Is magical talking hooved animal world as great as we think?

[Roughshod 719]

Plus the fact that we have shitty homes that can easily be set on fire seems so safe for living

Well that seems to be the case mostly in Ponyville as other cities(Canterlot, Manhattan) have been shown to possess more reliable architecture. I don't know why Ponyvilleans(?) seem to prefer medieval style housing. I guess it's just to look more folksy and charming for the kids.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Roughshod

[Neutral 1,185]

That's very true rough I can agree with you there

[Leonard Smix 421]

Lets just say, I would take a train through that portal any day and live there for the rest of my life (as long as family comes long, don't want to be lonely).

 

Like said by many others, it is far better than this world, and in my opinion, all of those things mentioned can be changed.

 

Also, I hope that there is an episode where Diamond Tiara is facing imminent death and Apple Bloom comes to save her so that she would stop all of her bullying, I hate that character with a passion right now.

[Roughshod 719]

The flash animated grass is always greener on the other side of the screen.

[A goat 323]

Their society may have problems, but we have seen no signs of the most serious things that inflict ours. No rape, no murder, no poverty, to name a few. Sure there are childhood bullies, but the ponies don't have racism (specism?) 

They seem to live in complete harmony.

It might seem that way, but Equestria may have more dark and evil stuff than the show lets on. There are probably a couple equestrians with Antisocial Personality Disorder running around.

[Roughshod 719]

Their society may have problems, but we have seen no signs of the most serious things that inflict ours. No rape, no murder, no poverty, to name a few. Sure there are childhood bullies, but the ponies don't have racism (specism?) 

They seem to live in complete harmony.

 

That's a largely irrelevant point since most of those things would almost certainly not be canonically shown in a television show aimed at young children or in any of is associated media outlets.

 

 

 

Earth maybe corrupted, but it has its perks (Technology, city's, etc.).

 

 

Equestria has a decent amount of technology in its own right, rivaling that of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century western nations. Locomotives, skyscrapers, regrigerators... All of these point to industrialization; but it doesn't seem to be very widespread throughout Equestria. The phenomenon of magic with it's prevalence and utility in ponies lives is likely the largest factor in that.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Roughshod

[Jora 164]

Friendship Hadouken is love Friendship Hadouken is life!~

[Fractured 2,684]

Devil's advocate coming: neither world's better than the other, We just trade one problem for another. Just look at Equestria from the other side; it's nowhere near as pleasant as it sounds.

 

To start with, terrible crap happens every other week. Can you imagine living in a part of Equestria that didn't happen to have the Elements of Harmony over its shoulder every second, or a place that didn't have an archmage like Twilight? Things that we laugh at from the show's perspective, like parasprites, suddenly means that you're entire village/ town is without food. Changelings show up, your entire village tears itself apart trying to find them. Sleeping dragon? Better pack up and move, and pray that he doesn't get hungry. Even one lone unicorn with an archaic item or the least bit of magical ability like Trixie, and you're all suddenly slaves.

 

And as bad as that is, "end of the world" happens every other month. Sure, Elements come in and fix everything up, but what kind of psychological damage does that have to leave, facing the prospect of eternal night? Or having your mind rototilled and your town literally defy every form of physics? Or having your soul/magical essence ripped out of your body? Even if Discord is turned to stone, or Tirek blown to pieces, that's not a comfort; you can never be sure something worse won't show up, if it hasn't already escaped from Celestia's house of horrors. Tartarus is within a day's walk from Ponyville; Hell literally exists on their Earth. 

 

Not that you'd ever know it, though; 90% of Equestria outside of Ponyville, Cloudsdale, Canterlot, and Manehatten is untamed wilderness, mountain ranges, and desert from what we've seen. If you're not a pegasi, and you're not one of the lucky ones in those four places, you'd essentially be stuck in your chosen city/town for life unless you feel like braving manticores, dragons, cave trolls, etc. I'd like to think there's a reason ponies are so close together, and it's probably because it's very difficult for anyone to anywhere else in Equestria.

 

To make it harder to leave, there's also forms of(albeit subliminal) segregation. Cloudsdale is the most obvious one, but outside obvious physical differences, Canterlot is a city that hosts "Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns", because they make up 90% of the population. Appleloosa is a place that's 90% earth ponies. Even Ponyville has its moments; Winter Wrap up is a homage to Earth pony settlers and specifically bans magical practices.

