Many Worlds of Many Colours
Understanding the Five Colours of Magic the Gathering as Ethe
One of the most iconic and fundamental elements of Magic the Gathering is its colour wheel or colour pie wherein mana is divided into five distinct colours. These colours underpin Magic as a game both mechanically — with each of them playing slightly differently and specialising in distinct elements of the game — and in terms of lore or flavour, with each colour assigned their own aesthetics, set of values, and personality traits.[i]
Within this essay, I shall examine the five colours of Magic — white, blue, black, red, and green — as philosophical worldviews. Of course, each of these colours is overtly designed with a kind of pluralism at its core, which is to say that no single colour, or even a combination of colours, could be reduced to a single philosophical position.
Instead, I am interested in examining these colours in terms of ethos. Within contemporary English, ethos refers to the fundamental values of a person, people, culture, or movement; the original Greek term ethos, however, specifically refers to something customary drawing our attention specifically to dispositions or a general manner.[ii] Ethos is the root for the term ethics, grounding our discussion of ethical issues within our wider social context.
To seek the ethos of the five colours of mana is therefore to go slightly beyond the values and personality traits that are associated with each colour and to instead reflect on how these could be synthesised into a worldview, or, more strictly, into a way of being within the world. Into an ethos. When attempting to express the colours as ethe, then, precisely what is sought is a way of inhabiting, understanding, and navigating the world.
In the following, I shall examine each of the five colours in turn, summarising their core traits and discussing what kind of ethos we might understand to follow from each. This is a matter of understanding the colours ethically. Of course, it is not possible to describe a particular colour as entirely good or evil for their ethe are, themselves, frameworks within which values are defined and within which morality can be determined. It is, however, possible to derive multiple ethe from each colour, with some perhaps representing the ‘best’ of their associated values and others representing the ‘worst’. In most cases, however, the very ‘worst’ each colour can offer can be understood as a perversion of its core values.
So, let’s get into it!
White
Associated with the core value of organisation, White is fundamentally the colour of civilisation in so far as we understand this as the production and maintenance of community. United with others, White’s fundamental value is the pursuit of peace through a surrender to a higher system of meaning: keeping both the individual and disorder in check for the betterment of the collective.
White is the colour of principled organisation, concerned with morality, order, uniformity, and structure. It wishes to see a world within which all work together toward the same unified goal: the betterment of the whole and the preferencing of the community over and even against the individual. That which threatens the larger group, particularly its coherence and uniformity, is anathema to White, which understands suffering as a result of strife, with strife ensuing from the prioritisation of individual goals and desires above those of the group.
We can therefore understand White as a civic colour to its core. Above all, it seeks to foster a kind of appreciation for the social world shared by individuals, with the institutions of this world (religion, law, government) all understood as having a holy task of guiding people towards the shared goal of the unified, greater good. We can liken aspects of White to the kinds of civic participation we find in classical Greek thought, particularly the work of Socrates and Plato (and, perhaps to a lesser extent Aristotle) — views that stress the importance of an individual cultivating virtue not merely for personal gain but in order to better the society in which they live. Indeed, Plato’s Republic stresses the importance of social harmony[iii] — of a world wherein each individual plays their role to ensure the healthy functioning of the city, putting the needs of the whole before personal needs.
However, White’s obsession with cohesion and order — viewing the majority of people as needing to be disciplined into pursuing the good of the all — can produce a nefarious system of restriction. White can easily lend itself to a bureaucratisation of the world, wherein everything must be accounted for, where life itself becomes bound to the protocols and processes of an administration. Life is not simply allowed to be, life must always be governed.
At its worst, this bureaucratic impulse can develop into a full-blown totalitarianism whereby the pursuit of a common, collective good is seen as justification for the suppression of individuality. Such an allegation has been thrown at Plato’s Republic often enough, though should either his work or White prove to be totalitarian it would be through a perversion of their core values. White values the community, but we learn from the work of Hannah Arendt that totalitarianism relies upon the atomisation of individuals, separating them from each other and rupturing the social fabric.[iv] This would be to suggest that totalitarianism as a political organisation runs counter to White’s core values.
Philosophically speaking, White is the ultimate system builder — a ‘style’ of philosophy that perhaps peaked with figures such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx but has since, for many, fallen out of favour (or at least intellectual vogue). To build a philosophical system is often understood as a project of approximation whereby the system builder is interested in the articulation of a series of interlocking principles, perspectives, or beliefs that are mutually supporting and co-constitutive. It seeks a universal perspective upon the world, something that can organise not only people in a socio-political sense but also the world itself in an intellectual sense. White is, therefore, concerned with the construction of principles, with the synthesis of a tradition that is at once intellectual and political.
