Below are the five colors of Magic: white, blue, black, red, and green.
Each color has a central goal, and a default strategy.
White
White seeks peace, and it tries to achieve that peace through the imposition of order. White believes that the solution to all suffering and unhappiness is coordination and cooperation and rules and restraint. The archetypal white organization would be a church, and a white dystopia would be a fascist regime such as the one in George Orwell’s 1984, or a stagnant society like the one in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.
Central examples of white characters from pop culture include Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, Javert from Les Misérables, Ozymandias from Watchmen, Superman, McGonagall from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and Marge from The Simpsons. In the actual game of Magic, white cards are angels and knights and clerics and loyal steeds, healing spells and protective auras and laws that bind all parties equally, and anthems that strengthen all of your allies at once.
A white agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what is the right course of action to take, where “right” depends on their moral or cultural framework.
Victory for a white agent feels like brightness, purity, exaltation — a clean breeze sweeping across a high plain under a bright sun. Defeat feels like watching the corrosion creep forward, the great monuments crumble, or the enemy pouring over the gates, knowing that the goodness of the world is unraveling.
Other words associated with white: authority, compassion, community, contribution, fairness, happiness, honesty, justice, kindness, leadership, peace, religion, responsibility, security, service, trustworthiness, altruism, cleanliness, commitment, consistency, duty, conviction, courtesy, dedication, discipline, endurance, gratitude, honor, integrity, patience, poise, respect, teamwork, tradition, unity, valor, honor, formality, generosity, protectiveness, asceticism, authoritarianism, morality, fanaticism, intolerance
From most to least, white agents have the following Big Five traits:
- Conscientiousness (++)
- Agreeableness (+)
- Extraversion (~)
- Neuroticism (-)
- Openness (–)
From a negative perspective, white craves order. It needs certainty, predictability, clear expectations. Rules. Clear distinctions. Justice. White struggles with ambiguity and nuance, and doesn’t do a good job of stepping outside of its own frame or perspective.
A white agent, when injured or disoriented or low-resourced, will tend to double down on structure—trying to force things into place, ignoring or attacking anything that threatens to not-fit its preconceptions. And with too much white, things ossify, freezing into suffocating unchangeability, rituals that are empty of meaning and have lost their original purpose.
Blue
Blue seeks perfection, and it tries to achieve that perfection through the pursuit of knowledge. Blue believes that things could be almost arbitrarily good if we could all just figure out the truth, and then apply that understanding to its fullest extent. The archetypal blue organization would be a university or a research lab, and a blue dystopia would be one in which efficiency were pursued without morals or limits, or in which intelligence were the sole axis of a meritocracy.
Merlin is a classic blue character, as are Spock from Star Trek and Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. Lisa from The Simpsons is blue, and Ravenclaw House from Harry Potter exists to serve blue students. Interestingly, there’s a strong argument that Spongebob Squarepants is at least partially blue, despite not being particularly intelligent or competent, because he’s often driven by his curiosity and his desire for perfection. Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres in HPMOR is more than one color, but his projects with Hermione and Draco are strongly blue-leaning. In MTG, blue cards are wizards and faeries and monsters of the deep, counterspells and illusory tricks, magic that accumulates knowledge and incremental advantage and undercuts, rather than directly opposing (brains over brawn and mind over matter).
A blue agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what course of action makes the most sense, where “sense” is determined by careful thought and the application of knowledge and expertise.
Victory for a blue agent feels like clarity, revelation, actualization, conclusion — a final puzzle piece clicking into place, or the last note of a perfect symphonic performance. Defeat feels like everything is slippery, foggy, intractable (and will be evermore), like there’s no path forward and nothing to be done, like all of the potential is wasted and all of the confusion is permanent.
