r/colorpie

I want to engage the “few colors vs a lot of colors” discourse in a long-form post, as well as share some thoughts about how people here are assigning colors. Note that this is my opinion. I can’t prove any of this in a laboratory. As someone who strives to make his thinking as coherent and reasonable as possible, however, I wanted to share my viewpoint.

This subreddit is about color philosophy. I want to begin by describing *what kind of philosophy* color philosophy is.

The color philosophies are *philosophies of value*. Red’s color philosophy, for example, isn’t about metaphysics. It isn’t epistemology. (At least, not directly. We could make some extrapolations.) Rather, a color philosophy is a philosophy about what is valuable and important. More specifically, it is a philosophy about what is more valuable and important than other things—in other words, prioritization.

Someone might think, “Hey, Black is amoral and denies the importance of values. How is Black’s color philosophy about value?”

Black’s color philosophy holds that the self and the self’s own interests are more important than other considerations. Black says: my advancement, autonomy, power, survival, and self-interest matter more than other things.

White says the opposite. White says that the welfare and interests of everyone collectively matter more than other things.

Furthermore, philosophies of value like these come into play when values are in conflict. In Black’s case, for example, when self-interest and interests of others conflict—when Black and others cannot each have what they want—then Black’s philosophy says, “Me getting what I want is more important than other people’s interests.” In other words, color philosophies have maximum import when interests conflict and trade-offs have to happen.

What I see on this subreddit is, people often ignore that color philosophies are about value and priorities. They are not about traits.

That distinction matters enormously because a lot of color assignments on this subreddit operate almost entirely descriptively.

“This character has strong emotions, therefore they must have Red.”

“This character wants to learn something or is intelligent, therefore they must have Blue.”

“This character is self-interested, therefore they’re Black.”

But that is not actually how the philosophies work.

Everyone has emotions. Everyone uses reason. Everyone has self-interest. Everyone cares about other people sometimes. Everyone accepts some things and changes others.

The question is not whether these elements exist in a person. The question is which principles govern their decision-making when those principles conflict.

If caring about your own well-being was all it took to be Black, then everyone would be Black. That’s not sufficient. For a character to be Black, they must care about their own well-being enough that they’re prioritizing it over other things and regularly willing to act to the detriment and harm of others to further themselves. Because that is their philosophy of value.

In the same vein, a truly Red character is not simply emotional. A truly Red character prioritizes emotion over competing considerations. It is not enough to have emotions, even strong emotions: For a character to be Red, they must give their emotions precedence in situations where other considerations would lead them in a different direction. *They must care about their strong emotions enough that they’re prioritizing their emotions over other things when conflicts arise and values conflict*.

And this is why I think fewer-color interpretations are often more coherent than maximalist ones. Because philosophies of value are inherently about prioritizing one set of considerations at the expense of other considerations.

It is difficult to prioritize multiple things to the exclusion of other things simultaneously. Not impossible, but difficult.

Because if everything is prioritized, nothing is prioritized. The entire meaning of value systems emerges through trade-offs. A philosophy only becomes visible when it overrides competing considerations. Otherwise, the color pie collapses into a vague personality inventory where every psychologically normal person becomes five-color by default.

For a character to have many colors, they must be quite inconsistent as a personality. To be Red, they must prioritize emotions over other factors. To be Blue, they must prioritize intellectual deliberation over other factors. To be both, they must prioritize both, and these are often in direct conflict. As we all know, Blue and Red are enemy colors. Once we add one or more other colors, the prioritization process becomes very complex, if not unmanageable.

This is why WUBRG characters in MTG are often represented as impersonal forces and entities. WUBRG and colorless are similar in this regard. They seemingly prioritize everything and nothing.[[Jodah, Grand Unifier]] is a personification of legendary status, and [[The Ur-Dragon]], all of dragonkind. They represent an abstraction or category that spans all colors, prioritizing none yet representing something that is contained within all of them. What they aren’t is an average Joe who has ethics, intelligence, self-interest, emotions, and instincts, all five.

In a similar vein, if we look at color philosophies as philosophies of value that prioritize things over other things, to get to even three colors, we’re looking at quite a complex character, because at least two of the colors individually will oppose each other. To prioritize things that are in conflict simultaneously is difficult to do and usually requires cross-sectional thinking like Rosewater has elaborated for the Ravnica guilds. It might sound hard to prioritize others and the self at the same time, so Orzhov represents prioritization of a sub-group aligned with the self over others. We would have to see these cross-sections at work once we get to even two opposing colors, to say nothing of three or more colors.

Hopefully yall have gotten the idea I intended to share at this point. I hope you enjoyed reading this if you did. I know this is a controversial topic so if you want to argue with me in the comments feel free to do so.

I have noticed in my time here that people struggle to comprehend Green philosophy. It’s not surprising, Reddit is a majority Western platform and Western philosophy is notoriously lacking in Green.

I think we would all benefit from taking a closer look at Green’s beliefs and values. To that end, I am beginning a series of posts dispelling common misconceptions about Green.