For some, this kind of systematic philosophy is often understood as a kind of intellectual totalitarianism wherein all ideas and perspectives become bound together or subsumed by whatever singular principle or guiding truth is held at the core of the system. Most of the classical systems of philosophy — whether this be the work of Plato, Kant, Hegel, or any of the other innumerable figures we could add to this cannon — have faced charges of dogmatism, particularly from later disciplines that seek to critique this kind of systematisation or singlemindedness. Whether these critiques strike true is an ongoing matter of philosophical discussion, though it is often more difficult than one would presume to paint any of the classical systematisers as straightforwardly totalitarian. Still, philosophical systems particularly those intellectual projects that also seek — as Plato, Kant, and Hegel do — to pass comment upon or even prescribe our political formulations are often met with responses that charge these systems with an inability to appreciate pluralism or to incorporate difference, particularly radical difference.
The same kinds of charge can be levied against White, with the systematic organisation of its principles and the encoding of these into its institutions often unable to tolerate friction, discussion, debate, or challenge. Of course, when likening White to the classical perspectives of ancient Greek political philosophy (particularly that of ancient Athens with its focus upon democracy and debate) the ethos of White does not entirely preclude the possibility of discussion, but the strictures of its principles will delineate what kinds of discussion its institutions and spaces enable, and these will limit the possibility of any radical critique of those structures.
Of course, White will understand these limits as important for the very peace that it not only strives for as an end in and of itself, but also the peace that underpins the possibility of political discourse.[v] We can think about how various policies around free speech will preclude the possibility of hate speech and violent speech in order to ensure that speech itself can be free, despite the bastardisations of these principles in many contemporary discussions of freedom of speech. This is perhaps one of the clearest points wherein White demonstrates itself as a civicly-orientated ethos.
However, there are limits on understanding White as a democratic colour. White itself is concerned primarily with the elimination of conflict. As an ethos, White seeks to distil a series of principles or strictures that can guide in the production of a peaceful world, a world wherein conflict is reduced and harmony is promoted. The distillation of these principles is always in the name of a greater good, a good that serves all and White understands the importance of establishing institutions in order to discipline and perhaps even coerce its population into following this greater good. Where a central moral concern lies within the ethos of White is in questioning: whose conception of the greater good counts, who gets to participate in the conversation around defining these principles?
Again, we can hear return to one of the classic philosophical discussions as to the relationship between truth and democracy, a concern that returns us to the work of Plato. As he is commonly characterised, Plato presents something of an anti-democratic view of truth, with this extending into his understanding as to how the political should ideally be organised. Plato’s Republic is a meritocracy at its foundation: with the decisions as to the guiding principles and organisations of society being made by his philosopher kings. For Plato, expertise is central.
And it is within his preferencing of expertise that the seed of anti-democratic thinking is able to germinate — with this leading to a devaluing or outright disregard for individual freedoms, not only in the sense of personal liberty (however this is defined) but more specifically in terms of the capacity of individuals to think for themselves.
This is to suggest that at its ‘best’, White produces an ethos of civic cooperation and harmony that stands to protect the ability of individuals to act together in concert. Particularly in an Arendtian sense, we could claim that this makes White the colour of the political itself. But, at its worst, White’s desire to zealously protect the community can lead to a preoccupation with security, bureaucracy, and orthodoxy that can serve to undermine this very political condition and thereby transform White into an ideological ethos that seeks to prescribe and control the behaviour of individuals in order to pursue an imposed vision of the good, rendering it totalitarian.
Blue
Associated with the core value of curiosity, Blue is the colour of perfectionism that seeks to transform primarily the individual and secondarily the world through a project of improvement and excellence. Blue is a colour of openness, a colour that is interested in potentialities and possibilities, it is a colour that is not preoccupied with the world as it is but is instead focused upon the world as it could be. In order to achieve these goals, Blue takes an active interest in education, experience, and technological tools.
Blue is furthermore the colour of thought and strategy, valuing careful consideration and planning over impulse or learning by rote. Rather than a static perfectionism, Blue is always seeking to iterate and transform, it is the colour of adaptation and flexibility. Its greatest tool within the context of this project is information: through gathering more knowledge, Blue is able to better conceptualise the possibilities that can be explored. Because of its love for potential and its desire to transform, Blue is anathema to tradition and ceremony and due to its desire to seek perfectionism Blue often represents cool rationality over passionate reactivity.