Other words associated with blue: challenge, competence, creativity, curiosity, knowledge, optimism, accuracy, adaptability, awareness, brilliance, cleverness, concentration, development, efficiency, foresight, imagination, insight, logic, quality, rigor, trickery, strategy, service, truth, vision, wonder, perception, nuance, aspiration, focus, invention, patience, wordplay, rationality, subtlety, scholarship, absent-mindedness, cerebral, deception, enigmatic, skepticism, aloofness
From most to least, blue agents have the following Big Five traits:
- Openness (++)
- Conscientiousness (+)
- Extraversion (~)
- Agreeableness (~)
- Neuroticism (-)
From a negative perspective, blue craves clarity. Its need to see and understand and optimize can become frantic, like a child clutching a stuffed animal—even if knowledge won’t do anything, won’t allow for any new actions or help in any way, blue will often scrabble for it, even at the expense of other stuff that would help. A blue agent, when injured or disoriented or low-resourced, will often perseverate, spinning its wheels on irrelevant questions or tinkering with trivialities as a way to avoid having to engage with the big things it doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel ready for.
And with too much blue, everything not easily quantifiable can evaporate or suffocate. Pathological blue is dismissive of that which it doesn’t understand or can’t sufficiently explain. Out-of-balance blue often disregards large swathes of what matters, and that disregard grows louder and more insistent as the situation worsens.
Black
Black seeks satisfaction, and it tries to achieve that satisfaction through ruthlessness. Black wants power and agency so that it can act upon its preferences at any time, doing whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and reshaping the world around it as it sees fit.. It recognizes no limits upon this pursuit except those which emerge from its own desires and self-interest. It is capable of cooperation and alliance, but only consequentially, as in game theory; at its core, black is amoral, not immoral, since it doesn’t think morality is even really a Thing. The archetypal black organization would be a hedge fund or a startup, and a black dystopia would be a totalitarian dictatorship.
In the first Star Wars film, Han Solo was a sympathetic black character, whereas in Game of Thrones Cersei Lannister is a black villain. Every major character in Seinfeld is black except Kramer, and both Bart Simpson and Slytherin House embrace and embody black ideals. Blaise Zabini and Sirius Black are black characters in HPMOR. In the game of Magic, black cards are vampires and necromancers, demons and horrors, kill spells and resurrection spells and sacrificial spells that trade life and creatures for power and pain.
A black agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what’s best for me? What course of action will leave me best off, where “best off” includes having power, influence, safety, and wealth, as well as having moved closer to one’s goals.
Victory for a black agent feels hefty, exultant, and satisfying, like a bag of gold coins or a heavy hammer — it’s the feeling you have when you know that the game is won, even if you haven’t yet crossed the finish line. Defeat, on the other hand, feels like aging or imprisonment — like scrabbling against an unscalable wall behind which your dreams are turning to ash and trickling away, leaving you with nothing.
Other words associated with black: achievement, autonomy, determination, fame, influence, pleasure, popularity, reputation, success, status, wealth, ambition, control, dignity, excellence, improvement, innovation, liberty, mastery, performance, power, self-reliant, talented, undaunted, decisive, relentless, industrious, persuasive, realistic, suave, competitive, political, proud, solitary, uninhibited, amoral, arrogant, calculating, egocentric, hedonistic, malicious, opportunistic
From most to least, black agents have the following Big Five traits:
- Openness (+)
- Extraversion (~)
- Neuroticism (~)
- Agreeableness (-)
- Conscientiousness (–)
(Although that last one is complicated; black is low on shoulds but is quite capable of diligence and effort when it feels like it.)
From a negative perspective, black can’t handle codependency or obligation. It starts to freak out if it feels penned-in, depended-upon, trapped, drained. A black agent, when injured or disoriented or low-resourced, is extremely loath to cooperate, to invest, to engage in interactions that don’t visibly and immediately pay off. Black needs a feeling of power and possibility and potential, and when that’s missing or threatened, it tends to shift even harder into a kind of short-sighted transactional mode, often driving away precisely the people and opportunities that would have helped. With too much black, concepts like “cooperation” and “sustainability” drop away—black-out-of-balance is like a wildfire, consuming everything as quickly as possible, sowing the seeds of its own suffocation.
Red
Red seeks freedom, and it tries to achieve that freedom through action. Red wants the ability to live in the moment and follow the thread of aliveness and passion. It’s a bit strange to speak of a red “organization,” but to the extent that it’s possible to have an archetypal red organization, it would be one of those art studios that’s owned by no one where there’s paint on every wall and it’s almost impossible to move around what with all of the dancing and debating and half-finished projects. A red dystopia, on the other hand, would simply be anarchy.
