Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #726: Blue-Red

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

This is another podcast in my two-color philosophy series. This time, I talk blue-red.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another in my two-color philosophy series. So I'm up to blue-red. Okay, so I'm into the enemy color pairs now. I did white-black already. So first let me talk about blue and red, and then I'll get into all the different things to discuss. So first let me talk about blue and red, and then I'll get into all the different things to discuss. So first off, what is blue and red about? Okay, so blue is the color that believes that you can perceive perfection through knowledge.

So blue's whole thing is that you are born a blank slate, that you can become whatever you want to be, that your job in life is to figure out how to be the best you that you can be. And you do that through knowledge, through learning, through education, through experience, through tools, through technology. The idea is learn what the possibilities are and then become that thing. Find the thing that you can become. And blue really believes that you have the ability to be whatever and that your goal in life and how you are happiest is finding what is the optimal thing that you can be.

Okay, red. Red is all about freedom through action. So the idea for Red is, Red believes that in your heart of hearts, you know what to be doing. That your internal self knows what's right and your body has feelings to tell you what it needs. And the key to being happy,

the key to living life to the fullest, is seizing on that. It's following your heart, listening to what you're internally you want, and then acting on that. If you're happy, laugh. If you're sad, cry. If you're mad, punch somebody. You know, red is like, live your experience. Be who you want to be.

And that's how you be the true self. And that's how you be the true self. Okay, so with enemy colors, I start with their conflict, because that's the more understanding who they are is really about understanding their conflict. With allies, it's first their overlap with each other, and then we get to sort of what separates them. With enemy, we start in reverse, just because their relationship is more based on their conflict than their overlap. But we'll get to their overlap.

Okay, so what is the conflict of blue and red? Well, the conflict of blue and red is intellect versus emotion. Thought versus action. Blue believes that the key to life is making the right decision. So blue is very careful. Blue does not want to rush. If you're trying to figure out the optimal thing to do, the last thing you want to do if you're blue is to prematurely do something and cut off opportunities to you. Blue is all about thinking carefully and then only making a decision and taking action when you've thought through all the ramifications of what you've done.

Red is about taking action, about doing things, about being, about living. Red is about being in the moment. So blue is much more about passivity, right? Blue is about take your time, think about things and act. Red is about acting, living in the moment, doing what you feel. And so the idea of the intellect versus emotion is the core to the blue-red conflict. That blue-red really sort of says, how are you supposed to function? What are you supposed to do?

Do you listen to your head, or do you listen to your heart? It's sort of the idea. And so, the one thing that blue and red, I mean, where blue and red obviously disagree with each other, is how to live, essentially. What are you supposed to be doing? I mean, where Blue and Red obviously disagree with each other is how to live, essentially. What are you supposed to be doing?

I mean, the thing to remember with all the colors is fundamentally they believe if you follow their recipe for success, that is how you'll be happy. Blue is like, you want to be the best you can be, and if you're careful and considerate and thoughtful and you really take the time to learn, you can be the best you. And red is like, hey, listen to your heart, listen to, you know, act, be in the moment, be who you are and that's how you be true to yourself. And so the inherent conflict there is just the idea of that each one of them, their end state, there's a different path to getting there. I mean, blue looks at red and says, oh, you are never thinking long-term. You are only thinking of short, you know what I'm saying?

Everything you do is about short-term advantage, about being in the moment. And maybe what you're doing helps you right now, but it doesn't help you long-term. You know, that you are just a walking, you know, you are listening to impulses that just will lead you astray and you are just setting yourselves up to like, yes, yes, maybe in the short term you're doing things that feel good but in the long term you're sabotaging yourself. You're keeping yourself from truly being the best that you can be. And red looks at blue and says you have no

feelings. At least you don't acknowledge your feelings. You are always putting things off and you're never living in the moment. What does it matter if you spend time thinking if you never live? And red is like, I'm living life. I'm living life to the fullest. You are missing out on opportunities. And that's the funny thing.

Each one feels that the other one is missing out on something. That red is missing out on the opportunity to see who it truly could be. And blue is missing out on being in the moment of living life to its fullest. So each one of them sees the other one as, like sees the downsides of the others and says that you're not being everything you can be because of the way you live your life. Now, the interesting area of overlap between them is that both of them very much, there's a sense that red and blue have of the idea of finding a place of happiness.

you know, green for example says that it's not about finding who you are like, you are who you are, green is all about discovering who you are but there's nothing about it that can change you are who you are white, for example, very much lives about the you know, white very much lives in the, it's about the community, right? I mean, white and green at some level are both about community. So the one thing I say is to look at their, where you can find some similarity is looking at their

shared color, which is black, right? So black is about selfishness. Black is about doing what you need to do for you. Well, there's some of blue and some of red that really lean in that direction. This is where the overlap, I think, happens between blue and red, is the idea of being true to yourself, being the best you. Now, blue is the best you through intellect, and red is the best you through emotion, meaning the path they go there is very different.

But this idea of finding who you are, of being what you are, is an overlap between red and blue. Red and blue both want to be the best person they can be. Now, black is interesting. Black and its selfishness is really about a quest for power and just getting what it wants. But blue and red have this quality about being the best person it can be,

but not in a group sense, not in the community sense, not in the role you play, but of being true to who you are for you. Now, the interesting thing is when you mix blue and red, when you mix sort of the interest in knowledge with the passion of emotion, you know, the attraction that comes to intellect and the attraction that comes to emotion, when you pull those together, you get creativity. Because creativity is a combination of the... It is caring about the meaning of the two. Creativity says, I want to be in the moment, but I want to be doing what, I want to be my truest self.