When considering what possible ethos could be produced from this colour, we could begin with the notion of an intellectualism. This would begin our explanation with a memetic invocation of those habits, behaviours, the very modes of life that we associate with the figure of the intellectual and its associated institutions. The difficulty with this line of consideration is that it often limits us to an aesthetic. We have seen within trends such as ‘dark academia’ and its related subcategories how intellectualism can be reproduced at the level of the aesthetic.
As an ethos, however, intellectualism is trickier to define.
All too often, the term intellectualism is levied as a polemic, and is often used to describe something on the basis of its inaccessibility, or upon its abstract nature. As this kind of polemic, the term becomes a barb that is then wielded, rightly or wrongly, against a particular image of ‘the intellectual’ — here almost exclusively understood as the ivory tower academic, who is usually understood as detached from some configuration of ‘the real world’. This would configure the intellectual as one who gives too much attention to thinking.
Beyond this polemic, intellectualism is often understood through the term ‘intellect’. On this account, to be an intellectual is to be one who seeks to develop and promote the capacities of one’s own intellect. Intellect is here understood as reason, which would make intellectualism a form of rationalism. With rationalism best understood as founding one’s epistemology, one’s theory of knowledge or system for understanding truth, upon reason and reason alone — this would configure Blue as emotionless and senseless. As a rationalism, then, Blue would be forever turning itself away from the world in order to derive its perspectives and understanding from reason, or from the fruits of its intellectual dreams.
As an ethos, we could understand this representation of Blue as representing the classical formulation of ‘the life of the mind’. Arendt distinguishes this life of the mind (or the vita contemplativa) from the active life (the vita activa) — that the former is the purview of philosophy as it is classically understood. Indeed, it is on the basis of this very distinction that Arendt once argued that she herself was not a philosopher, for her interests were much more aligned with the active life of people as it is lived rather than the abstractions that tend to dominate classical philosophical discourses.[vi]
Central to this criticism is the trend that Arendt notes within the history of philosophy wherein philosophers become preoccupied with the self over the world around them. We can see elements of this in classical stoicism which enacts a split between the internal and the external, between what one can and cannot control, with many of its practises encourage individuals to focus only upon what is within their power. though this is not true for all elements of stoicism, there is a persistent strain of stoic thought that results in a disregard of the world and a centring of the self (with this being present in many of our contemporary bastardisations of stoic thought). Of course, stoicism’s constitution as a philosophy of acceptance, wherein one except that which is beyond one’s power, is fundamentally at odds with Blue’s fundamental project. Therefore, another key figure within this trend, And one that is perhaps more appropriate, would be Descartes, whose text The Meditations produces one of the most famous accounts of rationalism that turns to reason as the source of all truth at the absolute expense of the senses, and therefore at the expense of the world.[vii]
It is clear that, to some degree, Blue can be said to fall into this trap of disregarding the world in front of it given its focus on reinventing or transforming the self and progressing it towards a more perfect state. In this sense, Blue’s project of self perfection can produce a navelgazing intellectual that places their own individuality and their own ego at the core of their intellectual practise, with this effectively cutting them off from their environment. However, in order to be effective as an ethos, in order to be able to actualise its own goals, Blue’s focus upon the collection of knowledge and information represents a particular strain within its values that compete against this reading of the colour as abstract.
Certainly, with curiosity as its core value, Blue at its ‘best’ maintains an active engagement with the world around it, a world that it seeks to perfect. Though its pursuit of perfectionism does not necessarily result in an alienation from the world, there does seem to remain a fundamental level of detachment required at the core of any ethos produced by Blue. Specifically, Blue seeks to relinquish attachment in order to rethink the world. Blue is therefore at its best when it refuses to accept the shortcomings of the world as a necessity. It understands the artificial nature of not only our socio political concepts but also the frameworks that govern our understanding of our existence more broadly. Though it is true that the open-endedness of Blue’s spirit of inquiry and exploration does perhaps lack certain moral constraints, it remains an ethos that stresses our potential and our agency.
At its ‘best’, Blue is the colour that reminds us “things do not have to be as they are” and indeed that “things can be better than they are”. It is furthermore the colour that remains most committed to actualising these potentials for change by never attaching itself too strongly to the world as it is. However, when this detachment goes too far it sinks into a solipsistic and meditative practise content with its own dreams but that which is most unable to change anything about the world that it chooses to ignore. And at its ‘worst’, Blue simply plays with ideas and concepts in a manner that is either ineffective at changing the world or that changes it unthinkingly, persuing transformation for transformation’s sake.
