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Background Pony #C431
@Background Pony #E1DA
It’s not so different from the social upheaval the introduction of firearms caused, just more potent. In the case of firearms, all they really killed was the chivalric ideal and eventually most monarchies, as the dumbest, least trained peasant was now able to kill highly trained and well equipped knights with ease. Democratisation of power didn’t materialise in any way that mattered despite this, the aristocrats of yesteryear simply gave way to the financiers and bankers of modern times, power ultimately rests with them rather than the electorate as we’re lead to believe. Power over others stems from control over resources, as such whoever holds the power to enforce their claim over resources ends up in charge, in this case, it’s the magic of friendship that grants power over the land and all those who live in it, not simply magic itself. Rogue alicorns, chaos spirits, edgy crickets, rock obsessed smoke, magic absorbing centaurs and even the chad cast itself all learned that the hard way.
They’re still based though. Nothing goes harder than shooting your shot in the face of fearful odds.
Background Pony #E1DA
The meme made me think deeper than I thought it would.
Would magic be democratizing or would it only exacerbate the tendency of of the social formations to concentrate ‘power’ and wealth in possession of the few, such as in a monarchy?
Without magic a warlord or a capitalist uses their already existing power to exploit the population and grow their resources/power. But isn’t magic totally different; where power that could only otherwise be accomplished socially through commanding armies or nations, is instead accomplished by the magician by themselves. What is desired is made reality not by marshalling resources or servants, but by the desirer alone, mystically, where their ego prevails much much more than consensus between elite and follower like happens without magic. This would suggest that elite classes in a magical world would always be made up of magicians who used mystical power to individually will themselves to dominate others. But also there is greater possibility of insurrectionary upending within a magical society, where an outsider without the established resources of being an elite can still mystically destroy the masters.
So why do you study “magic”? Is it to reinforce existing social forms and the status quo, or to fight against them?