JustColorPieThings

Collecting my monographs on the Color Pie, a psycho-philosophical framework originated by Richard Garfield

[justcolorpiethings]

Red-White dual philosophy

Red-White Chaos Impulse | Morality Order

Goal: Freedom + Peace = Heaven

Defining Aspect: Chaos + Order = Spontaneous Action + Laws of Man = Principles

Method: Action + Structure = "Guardian Vigil"

Strength: Forceful + Structured = Radiance

Weakness: Short-sighted + Inflexible = Wrath

Red-White's goal is the appropriate dwelling of such angels as itself: to be in the supernal grace of Heaven. An utterly good, moral, and radiant place, every inhabitant magnified in essence, their every movement touched with love. A communal festival into eternity, celebrating existence and action without harm or meanness. A place where everyone is with everyone, all voices merged in an omnipresent chorus so beautiful: to listen is to know the inexhaustibleness of love; to be there is to listen; and, if Red-White can bring that place into being, to be yourself is to be there. A high-minded goal, but not an imaginary one. To Red-White it's not a "hereafter" thing. It's a "now" thing. That place - that "World of Congratulation" - lives inside Red-White, and its every action is the attempt to share it.

The apparent defining characteristic of Red-White is unshakeable moral fortitude. None can claim greater commitment to enacting the Ideal than they. The image is created easily in the mind: a guardian, a footsoldier, a patrolman aligned to justice. If we try the calculus like "man of action meets man of principle," (and excuse the sexism of the trope name), we can infer some things. This duality can be analyzed with some help from Ancient Greece. To its philosophers, alongside the project of morality is a project of wisdom, where both are seen as two faces of virtue. 'Principles' are something like the product of reflection on virtuous action. Wisdom tries to theorize, rationally, the core of virtue. This spoken core pairs with the practicalities and "skill" of virtue, called the Morality as such, that evades and escapes capture in sentences, at least because to merely say and not do is not virtue. Red-White aims for this embodiment, this two-dimensional project of The Ideal. It is Red-White's crux to enact, identify, and make more complete and Real (think White's Structure), the Heaven it knows to be Peace. This responsibility takes a faultless commitment, which is the Guardian's Vigil.

To watch is the work of Red-White. Red's Action is only complemented by White's emphasis on responsibility and accountability to judgment. Red can own mistakes. Red never thinks its emotions are wrong, but it can very well appreciate having missed the mark in a zealous response, and want to adjust its attitudes and anything disturbed from where it should be. It does so to continue to Act, not prey to stubbornness or self-confirming fallacy. When there is a misstep, it gets up again. White's Structure is always trying to catch problems in advance. Anticipating friction and smoothing it over. Anticipating friction and diverting it. Even relying upon friction to erect sturdy, literal structures. As White seeks the One Law, it has to propagate it, pushing that anticipatory horizon out to the furthest reaches of time and space, never erring. Red-White, though, believes you cannot get up from the mistake until you make it. It is the living with the choice, and being behind your deeds, that deduces the One Law. It is Freedom once it comes from you (within). It is not Peace until it contains everyone.

To watch, Red-White must cast light. All things have to come out, be discovered, be faced. Be confessed. The Congratulation Of All Action will not live until everything is fully in the open. Some may find villainous motives stunted by this light. Others may recoil from light for more... embarrassing reasons. Radiance is absolute, and, as a magical symbol, Red-White beams it into and upon anything and everything until their true natures explode from the intensity of the supernal light. There are not half measures. There are not pragmatics. The One Law has to come to pass, and has to be found out. We can't solve problems until they are revealed. Yet, the higher authority lives in what we do, not what we know. Red-White holds nothing back from that judgment, receiving it entirely and giving itself utterly into it, committing everything, always. Covetousness over what you can lose is a misshapen perspective. The only thing ever really owned is your morality - *if* you own your deeds. Without owning those, there is only morTality left. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", Red-White might say. Replace [sword] with any term at all and it is still the right maxim. Thusly, Red-White makes itself the proof. Its life is the demonstration of the proof. Red-White, truly, will do it or die trying. Its path becomes the determination of the missing knowledge, and that means externalizing everything - illuminating all.

This way of commitment, of pinning everything on yourself, may seem to be pure foolishness. No past observation could justify a totalizing wager on the parts of life that are a guess, not rationally. Is it rational, to step off of the ground into fathomless Void? The answer is the Heavens are stronger than what's rational, or real. Red-White cuts corruption from virtue, but it also reveals the Truth in darkness. The issue, is where "less mature elements" come up, and mistake mere boldness for that courage, and belligerence for tenacity. It is there we observe the endemic problem.

Wrath. The tragic fury of an enraged short-sightedness. When you know how things are supposed to be, there's no need for thinking more about it. Input is irrelevant, it is time to act. Even if Red-White has a font of supernal motivation that can make 1 out of 0, such absolute will is, by construction, unbent by the situation or circumstances! That is the strength, but that's the problem. Red-White bullies its way through. It blasts apart every other perspective but its own. It either manages or it doesn't; it is terrible at taking input or adapting unless by bashing the horns together. Moderation is unknown to it, and temperance is surely a far-off lesson to any of its mold.

[justcolorpiethings]

A category of poems

To have an order reappear in a list, you seek a homomorphism of order to sequence.

To represent a sequence de facto, you must produce a sequence de jure!

Sequences address items like Time, specifically with Naturals from the Line.

(that says morphing one sequence to another, is yet one morphism on each end of the tether!)

The tenfold isomorph, and reflection,

has arrows describing the Jig:

Green faces Technology, Blue stares down Impulse,

Red is not having it with Order, White IS not Amoral, Black recedes from Fate-driven decree;

If these be the only ties knowing, then the graph's missing edges are showing, but precisely the friends' constancy.

The there graph then is easily inverted, and/or its edges can have their "direction" perverted,

but by diligent morphing you unify all twenty.

...

But what proves that this homology is the limit?

Can any the 100 fit in with it?

When does a recital speak this graph or else not?

By functions preserving an implicit structure deserving of attention in crass Language's argot.

The ordinals 1 through 5, when set, come alive, as their betters degrade them as not much.

But not only, is fixed, the comparator betwixt their limitation, but, too, their ranks as such.

When you speak the Pie, one of those words is first.

That attribute cannot be altered. Nor the identity of the ordinals, ever.

When we want to erase rank, but utilize it, then we care not of score but relation. For a graphed Pie, since there are only five, that leaves two bits: distance, with direction.

It must preserved be, therefore, the shape that simply is those four,

in whose language all truths are expressed.

Without altering that,

cite me but one sentence flat,

and my true route is in six ciphers addressed.

So I pray: Tell to me, in ways plain for all to see, how to get from each post to any other, but do not spoil for me, the identity, of my factual initial number.

In the graph we have laid, the only edges displayed, iterate one nary step (the 5-gram over).

Thus when this pattern divine, is in these ordinals assigned,

It's (5 x 4) characteristic first steps, tie six blunders.

[justcolorpiethings]

A poem of categories

Of the 120 ways of reciting the five colors,

only twenty are correct.

Of White, Blue, Black, Red, Green,

there are four rotations,

and five reversals from those.

Whereof the involutions - which unite opposite to opposite in chain - there are equal variations,

5 and 5 and again is twenty.

Only these two categories preserve the canon of WUBRG order.

In other recitations, there is only a list.

Now, do you know a funny proof?

[justcolorpiethings]

A stance for each color

White asks (not answers) :

Where do things break? (and which way is appropriate to repair them?)

Blue asks:

Why does thought diverge from fact? (and what control of that gap is possible?)

Black asks:

What am I suffering for? (and how is this pain exchanged for another?)

Red asks:

When do I know this feeling from? (and why is it with me still?)

Green asks:

Who am I? (and where do I find myself now?)