Black
Black’s core value is that of self-concern, with the only justification any course of action requires being whether or not it is successful. Though the aesthetics often associated with this colour, indeed with the very racialized category of ‘black magic’ itself,[viii] tend toward the dark and the morbid — toward things we would often associate with a classical depiction of ‘evil’ — Black is not an immoral or corrupted colour, but one that instead values individual satisfaction and success over an against that of the group or collective. For this reason, Black is often associated with amorality. From the perspective of Black, the other colours are best understood as ideological distortions of the world, they see the world as they wish it to be rather than willing to face the ugliness and corrupt nature of the world as it is. By corruption, I simply mean that from the perspective of Black the world cannot be made to fit into the ideals represented by the other colours.
Perhaps uniquely amongst all of the colours represented within Magic’s system, Black values self-love, self-reliance, and a willingness to face the ugly side of things. Each of these notably contain the potential to act as potent virtues — particularly in the face of the shortcomings of several of the other colours. In truth, the greatest strength of Black is its unwillingness to accept limitation — as a philosophical perspective it departs from the worldviews of the other colours in so far as it is absolutely uninterested in providing reasons not to do something. Indeed, this leads Black into embracing that which is often viewed as taboo, a violation of norms that can make those aligned with other colours (particularly White and Green) very uncomfortable. But not all taboos are created equal, and several of the normative limits that Black willingly defies include embracing the darker elements of existence: such as negative emotions, ugliness, outcasts, pain, and even decay and death.
As an ethos Black fundamentally centres the self, which can lead it to becoming a kind of crude individualism. We can compare Black’s understanding of the world to realpolitik,[ix] or to the work of thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli,[x] or to moral standpoints that are strictly consequentialist (particularly if these promote self-interest). Black sees the world as an ongoing battle, a war of all against all. It is the responsibility of each individual to look out for themselves, and of course not everyone will be able to do this, but for Black this is an acceptable cost in order to teach the lesson of self-reliance.
Perhaps the most overt philosophical touchstone for Black is Friedrich Nietzsche’s work on the will to power and the will to truth. According to Nietzsche’s formulation, we are encouraged to understand the world as a product of power and to understand individuals as fundamentally motivated by the desire or the will to shape the world as they wish.[xi] This is furthermore an epistemological standpoint, that understands truth as a product of power and that understands individuals as desiring the power to define what is true and what is false.
Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for his philosophical war cry: “God is dead!”[xii] Through which he articulates the source of the problem of nihilism that beset his contemporary Europe. Notably, Nietzsche himself is not a nihilist, understanding nihilism as something that must be resolved, as a problem to be dealt with, but with the death of God — with the death of a transcendent system of truth — we are left to create and maintain our own system of meaning. This includes truth and it includes morality, with neither of these having a transcendent ground beyond ourselves. The same can be said of Black, which is hardly nihilistic, but that instead affirms the ultimate value of the individual.
We can read the relationship between the colours Black and White in Nietzschean terms. Black’s fundamental suspicion of White is due to its desire to create and maintain moral systems that not only impose restraints upon individuals, but which also convince individuals to act against their own self-interest. Accordingly, Nietzsche outlines an extensive critique of Christianity (which we can understand, at least partially, through the lens of White) as productive of a ‘slave morality’. Though this idea has been subjected to widespread criticism, both philosophically and theologically, the stakes of this debate mimic the polarisation between these colours.
It is in this way that we can understand Black as an overtly existentialist colour. Within this context, we can understand existentialism as an affirmation of our agency, specifically highlighting our ability to choose beyond the constraints we often believe to immutably dictate the horizons of our possible actions. Our touch stones for existential philosophy are the works of figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre[xiii] and Simone de Beauvoir,[xiv] though we can also include figures adjacent to existentialism as a formal category, such as Martin Heidegger.[xv]
Indeed, both the work of Sartre and Heidegger has come under criticism for their apparent individualism, wherein their philosophical approaches appear to focus on the individual in a myopic and fundamentally selfish way. There are certainly elements of both of these thinkers that play into or that can lead a reader to interpret them in this way.
