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The Xenophile's Guide to Equestria

by archonix

Chapter 1: Foreword and Introduction

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The Xenophile's Guide to Equestria

A collection of works dedicated to providing a greater understanding of Equestrian society, from multiple authors in multiple fields.

Compiled by Twilight Sparkle

Including Foreword by HRH Princess Celestia

First Edition Copyright © 1218 AC by University of Canterlot Press
Published by Canterlot University Press
100-132 Slope Street, Canterlot, Equestria

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
duplicated, stored or transmitted by any means physical or arcane,
except by permission of Ponyville Metropolitan University Press or the Author.

EBN: 202-9-65-784533-2

Dedication

To Princess Celestia;

for her support and friendship

and for showing me how to

make friends.

To the herd of Bellerophon;

who taught me

to be still, and to be free

and

To Lero;

Through your eyes I

beheld the world anew


Foreword

It is unusual that I write the foreword to a first edition of any book, save for those few rare and exceptional works that appeared to define the age in which they were written and it has been my pleasure to see those choices validated time and time again. The question of selection bias aside, again I find within my hooves a manuscript that promises to both define the understanding of our era, but also holds the promise of future interaction with races beyond this world.

The arrival of the Human, Bellerophon, marked a turning point in our understanding of the universe. The first creature to arrive from a world beyond our own, Lero has become something of a celebrity simply by his existence and caused more than a little controversy through his marriage to his herd, over which I had the great pleasure to preside, a pleasure rendered all the greater by his choice to include Twilight Sparkle within his circle of affection.

Yet it is not merely his behaviours that this book deals with, but our own. Through Lero's eyes and through the words of her friends and family, Twilight Sparkle has taken a critical and deep view of our society and distilled out its essentials, all for the benefit of any race that may one day find their way to our world as Lero did.

I consider myself honoured to have been Twilight's mentor for so many years and I am immensely proud of her achievements under my tutelage, though which she has taught me as much as I have taught her. She has already accomplished much in her life, authoring numerous studies on the sociology of interpersonal relationships and the seminal work on the ethics of reintroducing forgotten magic to modern society; and undertaken the creation of entirely novel forms of magical study, a pursuit which both I and Princess Luna have wholeheartedly supported.

Despite it's uncharacteristically disorganised nature, this book represents the pinnacle of Twilight's work to date and stands above any other on the subject, as both a guide for the outsider and as a careful dissection of our own subconscious perceptions and beliefs. I was pleasantly surprised at how often my own preconceptions about our society were challenged by the work presented here. It is my sincere hope that this work may one day be joined by similar examinations of the other great races of our world and of other worlds, should they ever find a way to join us.

Princess Celestia


Introduction

How does a pony look to the eyes of another being? It's not a question we ask too often and usually with good reason; we live in a world filled with myriad sapient species and we ourselves are, as a species, three parts of a whole. We believe we know ourselves because we know one another so well; we believe we know how others perceive us as a result of this.

How does our society appear to an outsider? In truth we don't know. We may ask the Griffon and be told that we are soft; ask the Sheep and be told we are hard and cruel; ask the Dragon and be ignored for a century and then told we are not worth paying attention to because we inconsiderately die before we've allowed sufficient examination of the question at hand.1 Nevertheless, all the species on our world share some essential commonalities; for all their differences our races are, at some fundamental sociological level, the same.

We are the same because we share that innate knowledge of the Other: we understand that we are not alone, that we have other races to observe and that they observe us. We may think it makes us cosmopolitan and self-aware, but we forget that they share our world and we share theirs. We and they are not outsiders to one another, but merely expressions of the same harmonious whole.

This is not to deny differences nor to belittle the contribution of interspecies relations and study, but merely to question that primary assumption everypony makes when considering their behaviour, conscious and subconscious: that they are able to consider their lives from the view of an outsider when no such outsider exists.

The essential idea for this collection was first formed shortly after my interaction with the alien we came to know as Bellerophon, or Lero to his friends. Lero caused quite a storm when he entered our world, appearing without fanfare on the fringes of the Everfree Forest2 via means that would not be known for some time. He was quickly taken under the wing of the pegasus Rainbow Dash, who endeavoured to teach him everything she could about our society, from sports and games to work and personal interactions, up to and including romance and mating.

The concept remained dormant until I had spent more time with Lero and undertaken an embryonic attempt to construct a model for his society from analogues amongst the races that inhabit our world. That early model was, to say the least, of limited success due to there being no true analogue for his species here.

In fact, the world Lero originated from is dominated by a single sapient species, Homo sapiens sapiens – descended from creatures somewhat similar in appearance to the great apes3 – and has been so for many tens of thousands of years. As such, his view of the relationship between species is vastly different from our own and could be described as untainted by the assumptions we all have toward one another.

As I came to know Lero in a much more personal way I began to understand how truly different his worldview was. At that point I realised that it would be possible and indeed beneficial to use his views and modes of thought to undertake a complete examination of our society, in order to both provide him with a more detailed understanding of the world in which he now lived, to provide a means for any future visitors to quickly come to terms with our way of life and for ponies themselves to study and better appreciate the ways in which we subconsciously and consciously behave toward one another.

Because Lero has already begun to assimilate many of the concepts of Equestrian society it was not possible to provide a pure outsider's view of our social interactions. However, this instead created an opportunity to provide context through the inclusion of other works and in the process to produce a book that I hope will appeal to a much broader audience than my usual academic readers. Therefore, through the compilation of interviews and correspondence, interspersed with monographs and thoughts from myself, my family and experts in the field we have together endeavoured to provide you, the reader, with the most complete and detailed analysis of everything we ponies normally take for granted about ourselves.

Twilight Sparkle (M.Frnd, M.Scry, D.Thau)

of Bellerophon

Permanent Chair

Department of Metaphysics, Technomancy and Theoretical Magic

Canterlot University


    Equinas, Chasing the Dragon - The Ageless Philosophy of the Flying Lizard (Victor Plebia Books, 1194)Glint Eastwither, The Everfree Forest and why every bloody thing turns up there (Canterlot University Press, 1188)Archaeological studies in the Zebrican homeland recently uncovered an extinct relative of the Gracile Plains Ape, Pan pediobates, that appears sufficiently differentiated from other members of panini to require the reorganisation of the family heminidae4 with a new subfamily, tentatively named hemininae. The presence of this and other modern equivalent species on Lero's Earth appears to raise fairly fundamental questions about the similarities between our world and that of the Humans. However, the limitations of space and scope prevent a detailed analysis of such questions.Ancient Equestrian: “Soil dwellers”

Next Chapter: Selected Correspondence between Twilight Sparkle and HRH Princess Celestia Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 36 Minutes
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