[justcolorpiethings]

Black-Red dual philosophy

Black-Red

Parasitism Amorality | Chaos Emotion

Goal: Omnipotence + Freedom = Independence

Essential Aspect: Amorality + Chaos = Selfishness above all else + Spontaneous Action = Anarchy

Method: Selfishness + Action = Selfish Action

Strength: Shameless + Forceful = Enthusiasm

Weakness: Paranoid + Short-sighted = Panic

Goal

Black-Red wants to live in a totally selfish, present moment, without qualification or constraint. In colorful terms, its life is to see the world as its oyster. To Omnipotence, this is familiar. Black decides what it wants to take from this life, up to the limits of what must be sacrificed to snatch it. The goal Freedom is about subjectivity. Feelings, tastes, motives, attitudes, and so on, make up the subjective experience of self. Not in so many words, but this bundle of self-expression is what Red defends in the whole, inviolate package termed "I". "I" am an original, and Independence lifts both censure and weakness from the trail "I" blaze through the world. There is no cause more personal. Omnipotence serves Black its material desires without mediation. Freedom is self-acceptance on par with Green's – it is the choice to let motives just be. These goals align. Omnipotence breaks moral boundaries. Freedom breaks mental boundaries. Black-Red does whatever it pleases, and chases whatever its heart commands. It is the "independent variable," entirely separate from the judgment or acceptance of others.

Essential Aspect

To reach such total Independence by degrees, Black-Red's bearing is toward Anarchy. Black-Red will follow no law, rite, or command that would delimit its freedom to exercise its wishes. It casts aside rules like rotten food. Rules, says Black-Red, only control people without controlling any payoff for them. They're "a bad joke", just the artifacts of "schemers trying to control their little worlds."(1) Black-Red is not a schemer. Chaos abandons preconception and calculation, replaced by spontaneity, chance, and even creation. Amorality is about letting go of eternity. Amorality is to not be fooled by things like words and promises and tender feelings of kinship, or that anything is ever "there" except what is "then". Instead, Anarchy rejects the always-unearned, always yet-to-be-discharged eternity in anything immaterial: in a belief, a promise, a trust, or an expectation. *Now*, or never. Unencumbered from that mess, Black-Red can keep up with life's curve-balls, and enjoy something along the way. The manner of total lawlessness is, of course, to "just. . . do things."

(1)[The Dark Knight, 2008]

Method

Black-Red is your every self-serving motive, unleashed; your every whim, indulged; and your every opinion, enacted. The means are completely obvious. Act selfishly! Feed those demons! Seize power and revel in the indulgences afforded you. Act for the exercise of your own independent power, which is the sole criterion of good to yourself. Do not ponder, do not refrain, just do what you want. Felicity waits on the other side of commitment.

Strength + commentary

This color's greatest ability is the momentum behind Enthusiasm. This is intense effusion of itself, a pouring forth, to whatever is its occupation. It holds nothing back. As a motivated individualist, Black-Red does whatever the situation calls for, in immediate terms. It has no policies to impede it, no host of constituents to consult. What Black-Red chooses, it does full-throttle. Everything is summoned to achieve it. In leisure, this is passion and exuberance. In war, this is rapaciousness and bloodlust. Black-Red never distresses itself trying to be consistent, either.

That's the other thing about Black-Red: it can pivot on a dime. It is its own master, free to reinvent itself every instant. Starting from zero is as easy as any other day, when all of life is labelled 'risk'. Don't mistake its momentum, for inertia.

Weakness

Black-Red's weakness is the state of Panic which its focus on desire permits. Paranoid and Short-sighted, Black-Red acts on the most pessimistic interpretation of the situation, as it appears to it presently. It is always just there, in the moment, burdened by all its needs, only haphazardly making provisions for itself. Panic takes its toll. Beyond just acting alone, Black-Red acts without any light of principle to guide it, or any concept of tendency or reliability in the world standing apart from individual actions, to make a decision. It repudiates such things, as more of the "rules" that its Anarchy rejects. Panic, is the shuddering in the floorboards of Black-Red's mind, the immovable background noise to everything else. Black-Red lives life for the highest rewards, at the very highest of risks, and is so easily the cause of its own ruin.

[justcolorpiethings]

Blue-Red color pair

Blue-Red

Logic Technology | Chaos Impulse

Goal: Omniscience + Freedom = Infinite Expression Essential Aspect: Logic + Impulse = Intellectual Theory + Emotional Action = Self-Invention Method: Technology + Chaos = Intellectual Application + Spontaneous Action = Experimentation Strength: Intelligent + Forceful = Genius Weakness: Inactive + Short-sighted = Self-absorbed

Goal

Blue-Red wants an enriched contact with reality, an unbound Being. It wants to act upon and be acted upon by "this", this existence, whatever it is; it wants to have that immediacy and intimacy, and never look back. It wishes to drive all ever onward to Action, and Intellectualize new perspectives in the infinite, open future. Blue aspires to be transformed through Knowledge, to attain the 'vista of the universe' where every possibility connects to all others. Red by comparison is easily underestimated, so bear with me here. The metaphor for Red is a voice. Individuality is a sense that wants contact with the world. All volition, all action, is a voice pressing itself against the world, affecting it, acquainting it, styling it. It is the statement, not to have the effect or outcome, but to express: 'I exist'. By touching the world in Expression, we at once unite to the world, yet define our uniqueness. In this light, Red's Action is the siding with oneself, to make not a design come true, but to make an emotion real. In short, to Be. Freedom is an idealisation of this 'contact', whereby the individual is delivered through their emotion. Take away all the trifles between the indivisible emotion and its expression, and that is Red's Freedom. So, to champion Blue is to see the paths through which everything moves. To epitomize Red is to express everything that you are. Thus, Blue-Red's ideal is seeing outward and inward, that fluency in thought and feeling. Its aim is to live and swim in fathoming it all, to see everything expressing their aims; in the ideal, to touch the Infinite, and truly express, simply put, your self - not as static completion, but a continual responding with the untold future. The Knowledge and Freedom to bring you into your own, fully awake.

Essential Aspect

Self-Invention or Self-creation are the central aspect to Blue-Red, and it isn't a common concept. An inventor is simply a career. The poetry to this dual is that free thinking can be a way to transform oneself: to enact, and become, and to contemplate the wonders of the Real. Romanticism and Lockeanism both apply to the topic, but there is a paradox. To self-create, something must come from beyond you, beyond the initial, to be a new creation. Blue's Logic. Yet something within must operate actively, not receptively, if the golem you make is from your Self. Red's Impulse. So how is personal change possible? The answer is to see self-creation as a step to fullness of Being. Logic is the meaning-hierarchy that sorts experience into thought, in Time and category and causation. Intellectual Theory sorts things into goals, norms, and true and false. Via theory, Blue sees into and through the contact with reality to the Other's deeper Being, mirroring it exactly. Impulse is the meaning-making that consanguinizes events and subjectivity, not dismissing the coincidence of anything, not fighting to ignore anything. Emotional Action presses perspectives together and unleashes the irreducible in things, to directly bare what they mean to each other; to meet and react. In emotion, Red denudes the raw moment (with the Other), living it fully. Thus we have a communication, violently active and turbulent at the surface, but collecting from that energy the residue for reflecting and understanding; the residue to paint a changed self.

Method + commentary

There are a pair of problems in naive formulations of Blue and of Red, clearing up the which will be expedient here. The standard line for Red is generally of a philosophy that draws action from an internal 'something', but all too often the treatment is opaque about that interiority. The emotional core is taken as a simple, that just arrives with the individual, who may express it or repress it in the moment. Any changes in feeling or attitude or drive, as a result of one's world and successes and failures, are all erased in this singularity, "Red's feelings". Moving to Blue, we have the color best at transformation, surely put. Yet, to Blue, being some particular thing is a mystery, once you question why ultimately to remain as it. People can be fundamentally changed (since existence precedes essence), so that leaves the question of whose judgment decides which essence is better? A fundamentally changeable self cannot ground the reasoning for that judgment. So, how does Red express an inner reality without interiority or conception? How does Blue intelligibly conceive of transformation without arbitrarily or circularly prioritizing a frame? The clarity, the directness, and the priority, are all resolved by foregrounding the New.