 

And that's just taking the least logical but most accurate position and assumed that everything would be depicted as it was in the show, no matter how unlikely or illogical. I highly doubt they have a 0% crime rate, or that wars would be fought with pies, or that Equestrian guards just have spears they never use... but even then you don't need to. Equestria is no paradise.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Shimmer5000

[Pastel 7,630]

Equestria is better than our world, but maybe not that much indeed.... They have their own problems too.

 

There's bullies (Diamond Taira, Gilda), con-ponies (the Flim-Flam Brothers), all the diseases and problems the brothers mentioned and showed off in the “Miracle curative tonic” episode, bad guys constantly showing up and wrecking things and disrupting the peace, power corrupted ponies (Sunset shimmer, Nightmare moon, Chrysalis), spiteful, out of control ponies (Trixie) and all that to be wary of. And even without Pinkie's presence, ponies are shown to be just plain grumpy and rude and irritable to each other. ): (Magical Mystery Cure)

Those things also exist in our world.

[NiceTryGuy 5]

Devil's advocate coming: neither world's better than the other, We just trade one problem for another. Just look at Equestria from the other side; it's nowhere near as pleasant as it sounds.

 

To start with, terrible crap happens every other week. Can you imagine living in a part of Equestria that didn't happen to have the Elements of Harmony over its shoulder every second, or a place that didn't have an archmage like Twilight? Things that we laugh at from the show's perspective, like parasprites, suddenly means that you're entire village/ town is without food. Changelings show up, your entire village tears itself apart trying to find them. Sleeping dragon? Better pack up and move, and pray that he doesn't get hungry. Even one lone unicorn with an archaic item or the least bit of magical ability like Trixie, and you're all suddenly slaves.

Ponyville is right next to an old, mystical forest full of dangerous creatures so the monster rate might be a bit higher than usually. We’ve seen some other monster outside of the forest like the quarry eels, the tatzleworm or the chimera but they live in remote areas. Chances are high that most ponies never even encounter any of these creatures in their entire live. That doesn’t means it never happens just not as often as in the show.

 

And as bad as that is, "end of the world" happens every other month. Sure, Elements come in and fix everything up, but what kind of psychological damage does that have to leave, facing the prospect of eternal night? Or having your mind rototilled and your town literally defy every form of physics? Or having your soul/magical essence ripped out of your body? Even if Discord is turned to stone, or Tirek blown to pieces, that's not a comfort; you can never be sure something worse won't show up, if it hasn't already escaped from Celestia's house of horrors. Tartarus is within a day's walk from Ponyville; Hell literally exists on their Earth.

The Equestrian version Tartarus is more like a Maximum Security Prison instead of a literal heel, though I admit that this doesn’t sounds much better.

 

While there’s a large number of powerful evil creatures most of them were defeated before they had a chance to spread their influence to more than one town/city. Tirek’s rampage was the only time we’ve seen more than one location being attacked and even then we don’t know how many places he visited before his defeat. Chances are high that he hadn’t even reached northern settlements like Manehattan or the Crystal Empire yet.

 

 

Not that you'd ever know it, though; 90% of Equestria outside of Ponyville, Cloudsdale, Canterlot, and Manehatten is untamed wilderness, mountain ranges, and desert from what we've seen. If you're not a pegasi, and you're not one of the lucky ones in those four places, you'd essentially be stuck in your chosen city/town for life unless you feel like braving manticores, dragons, cave trolls, etc. I'd like to think there's a reason ponies are so close together, and it's probably because it's very difficult for anyone to anywhere else in Equestria.

While there’s probably a lot of wilderness between the towns, the show has made it perfectly clear it’s rather easy to travel from one place to another. A Pony in Apleossa is only one train ride away from the Crystal Empire at the other side of Equestria.

 

There are several examples of characters travelling long distances without a hitch: Ms. Peachbottem aka Chickadee from “Games Ponies Play” was an actual tourist, several Crystal Ponies visited the Rainbow Falls Trade Exchange in “Trade Ya!”, Filly Applejack travelled to Manehattan on her own hoof in “Cutie Mark Chronicles”, characters like Trixie, the Flim & Flam brothers, Cheese Sandwich or Iron Will make a living by travelling from town to town and the list goes on and on. If there was a monster behind every tree none of this would be possible.