Yet, despite these criticisms it is not only possible but important from a standpoint of accuracy to defend both Sartre and Heidegger from charges of crude individualism. Both of their approaches acknowledge the importance of others and our inability to enact a definite split between self and other. However, this does not prevent the work of either philosopher being Black in the sense of this colour. Despite their inclusion of that which is shared and that which is mutual, what each of these philosophers stress is the phenomenological experience of individuality that roots us within a personal, first person perspective. To take Black as an existentialism is therefore to understand it as fundamentally rooting us within our individuality, even if that individuality is itself inextricably bound to our social condition.
In this sense, we can further compare Black to the Devil of Tarot’s major arcana. within the context of tarot, the Devil represent bindings, addictions, and vices that may appear to be inescapable — forming chains from which we are unable to escape. One of the potential messages to be gained from this card within a tarot reading is, conversely, an affirmation of individual agency and freedom, a reminder that such bindings can only restrain us if we submit and to some degree consent to them. In a similar way, Black seeks to affirm our ability to choose beyond limits, and embrace that which many would view as untouchable.
There is, furthermore, an aesthetic continuity between the work of Sartre and Black, insofar as Sartre’s account of agency relies upon nihilation and destruction — with both of these chiming with Black’s parasitic qualities. For Sartre, our agency relies upon our existence as nothing. Because we are nothing, lacunae within being itself, nothing can act upon us so as to determine or to delineate our choices. Furthermore, when we act, we are nihilating the world as a particular state of affairs in order to bring about a new state of affairs.[xvi]
At its ‘best’, then, Black is the colour of absolute freedom and self-advocacy, promoting an ethos that centres caring for oneself and improving the condition of one’s life. It is a way of life that rejects the limits many would see as immutable and that openly embraces that which is shunned or considered taboo — reaffirming the individual’s ability to make their own choice. However, at its ‘worst’ Black is a fundamentally reactionary and contrarian worldview, that violates boundaries for the very sake of it, and that pushes limits without thinking. Furthermore, the very ‘worst’ of this colour promotes an ethos of absolute individualism wherein the individual seeks to promote themselves over and against all others, wilfully pushing all others down to promote themselves. this combines the most nefarious impulses of liberalism, libertarianism, and reactionary forms of anarchism that take the individual as an absolute an inviolable political unit, disregarding the context and Connexions that produce this individual.
Red
At the core of Red is the fundamental value of emotion. Red Is guided by its heart, trusting its own impulses and instincts to guide it in the right direction. The fundamental ethos of Red approaches life as an adventure, as something to be explored and pursued, as something to be lived. Passion and action are therefore truly at the heart of what constitutes the worldview represented by Red.
Red is a colour that aspires to freedom but not quite in the same way as Black. Whereas Black has a definite focus on individuals in confrontation with one another, Red is more attentive to bonds of solidarity, loyalty, and passionate connection. Of course, this can include struggle and confrontation, but this is only one way that Red understands the connections between people, rather than hostility being the default.
Due to its reliance upon impulse, as well as trusting it’s passions and favouring action over contemplation, Red is fundamentally hasty and possibly chaotic. The desire for freedom and the embrace of instinct present within this colour grants it a strong preference for individual experience over a more macroscopic perspective. The ethos of Red is one wherein each individual is encouraged to listen to their own inner voices, to trust that intuition and their lived experiences and resist being swayed by external pressures and voices.
In one sense, we can read Red’s desire to embrace the adventure of life with its whole being as a desire to constantly experience the world, to explore every aspect that life offers and to expose oneself to all manner of experiences in order to truly feel the wealth, breadth, and depth of emotion. We can note certain parallels between Red and philosophical hedonism, a school of thought that finds its roots in classical Greece. Hedonism focuses on promoting pleasure and avoiding pain,[xvii] and though attempts have been made to produce ethical systems based upon its general principles (most notably the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham)[xviii] Red is not concerned with the systematisation of its pursuit of pleasure. Instead, Red seems to abhor abstraction, seeking to throw oneself into life rather than reflect or think about it. From the perspective of Red, the world is an open range of possibilities that cannot be properly subordinated to any system of thought or conception. Simply, the world is too chaotic to be reasoned with.
Instead of reason, Red thereby chooses passion as its core approach. Accordingly, the worldview of Red understands it as an arena wherein motivations, desires, and emotions bubble up, compete, or align.