A great deal of confusion about Green can be attributed to misleading use of language. Words have ambiguous or even contradictory meanings, and they can be used deceitfully. For this first post we will discuss one of the most common examples of this, the appeal to nature fallacy.

The premise of an appeal to nature is “what is natural is good.” What could be more Green than that? As it turns out, this rhetorical device is often used by non-Green peoples. Let’s discuss a few reasons why:

Morality

An appeal to nature is a moral argument, morality being a code of conduct that denotes right and/or wrong behavior within a social system. While Green often bases its communities on nature, it is not a color that relies on morality to guide its actions, relying instead on instinct. A person operating within a moral framework rather than behaving instinctively is a cue to look closer and investigate whether the person is actually behaving in a Green manner.

Does this person seek to impose their opinion on others? Green is the least confrontational color, preferring to live and let live. If they are trying to control others they may not be Green.

Is this person “cherry picking”? A Green individual values all aspects of nature. The lion is not more virtuous than the hyena, or the falcon more noble than the crow. All life has an equal place in the ecosystem. If this person is using some aspects of nature as exemplars while looking down on others, they may not be Green.

Bias

Which brings us to the topic of bias. To be Green a person must be able to set aside their preconceived notions of right and wrong. They must be able to look upon nature and accept it as it is. Not use it to validate their preexisting beliefs.

They must also have the humility to look at the world holistically and accept that they are a minuscule part of it. Not just as an individual, but humanity as a whole. An anthropocentrist cannot authentically appeal to nature because their values are based on human-centric ideologies rather than observations of the natural world.

Deception

Natural is a word with good connotations, evoking normality, purity and comfort. The guise of naturalism is extremely appealing, and profitable.

To frame something as natural is to give it power. A food that is branded as natural is more marketable. A natural remedy will be perceived as safer regardless of its efficacy. And if you can pass your policies off as natural? That will boost their popularity.

The inverse is also true. If you can convince the public that a belief, product or activity that you dislike is unnatural you can damage it.

The aesthetics of naturalism are so fashionable that many people trick themselves into believing it is a part of their values. And those that do not value naturalism often fraudulently adopt it to improve their social standing. In such an environment it is imperative to judge people by their deeds rather than their words. Do they actually act in accordance with their stated values, or are they just making a fool of themself or others?

Now I turn the discussion to you. What are your favorite examples of non-Green people, characters or groups that have appropriated Green aesthetics? What are some examples you often see mistaken for Green, here or elsewhere? And, how many of you have caught yourselves falling for this fallacy?

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It’s a joke but I do actually want to know what people think.

As someone who considers themself red when manic and impulsive, I don’t feel like I identify with that at all when I’m in a depressive episode

White believes red will destroy the world.

White has a far more optimistic view of civilization than most colors, and believes that as people continually cooperate and work together, things will only improve. However, no matter how united humanity remains, there will always be those who choose hedonism and personal pleasure over it. Humanity has a tendency to be irrational, hateful, and impulsive, making self-destructive decisions when left unrestrained. Eventually, as white perceived it, the sins of humanity may eventually pile up until a higher power has to intervene to course correct, ending the world in a rapture or biblical apocalypse.

Blue believes green will destroy the world.

Blue believes that there is nothing that humanity can’t triumph over through progress. As we become more advanced and more knowledgeable, petty conflicts should become less common and pollution should become controllable. However, just as blue sees progress as an unstoppable force, they are well aware of the statistically inevitable downfall of it all. Whether through disease, famine, meteor strikes, or cosmic occurrence, there will always be some force of nature that we have not yet prepared for. No matter how far blue progresses, they know that the universe will catch up with them eventually.

Black believe white will destroy the world.

Black views people as inherently selfish and individualistic, willing to hurt others for personal gain. However, black also sees a form of security of this, since one would rationally be driven to protect the world they themselves live on, if only just for self-interest. However, what black fears is when people become irrational, acting through zealotry and extremism. The more people unify, the more they draw lines in the sand against others, and they soon become willing to die for the sake of their causes. Eventually, the various united peoples of the worlds will kill themselves for the sake of their ideals, possibly through nuclear war. White is the color of boardwipes after all.

Red believes blue will destroy the world.

Out of all the colors red thinks about the end of the world the least. Why worry about tomorrow when there is today? However, if red does take time to think about how the world may end, they become less fearful of any form of destruction, but instead of stagnation. As humanity progresses and technologically improves, we may soon create a system that controls us rather than vice versa. Perhaps through a matrix-like ai uprising or similar dystopia, humanity could someday put itself into a corner, where there is nowhere else to go once they reach the singularity. To red, stagnation is the equivalent to death.

Green believes black will destroy the world.

More than any other color, green understands the perseverance of life. Humanity has endured many periods of disease, famine, and war, yet by working together and trusting nature we have persevered. However, as our civilization develops, it has started to turn its back on nature in an attempt to exploit it. Global warming, pollution, loss of land and resources, all consequence of selfish people caring more about themselves than the generations after. If people continue following their greed, the world will no longer have the means to support them, and humanity will wipe itself out. Of course, nature will still adapt, but it may choose to leave humanity behind if we don’t act with empathy.