The Intellectual Theory and Emotional Action, denuding the moment, and internalizing it, relating the irreducible motion in things to get at reality: this is a way of meeting the New. What is given above is not some mental style for reviewing the same ol' same ol'; it is the summoning of your awareness to the march of Time, and your fundamental position as a thing that does things. Blue-Red makes things happen. That is, it adds. It appends to the story. Everything is as fresh as an infant to a new moment, equalized. Everything each moment is cast into the question "what does this mean to you?" So, each color's paradox is the answer to the other. Blue looks inside by acting with something – the untutored motive – that, yes, it does not see all of. Blue chips away at this frontier by making itself reveal itself. Red finds the terms and intelligibility of its emotions in the actual way that it causes the moment to be lived, with the world turned one way and not another at that crossroads, of the reaction. The transmutation of the act, IS the meaning. Blue-Red's Experimentation is a self-exploration as it is a self-Invention. As so perfectly nailed on the card Nivix Guildmage, "the only action worth taking is one with an unknown outcome." Yet, "make things happen", now I can say, as a slogan, misses by obscuring that other piece of the process, which is that you will be guided by what it is you WANT to experience. That is an indispensable ingredient. This philosophy is not reception, it is interaction. In experimentation is the real acknowledgment of the Other/the World, as an untold and open thing. The New. To Experiment is to reflect this on yourself as a real thing, too. Two things must be accomplished to Experiment, easily fused mistakenly into one. There is the step of going in without an assumption of what you will find. To be doing it to look, eyes open. And there is the subtly distinct step of going in truly open to experiencing what will happen. To not close yourself off from your subjectivity, your deep feeling, your Self. Stated in the affirmative, the aim is to hold space with 'the brilliant Infinite', deliberately and authentically. No one can step into the same river twice, because everything, large and small, is changed by action. Blue-Red enters every moment to do that alchemy. Deliberately and authentically, in Knowledge and Freedom, fully awake.

Strength

Unfailingly, Blue-Red bears one strength. It is seemingly a trait advantage, free bonus with its world-view, but not so. I write of the trait of Genius. A genius is not genius because of powerful recall, or horsepower to outthink any who could compare. A genius is one who can reshape reality. I speak of real, non-magical life, I remind you, but the metaphor of the genius is the genie, and there's good reason to blur the idea of their magic power. The Genius is someone seen to change narratives—the stories that make reality real to our experience—so adeptly and so piercingly and so facile that it is as if they were on another plane of that reality in the first place. You know it by how it is to find them. To watch them be is "like being shaken out of a dream."(1) Somehow the way they live in wonder, can shock one out of their learned blindness, their waking sleep, and bring true reality into focus. Blue-Red is this way, its entire character that of experiencing through Experiment. Not a bit of Blue-Red lives in any other occupation. It is that Forcefulness, in their Intellectual mode, that makes up its Genius. Trust Green-Blue to learn an answer, but never bet against Blue-Red's ability to imagine its way out of any box, any double-bind, any conundrum; to assert its way through scorn and detractors, doubt and ridicule; to relight the fire of pure inspiration in contact with the chaotic unknown. (1)[Senna Diaz, "Dark Science #102" https://dresdencodak.com/2020/12/07/dark-science-102-exclusive-interview/]

Weakness

As we discuss Blue-Red's weakness, note, though its Self-Invention is a self-concerned project, Blue-Red isn't about getting in anyone's way. Villain or otherwise, it is self-absorbed all the same. A word I began in this spot is 'delusion', but this misses. As I come upon the last stretch of this series, it comes clear that Mark Rosewater was right: the great weakness is often "your greatest strength pushed too far". Not a lack of grounding is Blue-Red's issue; instead Blue-Red is unmoored from mutuality of perspective. Delusion put aside for a moment, Self-Absorption weakens Blue-Red in two other ways. One, somewhat of the loutish connotation applies, which we will abbreviate. Two, it is the lack of systemizing. As Blue-Red strives, the totality of Expression brings out conflicts in the known. If the meaning two ideas have for each other is contradiction, Intellect's penchant for pickiness, with Red's sincerity, gives you "the proud competition of ideas," i.e., a difficult person. That brings out meaning, but also noise. And loudness. Chaotic though it may be, Blue-Red converses with you to argue indeed. There's a lack of 'system' here however. The temperament is not one to catalogue its experience for others, to export it or codify it. Blue's critique of itself and all else is never at rest. Red cannot put down roots, it doesn't build. In brief, Blue-Red doesn't relate through a reference frame of any constancy, only itself. Thereby it may be, in Self-Absorption, that Blue-Red slips to delusion, but it is not endemic foolishness in the dual. A virtuoso of relating to the Other, this dual contacts reality as well as anyone, but to be a conduit of the meanings it finds, to take responsibility as a source of knowledge that flows out of that moment… that goes beyond a calling based mainly in its own relationship to the things. To be sure? In Green-White, I anticipated Blue-Red, and said Green-White's weakness is that it lives giving up a world seen as so changeable, *capable though it may have been* to do it. You can build with Earth because it doesn't move. The elemental Air in this equation, Blue-Red gives up how to live seeing a thing as constant. There is a great casualty to that abandonment. The casualty is the being-at-home of your world. This 'homed-ness', this sentiment of the very capacity to belong, comes from things "having their place". Blue-Red has forsworn a 'place'. No more than a puff of air has a home, can Blue-Red belong anywhere. The Ever-changer, Blue-Red, aspires to -be- with the brilliant Infinite, but, on pain of delusion, it can never give it "home". It dwells in its experience alone.

[justcolorpiethings]

Blue-Black color pair

Blue-Black

Goal: Omniscience + Omnipotence = Dominion Essential Aspect: Technology + Parasitism = Intellectual Application + Selfishness at the expense of others = Manipulation Method: Intellect + Selfishness = Subversion Strength: Intelligent + Shameless = Resourceful Weakness: Inactive + Paranoid = "Puppeteer's complex"

Goal

Blue-Black's purpose is perfect knowledge and absolute power - total control. Knowledge makes concepts possible. Power makes desire actual. To see into the world, and its workings, and have every opportunity at hand, is perfect knowledge. To make those worlds of possibility convulse, and give up just one outcome, if it's the one I command, is the force of absolute power. By these ends, Blue-Black can become anything, can produce anything, can deny anything. This illimitable dream is not hard to understand, but, perhaps being all too clear, it is easy to discount the role played by the ideology that births it. That ideology is Manipulation, which paints how Blue-Black relates Self and World.

Essential Aspect + commentary

Whatever it does not possess, or it does not choose for itself, is Blue-Black's enemy. Parasitism denounces another's gain as my loss; in so doing, the claim is laid for Black to take everything for itself. Intellect's Application frames knowledge for my use in transforming things; in so doing, the stage is set for Blue's transcendence of itself. To Blue-Black, the world is not created as it should exist, and the first problem with it is that the world exists separate from Blue-Black's wishes! The difference of reality from desire is the one evil with which Blue-Black concerns itself, and that is the task of Manipulation: to twist everything in the world to the dominion of Self.

From the Self comes the Will, viz. the desires that make an individual. Blue-Black champions the Will, choosing according to its desires, transforming the blank slate to whatever it dreams, consulting no outer rule or master. In archetypal terms, the Will is unchangeable, unbowed by circumstance. It imposes its dictum: "I will (make it so)." The World, as World, is the external, implicitly a place of limitation to Will, but Blue-Black defies that. Its dreams—supreme power, ultimate knowledge—defy all circumstance and limit, bursting World's horizons with regard only to the aspiration of the Will. That same regard, uplifting, holds the world in contempt. Nothing of the status quo deserves respect. Not morals or traditions, nor fears nor weaknesses are to go unbreached. Dominion is not a prank. Blue-Black presumes to claim the world, throwing it under to serve its desire. This view multiplies Blue-Black's enemies, but also opens up reality as a vast means to an end.