There are certainly further parallels between Red and existential philosophy, particularly some of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche discussed above. To expand on these connections, we can further consider how Nietzsche (as well as Sartre) present the idea of an existential project as only gaining meaning through the way the world resists our activity. Whenever we perceive a particular course of activity, there is always something attempting to stop that activity whether it is the actions and motivations of other human beings who seek to undermine us, whether it is simply mustering the required strength of body, mind, or will in order to achieve a task, or whether it is a matter of technological innovation to overcome our limits, the activities that comprise our lives always come at a cost. The existentialism of Nietzsche understands these obstacles as part of our existential being. Part of what it means to pursue a particular course of action is to be guided by the obstacles that prevent our progress and that must be surmounted if we are to succeed. We can suggest, then, that there are elements of Nietzsche’s existentialism (along with aspects of Sartre’s) that understand struggle as an inexorable element of human existence. In this sense, Nietzsche Helps us to articulate the fundamental ethos of Red: the obstacle is the way.
We can perhaps Explore a key aspect of Red through Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati, a view that he somewhat erroneously attributes to the great stoic philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.[xix] Translating directly from Latin as “love of fate”, amor fati is Less a philosophical principle and more of an ethical standpoint in the sense that it can be taken to produce an ethos. fundamentally, amor fati is an embrace of life in its totality, welcoming every aspect — whether pleasurable or painful — into ones experience. It is, arguably, the ultimate distillation of approaching life as an adventure, within amor fati life exists to be lived and experienced, it is a process that is ever unfolding and can only be understood from within. As an ethos, amor fati encourages us to live Fully, by embracing and loving every aspect of our lives. we are called not merely to endure the negative parts of our lives, the suffering that is inextricable from life itself, but to love it.
So Red Blends aspects of hedonism, existentialism, and stoicism but cannot be rightly reduced into any of these, and indeed cannot be said to reflect the breath included in any of these perspectives. Instead, we should understand the ethos of Red as an emotive desire to embrace all aspects of life, and to experience as much of this adventure as possible. An illustration of this kind of ethos can be found in the Planescape setting of Dungeons and Dragons, specifically within the faction known as the Society of Sensation. The sensates of this society seek out experiences of all kinds, using various kinds of magical technology to collect and share these experiences with their members. Through experiencing as much of creation as possible, the Society seeks to gain an ultimate understanding of the world. though the precise mechanism through which the Society of Sensation gain their experiences (often experiencing what others have collected) may itself be a little abstract for Red, the underlying principle remains shared in common.
All of this is to suggest that the ‘best’ reflection of Red is an ethos of adventure and passion that understands life as meant to be lived. Only through participating can we hope to understand what this world is really all about: discovering ourselves and our passions and helping others to do the same. The ‘darker’ side of this colour, however, perhaps struggles to take the world seriously enough, reducing it along with both one’s own life and the lives of others to a mere game.
Green
The central principle of Green is surrender, surrender to instinct, to nature, to tradition. Green is a colour of connection, of being a part of something greater than oneself, a colour that reminds us that each and ever organism is thoroughly punctuated by the inseverable connections between it and its environment. From Green’s perspective, there is only the whole and there are no true parts. For this reason, it is a heavily spiritual colour, one that emphasises the constitutive connections between all things. Whereas White is focused upon a social or political whole, an assemblage of individuals into a society, a system, or organisation — Green focuses on a far more all-encompassing totality. The notion of the whole or the all within Green is not limited to collectives of people, but instead affirms the interconnectedness of all things.
For these reasons, Green is often associated with nature, with nature reflective of the all-encompassing totality of everything that Green seeks to remind us can never be escaped. The Notion of nature present within Green is therefore wild for it exceeds our ability to control or capture, and it is also understood as a form of destiny for it represents a limit upon our ability to challenge or to change. There exists, for all living things, necessary interdependencies, connections without which we simply could not exist. It is to the level of this kind of fundamental necessity that Green seeks to return our attention. Whereas many of the other colours we have explored clearly seek to transform the world according to their ethe, or remain trapped at a microscopic level, Green is content to simply witness.
At its core, Green is a colour that stresses the importance of acceptance and surrender. The whole or the all is understood as transcendent of anyone individual, constituent if of patterns and cycles of behaviour that both represent ultimate truth and within which a higher meaning can be located. There is no need to challenge or to change this meaning, nor is it necessary to grapple with it in an attempt to subordinate it to our understanding. Instead, the transcendent nature of our environments, of the conditions within which we are constituted as ourselves, must simply be accepted. All that we must do is recognised the truth that has been right in front of us all along.
