The long-awaited Season 5 première was very interesting for a number of reasons. One of those reasons was that it clearly showed just how deeply My Little Pony is rooted in American values.

The United States have perhaps the most individualistic culture in the world. From a young age, Americans are told how "special" and "unique" they are, and encouraged to stand out, to excel, to compete. If you lose, it's your own fault; if you win, it's your own personal accomplishment, and you get to flaunt your success all you like. And if you win big – be it at business, politics, sports, or entertainment – you might acquire a cult following of sorts, a share of fans who'll never shut up about how awesome and inspiring you are. (See: Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Obama before he actually became President.)

So, The Cutie Map was about the value of individuality and unique talents, and the antagonists were at the opposite extreme: 'the individual is nothing, the collective is everything' – a mindset reminiscent of 20th-century totalitarian ideas. So far, so good. The point is that the idea of individuality as something to be celebrated and flaunted is a specifically American – and to a lesser extent British – attitude. In much of Europe, especially the small Protestant countries, we see things rather differently.

My own country, the Netherlands, is a particularly notorious example. Our unofficial national motto is 'Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg' – 'just act normal, that's weird enough already'. In other words: you're nothing special, don't try to stand out, don't try to get people's attention. Celebrities, politicians and even royalty constantly have to emphasise how normal and modest they are (for example, ministers often make a point of commuting to work by bicycle). Ambition is allowed, but only in moderation – you don't think you're better than the rest, do you?

To a Dutchman, few kinds of people are as annoying as the streber – a word borrowed from German, referring to someone who tries a little too hard to move up in the world, mostly by currying favour with teachers, bosses, and influential people in general. The kid who always gets high grades, sits on the student council, does the honours track, puts in lots of extra hours at his job, and is proud of those things to the point of smugness – that's a streber. Don't be a streber!

This mindset – which serves as a useful check on ego, attention-whoring and naïve hero-worship, at the cost of stifling creativity and discouraging people from putting in more effort than strictly necessary – isn't a uniquely Dutch thing, far from it. (Do we look like we're trying to stand out?) The Scandinavian countries share it as well. The Danes even have a snappy word for it: Janteloven, the law of Jante. And although the Catholic countries are often much more tolerant of extravagance and individual boasting, Europe in general tends to fall somewhere in the middle between the American hyper-individualism preached by the Mane Six, and the scary, spirit-crushing totalitarianism of Starlight Glimmer's village.

Note that, although I compared the village to 20th-century totalitarian states (and let's face it, the parallels are pretty blatant) there's one important difference. Totalitarianism preached that the collective was everything and the individual was insignificant – except for one individual, the Great Leader, who towered above the masses with his supreme wisdom and skill. (See: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini.) Starlight Glimmer, by contrast, pretends she's just as plain and uninteresting as her subjects – and when it's revealed she actually held on to her individual skill and vision, that's what drives them to rebel. In a way, The Cutie Map provides a glimpse, albeit a very brief one, of what a Dutch or Danish totalitarian movement might have looked like.

Cultural commentary aside, I found Starlight Glimmer an intriguing villain. Throughout most of the episode – okay, two episodes, if you want to get technical – I was waiting for her nefarious plans to be revealed: presumably she wanted to use the "harvested" cutie marks to build some kind of magical superweapon, or sell them for an obscene amount of money. (I already know who her first customers would be.) But the big reveal never came. Sure, she used lies, force, and brainwashing to achieve her aims, but she genuinely seemed to believe that stripping ponies of their individuality would make Equestria a better place. In other words, the Well-Intentioned Extremist has arrived in the MLP universe. Starlight Glimmer's backstory – how she arrived at these ideas, and how she became so convinced of them that she was willing to lie, threaten and coerce in order to implement them – should make for plenty of interesting fanfiction.

That's what we're here for, after all.