Method

As its ends are control, so its beginnings are to take control. Control means the overreach of one's compass. Already spoken for is the innate power over oneself; we call this the psyche. It is flawed even as it is bounded. Control per se begins where this fallibility ends. Furthermore, control is theft. Nothing can serve two masters, nor is dispossession ever borne amiably. Dominion is not to steal flawed power, then. It can only be cause-and-effect, by means of which Blue-Black inverts the bounds of the psyche, perfects its control, and deposes the natural order as lawgiver to Creation. Intellect grasps the cause, profanity compels the effect. When matter is ruled this way, it is machinery – reliable and prized. For a living being to be Subverted, there must be theft of its self-determination. As forewarned, a psyche contends with many inroads—e.g., deceit, coercion, incitement, provocation—yet the effectiveness of any teeters on the balance of information for beguiler and victim. If counteraction hinges on awareness, then Blue-Black's first goal is to obscure its intentions. Thinking in reverse, Blue-Black defends its autonomy via elaborate deception. It sheds all emotion, principle, or sentiment that can tie its hands, and dissimulates to have those same things. Foremost of all, it ever delves to know circumstances more deeply than anyone else.

Strength

"Resourceful" is only a pale image. Blue-Black has the willingness, and often comprehension, to use any device, and that counts for a lot more than the quantity of its assets. The grim fact, for its enemies at least, is Blue-Black has the intelligence to be discretionary in what and when it strikes, and the audacity to tread out lying, stealing, and killing over and over again. Thus is its surgical focus, as Mark Rosewater says, both "vicious yet subtle. Ruthless yet careful. Brutal yet secretive." Worse, its self-advancement toolbox recurses on itself: it analyzes information, identifying the greatest opportunity, which empowers it to control more and more, which gains access to more information. . . and the process feeds back. Darker still, the world is sculpted at every stage. That is, the world is changed to realize Blue-Black's desires, and to be a more suitable instrument to change itself with in the future. This burgeoning power is hindered, however, by Subversion's flaw.

Weakness

Blue-Black cannot function without controlling everything. The puppeteer's complex is something MaRo explained, although he didn't explicitly treat it as Blue-Black's great weakness. From him: "It is this threat of being at the mercy of someone else's desire that drives blue/black to do what it does. This means that blue/black has to constantly undermine everyone else's agenda. Subtly, of course. It has to be the puppet master constantly pulling the strings of those around it." This contempt for being in a situation of another's control, or no one's control, draws out its hand, seduced to meddle if just for meddling's sake. What irony for a color that values self-control so much. But the flaw is even worse than that. Intellect feeds paranoia, convincing Blue-Black that enemies abound, one step ahead of every plan. Blue-Black constantly second-guesses itself, even its own motives, spending so much of its great capacity on formless troubles,— and the more it gains, the more it fears to lose.

[justcolorpiethings]

Reflecting and Correcting

There is a nuance, to a thesis one might propose, on "an individual's (felt) obligation to aright the course of their tribe, to the extent the individual holds communal values", which serves to elucidate some things about the colors.

You might say that this concept is, in brief, "to tell the tribe about its errors", but this is equivalent only on some significant further assumptions: 1, someone's awareness of their errors is necessary for the errors to be annulled; 2, instruction about errors is sufficient to get the error corrected; and 3, this communicative act doesn't introduce any damage.

Blue thinks preternaturally, automatically, of identifying a mistake and then fixing it by bringing it into consciousness. For Blue, lack of awareness is the problem; awareness is a crucial vehicle of the solution. We fix a thing by bringing our minds and deliberation onto it. Problems are solved by intellect. There is also the factor of shared language to really multiply the co-operation.

But an alternate view of removing the error is just to change things so that people simply stop making the error. It's, in turn, possible for this to happen even without -anyone- becoming aware per se of the error. Just give way to an unconscious process that elides the problem. If your instinct is to say that this doesn't even count as a thing - that I've described something that barely even counts as an EVENT - then you have a Blue precept very deeply wound up in your theory of agency. Green does not privilege the status of awareness, just attunement. If you are never as much as opposed to The Tao, if you simply -are- in the course of flourishing and strength, then all is good. This extra layer of having reflective awareness, of having technological understanding, or even having the memory of the transition from pre-error to error to post-error, is all some baggage you have.

The preceding tells of where White sits, between Green and Blue on the matter. White changes something to evade the problem, but the pursuit of consciousness of it, of a perfect answer, is eschewed on balance of minimizing damage - particularly total damage from living with the error over time. Getting out of the problem, and not breaking something else, is White's priority. Since we don't want to break something else, many things about the current situation may be considered off-limits to a putative fix. Some elements might take on attributes of a "missing stair". In total, White's communal values are held to a metric where the status quo even as such, is considered until proven otherwise, to be a good. The thing is, "proven" is a social relation, involving actually doing something performative with others. Identifying the concerned parties matters, so as not to move without stepping on toes, as it were. This is how White is the most stagnant about errors, even if it is nominally the most into giving others the benefit of the fix. Lastly, even a record of the issue may or may not ever be committed. If it involved a victimization, perhaps we cannot forgive until we forget.

So that's the nuance. Blue - awareness of things is the most important Green - the things in themselves are the most important White - our social constructions among the things are the most important I might follow up later extending this to Black and Red, mutatis mutandis.

[justcolorpiethings]

Externalization - Red

Red is actually Green-Blue.

The immediacy of Red's emotional expression is the one and only road to the morality play that Green-Blue wishes to surf. The world, though a place of facts and natures, forever has open potential, open futures that require a guess. Life is in these guesses, yet the gamble is not morally ambivalent. One road leads to harm, and the other leads to less, and "there's always some stupid thing you can do to make it worse." Fatally Green-Blue suffers this paradox to find the flourishing choice, eternally damned to mistake the unknowable again and again. What could responsibility to that even mean?

Red's Action, Red's freedom, Red's individuality, is the way that even the Absurd is enfolded. Whether there is absurdity or not, you must take the side of whatever mental frame you are in. Whether there is wrongdoing, or only misfortune, the allegiance for the soul is clear: Take the side of yourself. Be what you are naturally, and if you would be redeemed, then you will, and if you shall be defeated, then you will. The world as the stage of it all, is the only one holding the cards to reveal the answers - you, too, were led to your place by your own nature, and the time for the test is either met or missed. You must act, you should act. It's the best you can make of it.

Perhaps by some favor of the gods we are given to have our dispositions and biases, that make up our choices without sensing the weight we have on the destiny of everything. In that moment of the emotional, unthought act, is it fundamental randomness? Or is it emergence from some shining place in the spirit, quieted by eons of quiescence, begging to be heard again?

You hurt no one by listening.

[justcolorpiethings]

Externalization - Blue

Blue is actually Black-Green.

The endless search for the perfect state of flow, adaptation, transformation by the unfiltered tutelage of Being, these desires only twist Blue into the form of germ that thrives in all contexts on the basis of holding nothing within itself. Blue has no true self, only an appetite for moving through, persisting, and gaining the ephemeral stuff of wisdom to learn from the visit.

Blue in purity makes both student and teacher learn; the first by assimilation, the second in accommodation. But for one who takes this way of Being into the ultimate, who is really to say one form of instruction is different from another? By pain? By embarrassment? By reinforcement? Or just classical conditioning.

Blue abandons the moral valence of all questions and only keeps posing them, slipping into the void to preserve itself in that advantage, that being one step ahead. Just like Black-Green, its allegiance lying only with the climb.

[justcolorpiethings]

Externalization - Green

Green is actually White-Black.

Pursuit of harmony and the cultivation of an attuned and accepting way of being leads only ultimately to the monolithic chaos of the food chain. Living things are the expending of energy; they can do this only by maintaining a ward of entropy at their exterior. This requires more energy input.

All movement toward or away from sucrose and threat, if not requiring discrimination, shall select for it in differential success. Thus Green brings about the tribalism of White-Black, sorting existence into Weal and Woe though it closes its eyes to the distinction.