Prima facie, then, we can note the extensive connections between the ethos of Green and stoic philosophy. As touched upon earlier, stoicism is perhaps best summarised as a philosophy of acceptance. For the stoic, A central philosophical and ethical distinction is made between that which is within ones individual power to control and that which is beyond one’s ability to direct. It is the first task of the stoic to use this distinction, concerning themselves only with the former. Classically, stoicism understands this distinction as between the internal and the external, with the internal her representing that which is in our power to control primarily comprised of our thoughts, attitude’s, and feelings. Conversely, the external other thoughts, attitude’s, feelings, and behaviours of others — with none of these understood as within our control.
Though this picture is, at least to some degree, a simplification of stoicism as a philosophical and ethical discipline (or series of practises), it does speak to several of the core concerns raised by Green. That which we cannot control, the environments within which we live and that give us our lives, indeed the environments that constitute the necessary conditions of our lives are not within our power to control, manipulate, or transform because they exceed us. Though we may act within these contexts, and though we do possess some influence over them, they exceed our ability both individually and collectively to determine them.
Yet, Green’s focus on the interconnectedness of beings contains within it a problematising of the stoic distinction between the internal and external. Of course, we have some ability to influence these things because we are a part of them, and stoicism itself does not understand the external world as entirely beyond our ability to influence — indeed, for the stoic we must understand ourselves as part of the universal world spirit the Anima mundi or the Pneuma.[xx] We are both within the world and of it, and this remains so despite our attempts, no matter how valiant, too abstract ourselves from it. There is, therefore, a clear ethos that emerges from Green, mimicking the project of stoicism. This is a surrender to a way of being that transcends us. For the stoic, we must pursue reason. For Green, we must pursue that which is in accordance with the all.
We could perhaps further note here similarities between Green and Taoism — a philosophy that pursues a way of living that is in harmony with the Tao, or the way. fundamentally, the Tao escapes and exceeds attempts to provide it with a fixed definition, instead being understood spiritually and philosophically as the source of everything and as the ultimate principle underlying all of reality.[xxi] The similarities between Taoism and Green are clear: both understand there to be an underlying and over arcing way of being over which we have no control, which cannot be resisted, and with which we should attempt to harmonise ourselves.
The ethos of Green is therefore founded upon a need to recognise the interconnectivity of all beings and the reliance of our individual existence upon the situatedness of our lives within a condition that exceeds individual agency, power, and control. It is, to some extent, a philosophy that stresses humility in the face of the transcendent. at its ‘best’, then, Green is the colour of accepting that which one cannot change, and of embracing one’s inexorable connections to other beings not at the level of the social or political, but at the level of life, of the biological. It is a life lived in a way that affirms our being part of something much bigger than ourselves.
However, Green contains within it a seed of quietism, which, when left unmanaged, constitutes Green as a totally passive and radically accepting perspective that simply venerates what is on the very basis of its existence. When it lapses into such a position, Green, ceases to be much of a ethos at all, with the very connections it supposedly seeks to affirm mattering very little to the passive observer it has allowed itself to become.
Colours in Motion
Each of the colours of Magic the Gathering’s wheel can be understood as articulating a distinct ethos, a particular way of living within and navigating the world. Part of these ethe is to be found within the distinct ways that each of these colours and their associated values understand the world as already being constituted. For each, it is possible to distil discreet and compelling ways to orientate ourselves, and to navigate through our own lives.
Through comparing the values and approaches of each of these colours to various schools, traditions, and thinkers of philosophy, I have sought to contextualise the perspectives represented by these colours within our own intellectual history. What has also emerged from this discussion is, however, how various aspects of these colours and their ethe cross-pollinate. though they are more or less distinct worldviews, many of the values and perspectives are shared between and across colours and it is indeed possible for each of these perspectives to contain within them worthwhile values and, indeed, ethical insights that may provide useful food for thought when reflecting how we understand our own world on what within that world matters to us, both individually and collectively. Together, the colours articulate the multifaceted nature of our world. Indeed, to align with one, two, or even three of these colours, at the expense of four, three, or two of the others is to sever ourselves from some of the aspects of life itself.
All of this is to suggest that though the colour wheel, much like the classic 3x3 alignment grid of Dungeons and Dragons, is primarily a tool to facilitate the gameplay and world building of Magic, it is possible to use it as a mode to creatively engage with intellectual history. By making these speak to one another and through noting that a productive dialogue can ensue, it is clear that, in addition to being a bit of fun, the colours of Magic can also provide us with a compelling framework through which to parse questions of value and ethics.
Notes
[i] In my presentation of these traits, I am indebted to the work of Mark Rosewater, who has written extensive articles on each of these colours, see: The Great White Way Revisited, True Blue Revisited, In the Black Revisited, Seeing Red Revisited, and It’s Not Easy Being Green Revisited.