 

To make it harder to leave, there's also forms of(albeit subliminal) segregation. Cloudsdale is the most obvious one, but outside obvious physical differences, Canterlot is a city that hosts "Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns", because they make up 90% of the population. Appleloosa is a place that's 90% earth ponies. Even Ponyville has its moments; Winter Wrap up is a homage to Earth pony settlers and specifically bans magical practices.

I agree with most of this. Most cities seem to have more ponies from one race than the other twos. It was even stated in the show that Ponyville is kind of special because it’s a place where member of all three races live in equal numbers.

 

And that's just taking the least logical but most accurate position and assumed that everything would be depicted as it was in the show, no matter how unlikely or illogical. I highly doubt they have a 0% crime rate, or that wars would be fought with pies, or that Equestrian guards just have spears they never use... but even then you don't need to. Equestria is no paradise.

Daring Don’t showed us that there are ponies willing to steal dangerous artefacts and sell them to villains or even working for said villains as henchponies. Not to mention unicorns like Sombra or Sunset Shimmer. Evil ponies exist and so do criminals.

 

So all in all Equestria can be a dangerous place, but unless you’re actively exploring/ visiting places that are off the map chances are high that you never even met one dangerous creature in your entire live.

Edited January 16, 2015 by NiceTryGuy

[[NULL] 906]

Of course Equestria is better than our world. 

 

Our world is just...... gah

 

Robbers, crimes, blood, etc.

 

Sure there are childhood bullies, but the ponies don't have racism (specism?)

 

Right, because none of that exists in the MLP universe.

 

 

Good to know that Equestria is a utopia with no conflict. Thank god they don't have to deal with any frequent monster attacks or tyrants trying to overthrow their leaders.

What idiot would write that in anyway? Since when did conflict for the main heroes to overcome, thus grow and develop, make for a good story?

Edited January 16, 2015 by SpaceOnion

[RainbowTashie 378]

Equestria would probably be a nicer place than our world. Most of the problems that world has are pretty tame compared to our world, and the really big problems can be solved with The Magic of Friendship. A Friendship Hadouken isn't really an option in our world and the solutions to major problems are not going to be very cut and dry and probably involve a lot of moral ambiguity and suffering.

i'd choose equestria any day of the week i think discord havoc would be fun! it's chocolate rain guys!

[Roughshod 719]

Kid's show. Kid's shows tend to have overly idealistic, sweet, "saccharine" (nice use of a vocab word, there) messages in them. It's kinda how they roll.

Even if that's generally true it doesn't actually redeem it's supposed flaw(s). In truth your statement is basically a genetic fallacy in that you're determining the qualities of something based on it's general origin. You're stereotyping.

 

I would say that ponies and humans are very similar, but that doesn't change the way Equestria works. If you found something that you were naturally amazing at, and you had an inborn love of doing it.....why on earth would you stop?

It seems I'll have to repeat myself:

I don't entirely like the concepts of cutie marks myself because I hold the view that human beings don't have destinies but rather choices determined by realities in the world. And since it's been shown that ponies are basically equivalent to humans in another dimension I think I can still make that complaint in this context. It seems to me like CM's would limit to some extent a pony's freedom to change. What if a pony lost interest in their talent or wanted to acquire a new one? Would this be possible? If they did could their CM possibly change? If not then how could a pony ever call themselves free? A society where everyone is expected to find their place and never depart from it doesn't sound all that perfect. The citizens of Equestria all seem to value harmony but... I don't know, it seems like they're afraid of change and just prefer a boring life of mundane repetition.

Again, I suggest that this is an idealized view that's being put out there. A society where everyone finds their place, and everyone is happy with where they are. I'm not saying it's realistic, I'm saying it's what Equestria is shown to be.

The core of this topic isn't just what Equestria is but whether or not it is ideal and preferable. Of course understanding the subject matter is crucial for any sort of intelligent discussion and while some opinions may vary my main contention with your stance isn't the nature of MLP itself so much as the worth of it's universe. Although it could be argued that one directly results from the other, but then again that really depends on your values. The only way we can truly examine and expound on this concept is through some sort of comparison, and there is no better comparison than the actual world that we inhabit.

 

***

 

From a first glance Equestria can easily seem like a nicer place to live. But when taken in a greater context of what it's universe comprises of and specifically what its drawbacks would entail in our own reality, then the situation becomes much more complex.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Roughshod