Red characters in popular culture include Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Wile E. Coyote from Looney Toons, both Romeo and Juliet, and Kramer from Seinfeld. Of the Simpsons, Homer is the one who best embodies the spirit of red. The character of Joyce Byers in Stranger Things (Winona Ryder’s character) is loudly embodying red through both the first and second seasons. In Magic, red cards are goblins and pyromancers and dragons, Lightning Bolts that burn the opponent, illusions that taunt and enrage their allies, spells that grant speed and haste and fragile power, desperate gambles that put everything on the line, and chaotic effects that upset the whole battlefield.
A red agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what do I feel like doing? Which path seems most alive? What does my heart tell me?
For a red agent, victory feels fiery, beautiful, magnificent, and fierce — it’s the climax of a dance or a brawl or a love affair, the feeling of cresting a summit or having successfully ridden a wave. It’s feeling alive. Defeat for a red agent is correspondingly quiet, empty, and gray — being trapped by things you can’t even pinpoint, to rail against; having nothing to love, nothing to do, nothing to be; feeling nihilism and pointlessness slowly swallowing you whole.
Other words associated with red: authenticity, adventure, beauty, boldness, friendship, fun, humor, loyalty, candor, courage, creation, drive, empathy, enthusiasm, ferocity, independence, individuality, irreverence, joy, originality, passion, purpose, sensitive, spontaneous, trusting, dramatic, flexible, forthright, casual, stubborn, angry, blunt, careless, reckless, destructive, fickle, flamboyant, impulsive, performative, poetic
From most to least, red agents have the following Big Five traits:
- Openness (++)
- Extraversion (+)
- Agreeableness (+)
- Neuroticism (~)
- Conscientiousness (–)
(As with black, red is capable of sustained diligent effort, but only if intrinsically motivated; no conscientiousness for conscientiousness’s sake.)
From a negative perspective, red is pathologically incapable of accepting limitations—the sort of person who’s unable to marry because they’re unable to commit, because committing means cutting off avenues of future possibility. It’s also unable to tolerate quietness, emptiness, boredom, ennui. Red is restless, needing independence, freedom of movement, a sense of unconstrained choice, passion.
A red agent, when injured or disoriented or low-resourced, will tend to flail or explode, magnifying and amplifying its emotions and then following them wherever they lead (and justifying the actions it takes as being valid and unimpeachable because they came from the heart). Red, fearing a loss of freedom and direction, responds by breaking everything around it and driving as hard and fast as it can in whatever direction it happens to be facing. With too much red, there’s no pattern, no ground to stand on, no reliability, no predictability.
Green
Green seeks harmony, and it tries to achieve that harmony through acceptance. Green is the color of nature, wisdom, stoicism, taoism, and destiny; it believes that most of the suffering and misfortune in the world comes from attempts to cast off one’s natural mantle, step outside of one’s natural role, or fix things which aren’t broken — it’s the color of Chesterton’s Fence. It seeks to embrace what is, harmony as distinct from order — the archetypal green organization would be a hippie commune, or the pop culture interpretation of a Native American tribe (such as in Disney’s Pocahontas), while a green dystopia would be something like the society in Divergent or a tribe with absolutely rigid traditions and an unchanging and unchangeable relationship to its environment.
Green characters are slightly harder to find in the role of the protagonist, but often crop up around the edges of a story. If green had a martial art, it would be aikido — a sort of bending, accepting formlessness backed by subtle power. Both Yoda from Star Wars and Guinan from Star Trek are green, as is Tom Bombadil from Lord of the Rings. Buffy (the vampire slayer) has other colors but moves toward green as she embraces her destiny and, on the more feral side, Wolverine from X-Men often acts from green. The centaur society in HPMOR is green, in that they had sworn not to set themselves against destiny, even if it meant the end of all things. Our last Simpson, Maggie, is green as well, but that’s got more to do with her age than her fundamental character. In the game, green cards are druids and sages, mighty monsters and howling wolves, auras that restore the natural order and regenerate the wounded, and bursts of magic that produce enormous, feral strength or quell entire battles.
A green agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks how are these things usually done? What is the established wisdom?