[ii] See the following dictionaries: A Greek-English Lexicon and An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon.
[iii] Plato, The Republic (Penguin Classics), trans. by Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 2007).
[iv] See: Samantha Rose Hill, ‘Where Loneliness Can Lead’, Aeon, 16 October 2020 <https://aeon.co/essays/for-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-is-rooted-in-loneliness> [accessed 6 May 2022].
[v] Here we can think of Arendt’s prescription against violence, see: Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1972).
[vi] Though she is heavily critical of this classical formulation of philosophy, much of which she attributes to Plato, Arendt is, nevertheless, a crucial figure for understanding an alternative reading of the history of philosophy which would then expand this category to include thinkers who do not fall into this classical formulation of the life of the mind.
[vii] See: René Descartes, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
[viii] See: Joseph M. Murphy, ‘Black Religion and “Black Magic”: Prejudice and Projection in Images of African-Derived Religions’, Religion, 20.4 (1990), 323–37 <https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-721X(90)90115-M>.
[ix] See: Adam R. Humphreys, ‘Realpolitik’, in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. by Michael T Gibbons and others (Chichester, West Sussex, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015) <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118474396> [accessed 13 June 2022].
[x] See: Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. by George Bull, Penguin Classics, Reissued with revisions (London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
[xi] See: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power: Selections from the Notebooks of the 1880s, trans. by Michael A. Scarpitti and R. Kevin Hill, Penguin Classics (UK: Penguin Books, 2017).
[xii] See: F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. by Bill Chapko, trans. by Thomas Common (Feedbooks, 2010).
[xiii] See: Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (UK: Routledge, 2003).
[xiv] See: Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, 2015 <http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9781453228487> [accessed 13 June 2022].
[xv] See: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).
[xvi] This is, at least, how he presents pure freedom at the beginning of Being and Nothingness. I have also written on how this view of freedom is presented in Dishonored, see: Benjamin Carpenter, ‘“Dishonored”, The Void, and Existential Nothingness’, Medium, 2018 <https://benjaminjjcarpenter.medium.com/dishonored-the-void-and-existential-nothingness-74043a9825b4> [accessed 13 September 2018].
[xvii] See: Fred Feldman, Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties and Plausibility of Hedonism, 1. paperback ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
[xviii] See: Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Dover ed (Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 2007).
[xix] See: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
[xx] See: Plato, Timaeus; Francis. M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997).
[xxi] See: Jeaneane D. Fowler, An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism: Pathways to Immortality (Portland, Ore: Sussex Academic Press, 2005).
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1972)
Beauvoir, Simone de, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, 2015 <http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9781453228487> [accessed 13 June 2022]
Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Dover ed (Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 2007)
Carpenter, Benjamin, ‘“Dishonored”, The Void, and Existential Nothingness’, Medium, 2018 <https://benjaminjjcarpenter.medium.com/dishonored-the-void-and-existential-nothingness-74043a9825b4> [accessed 13 September 2018]
Cornford, Francis. M., Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997)
Descartes, René, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Feldman, Fred, Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties and Plausibility of Hedonism, 1. paperback ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006)
Fowler, Jeaneane D., An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism: Pathways to Immortality (Portland, Ore: Sussex Academic Press, 2005)
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010)
Hill, Samantha Rose, ‘Where Loneliness Can Lead’, Aeon, 16 October 2020 <https://aeon.co/essays/for-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-is-rooted-in-loneliness> [accessed 6 May 2022]
Humphreys, Adam R., ‘Realpolitik’, in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. by Michael T Gibbons, Elisabeth Ellis, Diana Coole, and Kennan Ferguson (Chichester, West Sussex, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015) <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118474396> [accessed 13 June 2022]
Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, trans. by George Bull, Penguin Classics, Reissued with revisions (London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2003)
Murphy, Joseph M., ‘Black Religion and “Black Magic”: Prejudice and Projection in Images of African-Derived Religions’, Religion, 20.4 (1990), 323–37 <https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-721X(90)90115-M>
Nietzsche, F., Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. by Bill Chapko, trans. by Thomas Common (Feedbooks, 2010)
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1974)
— — — , The Will to Power: Selections from the Notebooks of the 1880s, trans. by Michael A. Scarpitti and R. Kevin Hill, Penguin Classics (UK: Penguin Books, 2017)
Plato, The Republic (Penguin Classics), trans. by Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 2007)
— — — , Timaeus
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (UK: Routledge, 2003)
