nervous breakdown can have a big reaction to something seemingly trivial, so long as they’re primed just right beforehand. And, similarly, someone who’s unhappy with their life and subconsciously yearns for something more fulfilling can also have a big reaction to something like a cartoon that outwardly seems equally as trivial. Fundamentally speaking, the show didn’t teach people how to act, as though they were an amoral blank slate before watching it. It, like everything that came before it in their life, was simply an external influence that affected and altered their course in life.
There are many, many such influences in life that put a person on a path to destruction, be that destruction of self or destruction of others. On the other hand, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has put countless numbers of bronies on a path to friendship, happiness, and companionship. It’s turned around those who were depressed, angry, or jaded, and has caused them to see the world with fresh eyes; to slow down and appreciate the small things in life; and to open themselves up emotionally and become vulnerable and let in other people in a way they hadn’t before, in a way that fosters true friendship as opposed to the parade of pretenses that is the hallmark of all too many social interactions in life.
At the end of the day, when we reach the end of our time on Earth, all we will have become – everything that will be who we are – will be the product of our experiences in this world and of our reactions to them. Though we all die eventually, we live on in the form of the ways in which we impacted the world. We’re remembered by the people who knew us, and we’re survived by the still-present ripples that our presence imparted on the pond that is existence.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic may just be a children’s cartoon. It may be trivial to many, and ignored or scoffed at by most. But it’s already touched the hearts of thousands – thousands who today are happier and more joyful than they otherwise would have been. Those thousands’ newfound hope and happiness in life will then touch thousands more, and so the ripples continue, across continents and oceans.
This is the true impact of the show. It’s not a master by which people live as though they were morally void and need it to cling to. It’s not a teacher needed by adults who never developed in life. Rather, it’s just a touch in the pond that has created a ripple of positivity, one that grows in magnitude with each new person who adds to the wave. There will be pushback, and there will be waves in the other direction intending to squelch that happiness and joy that the show brings. But it still remains a show that will leave the planet better than it used to be. And that’s something we all should celebrate.