[justcolorpiethings]

Green-White color pair

Green-White

Goal:  Attunement + Peace = Sanctified Life Defining Aspect:  Interdependence + Morality = Natural survival + Laws of Spirit = Sacredness Means:  Nature + Structure = "Tending the garden" Strength:  True + Structured = Resilient Weakness:  Naive + Uncreative = Indolent Thought

Green-White's goal is to place the obvious thing beyond the vicissitudes of mortal failing: to conserve and make inviolable the divine attribute of Life.  Peace protects Life from harm and injustice.  Green's gain is Attunement, through acceptance - fighting nothing, adjusting, and accommodating the natural currents that lead all down one destiny.  These are comprehensive visions of something defended, of a virtue 'joined to' if allowed to unfold.  Recall that Peace's strictures are supposed to be easy, at least in defining them.  White proposes that the good act can be known in advance and always is, it's just the discipline and structure we must furnish in ourselves to see it through.  Yet I would not make a mistake already warned against by Martin Luther King, and so the "presence of justice" in Peace is the move to affirmatively defend Life's virtue, via Sanctity.  Green-White sanctifies life, becoming a champion of it, adopting a duty over and above whatever social role it has, to propagate the sanctuarial reverence for that real thing.  From Sanctity, Green-White enjoys (and spreads) Peace and the Attunement of nature's pre-eminence.  Community enters into this as an expression of the equality and authority of Green-White's mission.  The mandate is the same to everyone.  Though our roles will be different when we Attune to our nature, the conformity of the mission of Sanctity builds strong ties, seen as the theme of Community.  The center of Green-White though, is still the Sacred.

Green-White is largely concerned with the difference of what it can change and what it cannot.  Change is something you do to deal with your own limitation within the grand scheme.  We have feeble hearts, so we eat well and on the regular.  We see only shadows of the Truth, so we speak conservatively and with kindness.  The community is enriched when we stand aside of our transient, short-lived wants to tend and nurture the more enduring, and common, needs, and the reciprocal bonds of society.  To Green-White, this is absolutely necessary, because Morality and Interdependence shout that there is a bigger picture we cannot take our eyes off of.  It is something to welcome us; but make no mistake that it will smash us when, in hubris, we try to think little of it.  It is something tough to do only for an egocentric culture.  Get along, don't reinvent the wheel.  The things you will do in life have been done by your ancestors.  Sacredness is the deference that Green-White has for 'the big picture', Creation, or God-as-the-world.  So is it, don't change it because you can't, or you shouldn't?  "Yes."  The Sacred is a symbolic place of where answers come from.  It's the thing that IS everything and the needs of everything, the necessity of itself, and the tautology of the Categorical Imperative (see next paragraph).  Green-White is trying to accept everything, to defend each thing so it can meet its purpose, and that means Green-White is a color of fierce principles.

I hold an idiosyncratic view of Kant's Categorical Imperative, so I'll lay out that view and then others might see it relate to White as I do.  The CI is an "idea", at least, a concept, whatever those are separately from anyone actually thinking them.  Perhaps the term 'meme' can be attached to it.  The idea goes, 'that I should act only according to a maxim, which I could simultaneously will to become a universal law.'  The derivation from this, though, is that it shall be a universal process, that agents will harbor a form of thought like this.  For whenever the meme space (like the gene space) comes to have such categorical maxims, their alternates, viz. maxims that must not be willed to become universal law, would of course not be moved to become universal by any of that acting and willing.  What can be seen to take up the place of the common, the widespread, the universal, will only be any patterns of tending to hold and engender thought adhering to the CI.  It is a concept that makes its own propagation inevitable, like the selfish genes of Darwin, and the selfish memes of Dawkins.  And so, the pursuit of Law, law in *reason* and action and society, could be called a fundamental force of any universe.  White's characteristic is secured as basic and indivisible.  Above, I have mixed this idea of Law as self-producing, into the view of Nature in Green of the necessary, unstoppable progress of Destiny.  They match, right?

Green-White has its principles, and what these principled defenders have in front of them, is the task of making space for the World to happen, for other people to play their part.  It's perhaps a troubling task, that has no specified accomplishment to "do".  There is much more in what must not be done.  Yet it is what it is.  Nature's tools are those of allowing growth, strength, life; in short to be concerned with the Real and with nourishment.  The body needs its energy, and the mind needs compassion, kindness, and love.  Structure's tools are preparation, manufacture, and focus, the use of systemic thinking to put problems to rest, to solve stressors, to make peace.  Living systems can get by on their own, but thrive even greater with guided and guarded development.  In a word, Green-White tends a garden, trying to let everything in, using some rearrangement here and there, but otherwise to give over to what the garden becomes.  The garden is of course inside as well.  There's no distinction between self and other, in any of this.  Care, kindness, social bonds - it's all worth doing and all part of the same, self-satisfying project, of that Sanctified Life.

This outright wholesomeness - yes - really is Green-White's greatest strength.  It doesn't buckle.  Knock it down, bruise it, distract it, it will not forget the eternal purpose.  Unlike any more anti-social school of thought, you cannot divide Green-White from within, you cannot make it nervously check over its back, and you *cannot* make it give up.  Sure, you can give it a moral dilemma.  Mortality is also vexing.  It knows frailty all too well.  But that is literally what keeps it going, what keeps it practicing, what keeps it trying its best.  Addressing and mending whatever frailty it can.  And, of course, there is the community.  When one hurts its limb, all hold the wound.

Toward this color's great weakness.  Mark Rosewater motioned to the idea of Green-White getting stuck in its ways, unable to "innovate".  It is difficult to try on an idea while thinking for everyone else's sake, true.  I prefer the concept outlined in Duncan Sabien's article, of a drifting off target.  Good intentions, out-of-touch methods.  Averaging the two, what you get is indolence, in thought at least.  Green-White's paradisical headspace, when living fulfillingly as it does, can become a lackadaisical one.  Making its community work can be something Green-White gets wrapped up in, repetitive as it is, and then it may not do much as far as thinking about what lies beyond today.  Naivety and Inflexibility: it isn't about innovation, it's about making itself move.  The thinking Green-White gives to the cause of Community, is done precisely without stepping outside that value system.  The Sacred way prioritizes the caring, kindness, and contemplation explicitly over the abstract or self-driven.  Wondering, reimagining, pushing limits?  There's just no room for such experiments.  That's the box it's in: to have foresworn those priorities.  To go outside it, is to stop being Green-White.  It is what it is.

[justcolorpiethings]

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[justcolorpiethings]

The basis of every particular thesis on this blog, the Color Wheel. Image property of Wizards of the Coast.

[justcolorpiethings]

Two-Color Combinations

White: Organized, Blue: Intelligent, Black: Shameless, Red: Forceful, Green: True

(work in progress) *

White-Blue Morality Order | Logic Technology

Goal: Peace + Omniscience = Universal Concord

Defining Aspect: Order + Logic = Laws of Man + Intellectual Theory = Authority

Method: Law + Intellect = System

Strength: Structured + Intelligent = Meticulous

Weakness: Uncreative + Inactive = Inhibitory

White-Blue is defined by its adherence to concepts of Good and Truth. This color believes in absolutes and should-bes. The moral absolute of Peace, the epistemic absolute of Knowledge, all these things are objective and imperative, forming a vision of singular purpose I call Universal Concord. "One truth prevails." This notion holds for White's morality as well as it does for Blue's logic. Thus White and Blue's goal is an 'ideal of one ideal,' aimed at a singular reality that puts an end to all doubt and conflict. This goal is constituted by Authority, which White-Blue embodies.

Authority means White-Blue takes its orders from principles and facts, never feelings. White-Blue is nothing if not "correct," if not prepared for every responsibility. As it upholds authority, White-Blue commands obedience. Those who disagree with White-Blue are just ignorant children, mistaken, who must be led to the straight and narrow with a proper lecture. All White-Blue's opponents are just unfortunate in this way, missing either the knowledge or respect of relevant Authority. White-Blue handles this ignorance with either compassion or condescension, but always relentless exertion. Through industrious effort, White-Blue builds systems for the use of every being, in Concord.