Victory for a green agent feels peaceful, fertile, and balanced — a tired general retiring to his farm, a mother nursing her baby, a valley lush with growth now that the rains have come and the pestilence has passed. It’s solemn, but without sadness; joyful, but without ego. Defeat, on the other hand, feels like having no ground beneath your feet, like being cut off from your tribe and family, like watching fair and fragile goodness being crushed underfoot and having everything you thought was true called into question.
Other words associated with green: growth, harmony, respect, spirituality, stability, acceptance, calm, centered, cautious, common sense, contentment, experienced, humility, intuition, maturity, meaning, moderation, restraint, reverence, serenity, sharing, significance, simplicity, strength, vigor, agreeable, contemplative, hearty, barbaric, virile, well-adapted, conservative, traditional, eldritch, ancient
From most to least, green agents have the following Big Five traits:
- Agreeableness (++)
- Conscientiousness (+)
- Extraversion (+)
- Neuroticism (-)
- Openness (–)
From a negative perspective, green is pathologically passive. It has too much faith in everything working out, in things being the way they should be, in accepting whatever comes, however horrible. It can be phlegmatic to a fault, passing up opportunities to save itself and refusing to prepare for predictable, oncoming change. Green struggles with taking a stand, and is suspicious of any kind of novel agency.
A green agent, when injured or disoriented or low-resourced, will often surrender or give up, turning to blind faith or repeating its default actions over and over again, unable to try something new. Worse, out-of-balance green will often undermine or sabotage others’ attempts to salvage a situation, dragging everyone else down with it. Green tends to fall back on what it already knows, regardless of whether that’s appropriate. And with too much green, all distinctions between good and bad, or better and worse, fall away, and everything becomes gray and indistinguishable.
On the flip side, a world without white is a world of unreliability, with no scaffolds or handrails, no rules or recourse, no sense of fairness and no moral compass. White is the hard and durable skeleton of society, and without it, much of the cooperation and coordination that we rely and depend upon vanishes — even things like driving on a particular side of the road.
A world without blue is a world without curiosity, without investigation, without the nitpicking desire to get every cog into just the right place. More than any other color, blue represents what makes humanity different from other animals, other species — without it, we sink back into the present and lose our bridge to the future.
A world without black is a horror show of codependency, with all the inefficiencies of communist Russia and all of the insipid conformity of the town in Footloose or the society in Equilibrium or the people in the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s a place where the sovereignty and nobility of the individual vanishes beneath the weight of the collective — it looks good at first, but without black, you lose the will to empire, the thirst for recognition, the desire to get ahead, the deep and personal wants that define and shape a person’s whole destiny. What’s left is pleasant, but there’s no soul at the core of it — nothing that burns with the hunger for something more.
A world without red lacks a different sort of fire — it’s a world that has wanting, but no passion…only a base and selfish grasping, with no real spark behind it. It’s a world where the rules never change, where the assumptions are never questioned, a world without teenage love and modern art and violent protests and spur-of-the-moment adventures. Without red, everything moves in slow motion and everything has its temperature turned down — like an entire society that’s been sedated.
A world without green, on the other hand, is a world unmoored from reality and disconnected from its own history. It’s a world full of bold schemes that fail to pan out, disasters that take generations to build momentum but are noticed too late. It’s a world where everything is out of place — where nothing truly even has a place — a constant parade of divorces and suicides and famines and extinctions, where things like global warming and eugenics and welfare programs with misaligned incentives happen all the time. It’s a world where the qualities that people derive from Zen Buddhism, or from the contemplation of a sunset, or from a hike in the mountains, or from the embrace of a grandmother, or from the sermon of an ancestor, are all entirely absent. It’s a place where you eat and eat and eat, but you never feel truly full.
Colors in Conflict
Another way to define the colors is to look at their disagreements with one another. There are five central conflicts between colors on opposite sides of the wheel, which help to define them in contrast with their enemies.
In earlier versions of this essay, I defined the conflicts using pairs of words like “order versus chaos,” or “preservation versus exploitation.” Attentive readers pointed out, though, that defining a conflict as order versus chaos is pretty overtly taking a position on that conflict! It’s rather like the choice to define a guerilla group as “terrorists” or “freedom fighters” … the terminology you use is often downstream of having already chosen a side.
So below, I’ve defined each conflict three times—once through the eyes of each of the colors involved, and once with a more neutral summary.