0 A.C.
I look around the market square, seeing my fellow ponies shop and socialize, twittering on about the weather or Pinkie Pie's latest party, or the coming of Cider Season.
Then, there are those ornery runts, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, as they call themselves. See how they play? Young Scootaloo pulls herself around on that wheeled death trap as her friends chase her down, trying to snag something she has clutched between her teeth.
I wonder: what would these carefree fillies act like if fire was raining out of the sky, if they had seen their parents subjected to sensory deprivation, fluctuations of extreme heat and cold, starvation, violence and poverty? Would they be different if they weren't raised in some closed-off utopia, where everypony sees no further than their own city limits?
Would they still play? Would they still stay idle in their lives, searching constantly for a flank-marking, or would they direct all of that youthful energy against those they recognize as destroyers?
Whomever is reading this, surely they will denounce me if they do not understand what I speak of; forget them. They are too far gone to be of concern. I, however, and others, I hope, can forget the ingrained teachings, our indoctrinations; to attempt a hard look at reality with a fresher, stronger eye. I believe you will come to understand what I am saying.
Let me start with this: Our conception of the reality that surrounds us is interpreted directly through the teachings that we grew up with. Unless one takes a step back, ignores their cultural instinct, the lenses through which one views the world will be permanently fogged by bias.
That doesn't sound too extreme, now, does it? One might wonder why this is imperative at all in reference to the world as it is.
It's because most of us aren't seeing the world as it is, we are seeing it through the mistuned and blurry eye of, what somepony once dubbed, Mother Culture.
And this is what I mean: When I tell you that I've been to our borders, seen the way with which we absorb the locals there, seen that they have retained their self-determination for millennia (as is apparent through their lineage, equally ancient as ours), and then see how we systematically destroy their culture, killing parents who fight for their customs, kidnapping children too young to have made their decisions about what really is, sending them to be adopted by Canterlonian families, I grow sick to the depths of my soul.
Even before these things started happening, the constant growth, the endless expansion of Equestria was never questioned.
It is automatically assumed that peace and love and unity are the concept, verily, that prosperity is the force driving the growth of our so called 'nation'. Surely it must be! Look at the riches with which we live! We can afford to fell forests for our paper, to strip the ground of minerals through rigorous planting methods, to throw away a half eaten plate of food!
In the eyes of ponies touting common ideals, these foreign ponies are as fully inferior to themselves as a cricket or a badger. Of course, there are some diverting philosophies that are kept, though they are fringe, located far away from the mainstream groupthink. The gentle Fluttershy is one such pony, conscious of the fact that most of these creatures have cultures and languages and customs of their own. Her revelation, however, is not shared by many...
Assimilation is the name of the new game we play, even if we now call it the 'education' of the ignorant and savage.
What we are told is that outside of Equestria, ponies are not fully self-aware. When I speak of ponies, of course, I am referring to the bearers of hooves, be they exactly like us or not. We are told that they are lowly, uncivilized, that they don't know that they are independent and free; they don't know that, like us, they are beings of the highest order, for whom the entire environment is there to provide for.
Yet if one merely travels outside our borders, ignores what they have been told, and uses only the observation of their senses, it seems clear that this is not the case.
Those indigenous ponies, their lands flow with goods that we couldn't dream of here! Where we have relatively few forested acres here (for we have cut down all of the trees for lumber and stripped the ground open beneath them for stone and gems and metals), they are thriving off of the fruits naturally born out by those healthy plants. There is no such thing as a place without woods! Food dangles in front of one's eyes everywhere! I could swear, it is true harmony, genuine balance. Here, it is a rare sight here to see a wild bird singing to themselves about the loveliness of the day yet, once outside Equestria, the difference is starkly apparent! The skies will darken as if night has fallen, yet one will soon realize it is simply the enormity of the flocks that roam freely through the deep blue!
Where we have stripped our land of all its health, taking from it everything that we claim as ours, they have nourished theirs, giving themselves to the land, caring for it as a shepherd for his flock. And that is why we are stronger than them in this moment. That is why, they either conform, or flee, or die.
Our desires for big stone buildings or metal armor, the exclusion of the natural world in our cities, these are generated by Mother Culture, this much seems obvious to me.
We can't look at these Water Buffalo, Elephants, and Giraffes, whose land we are stealing all the time, all of whom have been living in their own minimalistic context very happily and say that their desires are wrong. We cannot call them savage.
Perhaps we should call them enlightened.
Strictly speaking, it seems that non-Equestrians do not believe in a creator as we do, revering Him above all, with Celestia just below. They know of The Creator differently, as an intrinsic dimension of all their relations, part of every interaction that binds a people together.
Let me be clearer: We worship in rows, bowing our heads as somepony drones from a decaying text. We praise our creator by fearing His power. We praise our creator by destroying those who don't worship him as we do.
Let us look at them, those natives that we are constantly displacing. They worship by running, feeling the burning of their muscles or by recognizing the blissful sensation of clear water trickling down their parched throats, by holding each-other's hooves, by kissing each-other. They revel in the experience to be had in this magnificent creation.
And we tell them that this is wrong. We force them out of their territory, sending them fleeing, for they do not know that we will never stop growing, that is the way of our machine. If they did know this brutal fact, I am sure they would fight.
It seems to me that if this leviathan that is Equestria does not stop, one day we will run out of room. We will populate the surface of this planet like parasites, sucking away the living wealth of the world from its bones, a disgusting pus-filled tumor on the surface of this mighty ground.
And where will we go once there is no more room on the planet, no more trees to cut down, no more elements to dig up to fuel our machines, no more wildlife to claim as ours for the plundering?
We will implode. And ponies everywhere will shudder, horrified to the depths of their being, to think about what their ancestors once ignored.
All I know for certain is that these are my last few moments among what I formerly thought of as a great state. I cannot stay here, knowing what I do, passively supporting a lifestyle based on the destruction and exploitation of the world and its inhabitants, other than those classified as "US".
Before our rivers run dry and our earth turns arid, before the leaves tumble, brown and dead, from of the dying branches of withering trees, before the great supply chain is interrupted and brings devastation to us all, I must surely try to resist in some way.
I, Roseluck, must make my way into the unknown.
Fair ponies, wish me luck.