The mechanism of White-Blue is the systems-thinking of administrators, legalists, and technicians. All problems are solved by carefully reasoning about how they work, and applying consistent, reliable tools and procedures. Practice is a watchword for White-Blue. Knowledge and strategy are complemented by preparedness and rigour. The goal of this color is a timeless world where perfect behaviour is down to a science, and so its way of life consists in mastery of details.

The strength of White-Blue is that it has the patience and care to get every last detail perfectly correct, which works out well for it considering the pace at which such humourless toil goes. White is prepared and disciplined, and Blue has the smarts and data. When these colors get their ducks in a row, it's curtain call for the opposition. Not even misdirection is more than a temporary setback for such proficiency.

This insistence of proficiency is something I cannot pass without special emphasis. White-Blue must be understood with this: that its creed is the same as its competence. For no other color does it matter how good it is at striving for its goal. That's wholly independent of the value attached to the attempt. But for White-Blue, it has no justice if it lacks the know-how. It has no right, without being right. This of course figures in White-Blue's characteristic weakness.

If White-Blue's strength is doing things by the book, its weakness is its complete unwillingness to deviate from the book. Blue wants information and verifiable plans. White does nothing without objective justification. The color-pair will pass up blind fortune just to finish dotting the i's, to keep with the strict definition of some procedure it is not 100% sure works otherwise. It is a lack of individualism - of willingness to just "see what happens." White-Blue's method depends on its competence, which inhibits the color where that competence is lacking. It confronts the unknown so cautiously that it even hinders its allies; and conversely, White-Blue's enemies breathe a sigh of relief knowing that its procedures always delay mobilisation for a good while.

White-Black Morality Order | Parasitism Amorality

Goal: Peace + Omnipotence = Security

Defining Aspect: Morality + Amorality = Exaltation

Method: Order + Parasitism = Laws of Man + Selfishness at the expense of others = Exploit

Strength: Structured + Shameless = Cold-blooded

Weakness: Uncreative + Paranoid = Corrosive

White-Black's goal is security against harm and deprivation. It's about assurances - a power that suspends conflict and need; or a peace in supremacy. Peace and power are the ultimate insurance, and White-Black overcomes their contradiction for the sake of a sterile life, free from want. To see the contradiction, look no further than the welfare of others. In Peace there is elaborate equality, but Power means unilateral control. To go beyond the intersection requires a choice. White-Black does care about others - part of the classical analysis of happiness is to be able to provide for one's companions, after all - but the ideal of equality is disappointed by White-Black's methods. A subtly different ideal of spirit takes its place.

To get a grip on a "sum" for Morality and Amorality is about a 500-word job. Beyond the other four antipodal sums, these two elements are codified in our culture as perhaps no others have ever been: the battle of socialism versus individualism. This plays out in symbols. Liberty. Law. Money. Fair play. White-Black is driven by these and many more abstractions. I have adapted the word 'Exalt' - "1. to raise in rank, honour, quality etc.; 2. to praise; extol," - to mean the attribution of larger-than-life significance, and to define White-Black. Look at White's symbolism. As the proponent of the most complex system of values of all the colors, White depends on every possible kind of mental reinforcement to keep its adherents acting how they should act and thinking how they should think. This is Structure. Religion and purity concepts (like guilt) target thought directly; ceremony and ritual dictate actions while guiding the mindset to where these actions come naturally. Ritual loses out on practicality, but what it builds is community. Now meet Black, a pragmatist. Black worships opportunity. Community can be opportunity, but it can also be a drag. Black despises obligations, and would rather use laws for their penalties than hope to forge a lawful cooperation. It is a firebrand for the eager procurement of any and all strength, to hold the strongest seat in any room - but by the same token, Black can exalt community religiously as well. It's a cost/benefit spread. See how both colors play up the urgency of their ethics. Behind the divisiveness you hear, they hold common loathing for "cruel, senseless Nature." Both colors exhort individual responsibility, with the archetype of the heroic grasp of Fortune. They praise traits of gumption, and glorify decisiveness. They honour detached judgment. And they're very particular that you should exalt the same things. If everyone valued the right things, then struggle would be replaced with order. The proper lot of everyone would be unchallenged, and control could even be quantified. In the final, fighting would be done not with blood, but with bank books. White-Black wants more than society; it wants a whole culture, of security and debt. The only price for such a world is mercy.

The only course for Morality and Amorality to take together is if White-Black turns the ritualisms of Moral Law upon society's cheats and leeches. Harsh judgment, distilling the vindictiveness in both colors, realizes individual opportunity while clamping down on the borrowers and hangers-on. In this way, the group rallies around Moral Law, used as a scythe to part weakness and infighting from individual ascendancy. Note, this keen usage comes from dropping the precept of Mercy, usually defining of White. White's agenda is transformative, training others and itself to obey laws; Mercy is the patience for that transformation. But that philosophy cannot reconcile to individualist self-reliance. All is waste that's idle; opportunity and survival alike must be snatched from the Void. Those who cannot make peace with the group, the Moral Law pulverizes.* Refusal to co-ordinate is denounced as an attack, on welfare and on everyone's way forward. White-Black has no mercy to spare. It defends the law, seeing in its letters the only guard against pandemonium.

*(I don't think this is an in-group. An in-group stops at an arbitrary point. White expands the Moral Law to all. Explaining how Black tolerates community at all is a necessary subgoal, but that account will not explain White.)

White-Black's methods to ascendancy are various, but they are like building blocks, visible in the foundation of White-Black's society. By the Pie, White-Black's tool is parasitic lawfulness, but that's obscure. "Exploit" is apt, in three respects. White-Black creates a demanding society, which it Exploits for all its worth, of course. Mark Rosewater proposed the 'shaky trust', but, as mentioned above, White-Black binds its community with rituals. Calling attention to everyday interaction makes people think twice about betraying each other. A system of rights is only a few pieces more, so I reject the shaky trust, and revise it as mercilessness. We see from this that predictability is a virtue to White-Black. White-Black's love of Order also leads it to pacifism. Black won't fight to the death if it will lose. It's a skeptic, who knows even ruthlessness is no guarantee of victory. It and White size up threats, and try to find the least painful road to the end of violence. This strategy makes White-Black master of stalling. It is well-practiced staring down threats while advancing its agenda elsewhere. The trope of the ruthless businessman is associated with cunning risk assessment; find this in Black, combined with White's tactical doctrine, and you have a color that is particularly good at ploying every little battle. If the enemy overexerts itself, then it is vulnerable; ambiguous setups, defensive tactics, and overall strategic diligence test the aggressor's cohesion and resolve, Exploiting where either falters. Where White-Black lacks decisive power, it fights efficiently. A war of pins and needles is still a victory if it is won. The final "Exploit" is the fullest, in vampirism. Capitulation is preferable to struggle - among friends, that goes double. Equality is just a chaotic variable. Tyranny clarifies all roles. A peon may face great debt, but he is insured not to be quashed like a foe; thus we have Mark Rosewater's "tough love." Who in White-Black's tribe will work the most, but those who resist obligation the least? Those who can follow all the rules and still reap value head and shoulders above the rest can expect to enjoy the fruits. Without Mercy, what matters isn't that the rules are fair. It's that they exist.

White-Black's strength is its suitability to the machine malevolence of its process, which is to say, the invariable punishment of its enemies for any way in which they do not conform. Severe, yet pristine, White-Black practices carefully and is unflinching in securing whatever it needs. Meditative readiness meets selfish, shameless action. To its enemies, self-concern tempers regimentation to yield a chilling depth of malice, actively concerned with their ruin and subjugation. White-Black is like a razor - unassuming, even familiar, but easily fatal if put to that use.

The ultimate downfall of White-Black is its totally life-depleting nature. White and Black are haunted by whatever in the world they cannot contain in an easy conceptual box. Where a Paranoid outlook turns inflexibility into prejudice, White-Black's life becomes a colorless drudgery punctuated with defensiveness. Where once there was vitality, there will be dreadful ritual. Friendships become obligations. Gestures become tributes. Veiled in politics, Black's brutality finds an outlet, factionalizing and weakening the whole. And the environment in which White-Black operates is transformed into so much itemized profit, and the rest exists as hazard to be torn down. Mark Rosewater characterized this color as 'fractured from within', but my analysis goes beyond that, to say not only does White-Black corrode its relationships, it corrodes its world, and it corrodes its very livelihood, all for the ideal of Security.

Black-Red Parasitism Amorality | Chaos Emotion

Goal: Omnipotence + Freedom = Independence

Defining Aspect: Amorality + Chaos = Selfishness above all else + Spontaneous Action = Anarchy

Method: Selfishness + Action = Selfish Action

Strength: Shameless + Forceful = Enthusiasm

Weakness: Paranoid + Short-sighted = Panic

Black-Red wants to live in an unqualified, unconstricted, totally selfish, present moment. The goal Freedom is about subjectivity. Feelings, tastes, motives, attitudes, and so on make up the subjective experience of self, and they are what Red defends in the whole, inviolate package termed "I". "I" am an original; and Independence lifts both censure and weakness from the trail "I" blaze through the world. There is no cause more personal. Omnipotence serves Black its material desires without mediation. Freedom is self-acceptance greater than Green's - it is the choice to let motives just be. These goals align. Omnipotence breaks moral boundaries. Freedom breaks mental boundaries. Black-Red does whatever it pleases, and chases whatever its heart commands. It feeds its demons without differentiation, to become its own person, entirely separate from the judgment or acceptance of others.

To reach such total Independence by degrees, Black-Red's bearing is toward Anarchy. Black-Red will follow no law, command, or ritual that would delimit its freedom to exercise its wishes. It casts aside rules like rotten food. Rules, says Black-Red, only control people without controlling any payoff for them. They're "a bad joke" (The Dark Knight, 2008), just the artifacts of "schemers trying to control their little worlds." Black-Red is not a schemer. Chaos abandons preconception and calculation, replaced by spontaneity, chance, and even creation. The goal is to keep up with life's curve-balls, and enjoy something along the way. The manner of total lawlessness is, of course, to "just. . . do things."

Black-Red is your every self-serving motive, unleashed; your every whim, indulged; and your every opinion, enacted. The means are completely obvious. Act selfishly! Act for the exercise of your own independent power, which is the sole criterion of good in the life of the Self. Seize power and revel in the indulgences afforded you. Do not ponder, do not doubt, just do what you want. Felicity waits on the other side of commitment.

This color's greatest ability is the momentum behind Enthusiasm: its intense, effusive absorption in its chosen occupation. As a motivated individualist, Black-Red does whatever the situation calls for, in immediate terms. It has no policies to hold it back, no host of constituents to consult, and no complex morals to evaluate at the question at hand. What Black-Red chooses, it does full-throttle. In leisure, this is passion and exuberance. In war, this is rapaciousness and bloodlust. Black-Red never distresses itself trying to be consistent, either.

That's the other thing about Black-Red - it can pivot on a dime. It is its own master, free to reinvent itself every instant. Starting from zero is as easy as any other day, when all of life is labelled 'risk'. Don't mistake its momentum for inertia.

Black-Red's weakness is the state of Panic which its focus on desire permits. Paranoid and Short-sighted, Black-Red acts on the most pessimistic interpretation of the situation, as it appears to it presently. Beyond just acting alone, Black-Red acts without any light of principle to guide it, or any concept of tendency or reliability in the world apart from individual actions. It repudiates such things, as more of the "rules" that its Anarchy rejects. Thus it acts only in the moment, burdened by all its needs, but only haphazardly making provisions for itself. Panic takes its toll. Black-Red lives life very high-risk, and is so easily the cause of its own ruin.

Black-Green Parasitism Amorality | Instinct Interdependence *

Green-White Instinct Interdependence | Morality Order *

Green-Blue Instinct Interdependence | Logic Technology

Goal: Growth + Omniscience = Unfettered Development

Defining Aspect: Instinct + Technology = Natural Decisions + Intellectual Application = Adaptation

Method: Interdependence + Logic = Natural Survival + Intellectual Theory = Co-evolution

Strength: True + Intelligent = Insightful

Weakness: Naive + Inactive = Careless

Growth and Omniscience both are mental and material transformations. Hurry not to reduce Green-Blue to that dichotomy. Growth is Green's choice of life over death, energy over decay. You either "get busy living, or get busy dying," and Nature is an exemplar of vigorous and fruitful activity, everywhere capable of new generation. The promise is that this strength is already yours, if only you accept it. That mentality, acceptance, is Blue's bane. Though not the same as inaction, it is the minimum of agency: something like 'letting things happen'. Blue's business with knowledge is to maximize its agency (an optimization alternately called "perfection"), preferring the choice of choice itself. To that end, the essential implement is the mind - that infinitely plastic organ, which information and training can anneal to meet any purpose. The interests of these colors align, if the attitudes do not. Green-Blue wants development. This is the flowering and cross-combination of resources that produces energy, particularly at the collective level. This is a metaphor of pollination, and it's intricate, but it is crucial to understand Green's ideals. You could note, also, development is a process; for Green-Blue, process is the goal. It is unselfish. It is even, to the extent that it is procedural, based in faith - faith in that vigour of natural generation already mentioned. That is the development I mean. The increase of knowledge and techne, the growth of energy, these are variations on the same. The greatest possible outcome, in Green-Blue's view, is not to become so preoccupied with "perfect" that you miss the opportunities right in front of you. That's Growth and Omniscience: the release of energy to engage potential - outside the conception of this or that rationality. Throw yourself into your life, and your eyes will be open enough that you can steer away from woe and more toward success. In that light, Green-Blue's median goal is efficacy, and that demands the attitude of Adaptation.

Adaptation is a response that transcends a very old question, represented in Green-Blue's cores of Instinct and Technology. It's the question of identity. Technology is the doctrine of blank slate: that people and things can be redesigned. Instinct appoints Nature as optimal, affirming that deliberate design is a tangle in Her course. The key factor is intention - it distinguishes design from change. Green accepts change; change happens all the time. Acting to change, rather than acting to do, is what threatens Green. Thus Green busies itself with its process, preserving the natural matrix. This isn't antithetical to Blue. Accepting who you are and believing in what you might become are complementary - and the intersection is, "apply yourself." Don't prejudge the meaning of your life. Green's words, "become what you are," are a rally to action, not away from potential. 'Design' is the verbalization of a free will, yes; but to be changed for the better, at the end of the day, is what counts. To be changed is to sustain feedback, so that's Green-Blue's answer to identity: not how you are, neither how you might want to be - just what you are made to become. Learn by doing. Green-Blue just has to prick up its ears, and it will notice what to do.

Much of the foregoing has diagrammed a way of life for Green-Blue. Those are the ideals; there yet has to be a methodology for drawing out that way of life in an uncooperative world - but there's the anomaly. Green-Blue's methods are unique in that Green-Blue's obstacle is really itself. Nature is a giver to it; a teacher; a trainer. Nature can do no wrong! What this color has to do is defeat fear and ego. Interdependence and Logic come to hand, what can be said about those? Those tools both are schematics of a connected universe. Logic arranges the world with cause and effect. It understands outcomes as proceeding from knowable qualities of things. By this faculty, Blue can pursue its goals analytically, piece-by-piece. Interdependence rejects independence. It arrays the particular upon the universal - that means Green sees every particular thing as made possible by the sum of all things. This is the Holism that gives Green courage. With Interdependence, Green foregoes the need to compute a "final solution" to its problems; instead, its responsibility is to safeguard the eco-system supporting all solutions. Again this is intricate, but - consider the theory of evolution. Darwin's conceptual innovation was recognizing the ecological context to be, simultaneously, the constraint on fitness and the vehicle generating the instances of fitness. Green's Interdependence writes large this formula of "pluralistic problem-solving," without necessarily assuming the science of it. So Intellectual Theory reasons through each hardship, speculating and inventing answers to many possible worlds. But with respect to Interdependence, it doesn't defeat hardship as if to oust it; the ecosystem remains. Green-Blue's ally, as iterated already, is the exercise of a good struggle. The path of least resistance is only a folk notion; the cycle of organisms contesting each other's endurance is sustainable, the leisurely reap of sucrose is not. 'Co-evolution' captures this cyclicity, of adaptation to adaptation, ratcheting up performance on all sides. Blue sees this as improvement backed by knowledge. Green sees this as getting into the right role, remaining in touch with its environment. Green-Blue Adapts by literally meeting challenges just on the verge of its capabilities. Blue walks away with more knowledge, Green contents having found a niche.

These methods have a cost, in that it empowers, or even relies on, a challenging adversary. Green-Blue engages with situations on the brink of danger, playing with its very life, but that's not the maddest thing it does. The mad thing about Green-Blue is that it even creates perils to face. Green stubborns through countervailing pressure. Blue fancies the opportunities on the other side of fear. Only in that narrow band, where the difficulties just exceed its skills, can Green-Blue find the knowledge it seeks. So it looks for these challenges. It creates them. And when Green-Blue's liberties outpace its emergency reserves - or when its head just isn't on straight - then that might not be a good thing.

At last, if there's something Green-Blue is good at, it's learning. With the merest hint, Green-Blue can piece together any situation. It is both collected and clever, aware of its flaws, cautious of its vices, and a wise economizer of its mental resources. Learning also means transformation. As a truly outstanding mental force, Green-Blue readily faces facts. It is Intelligent enough to comprehend them, and True enough to confront them. Green's power is its ability to act without working against itself. Strength comes from Truth. Blue adds deliberation - conscious course-correction to stay on target, and stay constructive. Where there is normally a hole in Blue's analysis of its own motives, Green lends insight to Blue's plans, becoming matchless in understanding itself. Wisdom correlates with a faculty by which the mind appropriates itself, and Green-Blue has appropriated all of its mental powers, to use concentration, contemplation, wit, and reason as the situation calls for. Truly is Green-Blue the philosopher color.

The weakness of such brilliant mental and physical activity is callousness. Naivety is foolish trust, of the world to right itself. When Blue ignores the material, present, and actual for the mental, future, and possible, it places itself in jeopardy. But this color has a deficiency of fear. It has a hands-off approach to details, and so projects can run away from it. Of its well-being, Green-Blue is like Epictetus, a stoic: too willing to let go of something valued just to preserve dispassion. It bears with difficulty only all-too-well, coping and enduring instead of sidestepping the struggle. There is a deficiency of emotion. Equipped with more than ample foresight, Green-Blue is still fundamentally incautious. Carelessness is something a little more, though. Toward others, its emotions are kept slow and cold, unmoved by adversity and its consequences for the unprepared. Despite its great-souled character, Green-Blue is, at best, unconcerned with whether others sink or swim. Green-Blue is the real elitist of the color wheel, making no apology for Nature and manifesting no compassion outside its bounds.

Blue-Black Logic Technology | Parasitism Amorality

Goal: Omniscience + Omnipotence = Dominion

Defining Aspect: Technology + Parasitism = Intellectual Application + Selfishness at the expense of others = Manipulation

Method: Intellect + Selfishness = Subversion

Strength: Intelligent + Shameless = Resourceful

Weakness: Inactive + Paranoid = "Puppeteer's complex"

Blue-Black's purpose is perfect knowledge and absolute power - total control. Knowledge makes concepts possible. Power makes desire actual. To see into the world, and its workings, and have every opportunity at hand, is perfect knowledge. To make those worlds of possibility convulse, and give up just one outcome, if it's the one I command, is the force of absolute power. By these ends, Blue-Black can become anything, can produce anything, can deny anything. This illimitable dream is not hard to understand, but, perhaps being all too clear, it is easy to discount the role played by the ideology that births it. That ideology is Manipulation, which paints how Blue-Black relates Self and World.

Whatever it does not possess, or it does not choose for itself, is Blue-Black's enemy. Parasitism denounces another's gain as my loss; in so doing, the claim is laid for Black to take everything for itself. Intellect's Application frames knowledge for my use in transforming things; in so doing, the stage is set for Blue's transcendence of itself. To Blue-Black, the world is not created as it should exist, and the first problem with it is that the world exists separate from Blue-Black's wishes! The difference of reality from desire is the one evil with which Blue-Black concerns itself, and that is the task of Manipulation: to twist everything in the world to the dominion of Self.

From the Self comes the Will, viz. the desires that make an individual. Blue-Black champions the Will, choosing according to its desires, transforming the blank slate to whatever it dreams, consulting no outer rule or master. In archetypal terms, the Will is unchangeable; unbowed by circumstance, it imposes its dictum: "I will." The World, as World, is a place of limitation to Will, but Blue-Black defies that. Its dreams - supreme power, ultimate knowledge - defy all circumstance and limit, bursting World's horizons with regard only to the aspiration of its Will. That same regard, uplifting, holds the world in contempt. Nothing of the status quo deserves respect; not morals or traditions, nor fears nor weaknesses are to go unbreached. Dominion is not a prank; Blue-Black presumes to claim the world, throwing it under to serve its desire. This view multiplies Blue-Black's enemies, but also opens up reality as a vast means to an end.

As its ends are control, so its beginnings are to take control. Control *means* the overreach of one's compass. Already spoken for is the innate power over oneself called the psyche, which is flawed even as it is bounded. Control per se begins where this fallibility ends. Furthermore, control is theft. Nothing can serve two masters, nor is dispossession ever borne amiably. Dominion is not to steal flawed power, then. It can only be cause-and-effect, by means of which Blue-Black inverts the bounds of the psyche, perfects its control, and deposes the natural order as lawgiver to Creation. Intellect grasps the cause, profanity compels the effect. When matter is ruled this way, it is machinery - reliable and prized. To Subvert a living being entails theft of its self-determination. As forewarned, the psyche contends with many inroads (e.g. deceit, coercion, incitement, provocation), yet the effectiveness of each teeters on the balance of information for beguiler and victim. If counteraction hinges on awareness, then Blue-Black's first goal is to obscure its intentions. Thinking in reverse, Blue-Black defends its autonomy via elaborate deception: it sheds all emotion, principle, or sentiment that can tie its hands, and dissimulates to have those same things. Foremost of all, it ever delves to know circumstances more deeply than anyone else.

"Resourceful" is only a pale image. Blue-Black has the willingness, and often comprehension, to use any device, and that counts for a lot more than the quantity of its assets. It has the intelligence to be discretionary in what and when it strikes, and the audacity to tread out lying, stealing, and killing over and over again. Thus is its surgical focus, as Mark Rosewater says, both "vicious yet subtle. Ruthless yet careful. Brutal yet secretive." Worse, its self-advancement toolbox recurses on itself: it analyzes information, identifying the greatest opportunity, which empowers it to control more and more, which gains access to more information. . . and the process feeds back. Moreover, the world is sculpted at every stage. That is, the world is changed to realize Blue-Black's desires, and to be a more suitable instrument to realize its desires with. This burgeoning power is hindered, however, by Subversion's flaw.

Blue-Black cannot function without controlling everything. The puppeteer's complex is something MaRo explained, although he didn't explicitly treat it as Blue-Black's great weakness. From him: "It is this threat of being at the mercy of someone else's desire that drives blue/black to do what it does. This means that blue/black has to constantly undermine everyone else's agenda. Subtly, of course. It has to be the puppet master constantly pulling the strings of those around it." This contempt for being in a situation of another's control, or no one's control, draws out its hand, seduced to meddle if just for meddling's sake. What irony for a color that values self-control so much. But the flaw is even worse than that. Intellect feeds paranoia, convincing Blue-Black that enemies abound, one step ahead of every plan. Blue-Black constantly second-guesses itself, even its own motives, spending so much of its great capacity on formless troubles - and the more it gains, the more it fears to lose.

Blue-Red Logic Technology | Chaos Impulse *

Red-Green Chaos Impulse | Instinct Interdependence *

Red-White Chaos Impulse | Morality Order *