You know, I want to be, I want perfection, but I also want to find perfection through my, you know, I want to be the best that I can be. But embracing who I am and embracing my feelings. That creativity is taking the, sort of the, like intellect has this quest for knowledge, has this curiosity to it. There's a curiosity on the side of intellect. And there's this passion on the side of intellect. And there's this passion on the side of emotion. And creativity is curiosity meeting passion. So when blue and red get together, it wants to be the best that it can be.

It wants to find that medium between finding perfection through knowledge and discovery and finding that inner sense through following one's feelings. And so when you get blue and red together, I, by the way, am very blue-red, if somehow you didn't know that. And the thing that I appreciate that I can recognize in this, and this thing I see, is it's the color that's trying to find the halfway point between living life intellectually and living life emotionally. And the thing about creativity which is really interesting

is this idea of being passionate about ideas. That, you know, blue very much is very cold in its... Blue understands the value of ideas. Blue understands that it is through ideas that you learn and it's through learning and through knowledge that you are gaining the tools that you need to become who ultimately you're going to be. But blue approaches that very coolly.

One of the other things that's interesting between blue and red is every color combination, there's different aspects that also play up in it. And blue and red also have the sort of cold versus hot. You know, the cool versus the hot emotion. You know, the idea of thought versus action. The idea of, you know, blue and red are the color of elementals and blue is air and water and red is earth and fire and so and I think it's funny I think air and water are the mind and I think

fire and earth are the body so you also have a little bit of the mind versus the body thing going on there but yeah I think when blue and Red get together, the thing that they really sort of concentrate on is this idea of finding who you are, of finding, of trying to, like the thing that Red enjoys is this idea that you get excited about something, right? Red really has this idea that the way you are your happiest is... Sorry, one second, take a quick drink.

The way you're happiest is understanding what brings you joy. You know what I'm saying? Understanding what... Red wants to do things that make you feel good, that make you feel proud and happy and content. You know, Red is trying to do things and not just happy also. Sometimes it's like I have anger that, you know,

I have justifiable anger that needs to be worked out. I want to find a way to use that anger in a way that is going to lead towards something happening, right? If I'm sad, I want to use that. You're like, one of the big differences between red, like often I'm asked about, are emotions just a red thing? I'm like, no, no, no. Every color has emotions. The difference between red and the other four colors is red uses emotions as its impetus toward doing,

as its impetus toward action. It's not that the colors don't have emotions. They're just not the driver that they are for red. That red believes that you need to, that your emotions are the thing that guides you and tell you what you should be doing. The other thing that we get red and blue together is red and green to some extent are very much about instinct. You know, red, for example, is very much about impulse. About the idea that I'm going to do something, not because I've thought it out necessarily, but because

I've internalized it. And there's a shorthand that happens when you kind of follow your feelings, your gut, if you will. And red and green also are very much into sort of doing that. Now, the difference is green's instinct is much more of a biological instinct, fight or flight or, you know, I'm doing things because I'm programmed on a genetic level to be doing them. Where red is a little bit more about, I'm going to do things, but I'm going to do things based on what feels like the right thing to be doing.

And when you get blue and red together, there's this the idea that if you can lean into your impulses, like if you study, study, study, study, so much so that your brain can start finding its own connection. Like one of the ideas that differentiates blue from red is blue really believes that you have the power to find everything you're looking for. That the ability to discover something is a research thing. It's a time thing. It's an energy thing. It's a focus thing.

Blue feels like the way you discover something is you put the time in. The way that red feels you discover something is that you're feeling something. That your emotions are doing what they're doing and you have a gut reaction to something.

So part of blue and red coming together is this idea that what if I spend a lot of time studying, I spend a lot of time searching, but then I allow my impulsive side to sort of absorb all I'm learning and then find things that maybe on a conscious level I can't find. Um, one of the things about creativity is this idea that I'm discovering, but I'm not just discovering solely through looking. I'm discovering through, um, that, that I'm, I've internalized what it is, and that there's something within me sort of seeking to get out.

A lot of creativity, and I've spent a lot of time and energy reading about creativity, trying to understand creativity. I did a podcast, I wrote a whole article on it, and I did a podcast on that article called Connect the Dots. And a lot of what I claim, well, my take on creativity is it's the ability to connect things that other people don't see the connections between. It's the ability to find connections. And then a lot of what I think creativity is, is saying, here's a good idea and here's a good idea. And when you combine those ideas together, they make something that's greater than the sum of their parts.

And what creativity to me is is the blending together of ideas and the connecting of ideas. And so let's look at blue and red. So blue is like I collect ideas. Blue is like I value, um, knowing as much as possible. Red says, um, I value sort of letting my, my inner sense sort of speak. And so it's sort of like, okay, I collect the ideas and then I process it through my sort of emotional center. And what happens is, and this is where I kind of believe creativity comes from,

is that you use the same process you would use to filter your emotions, but with ideas. And that the way you handle emotions is you're feeling a lot of things, and then you sort of let your body kind of look at all of it in a big picture, and that it can sort of feel the things it needs. Like, one of the things about intuition in general is the idea that

intuition is not like, I just was born with the idea. You know what I'm saying? It's not like I just intuitively knew to do that. What intuition is, I believe, is that you've learned things and then you've managed to process them internally. And through processing them internally,

you get to find connections that you wouldn't normally find. And so that, to me, that's why blue-red is creativity. It's the ability to sort of take all the ideas you have and have this drive to learn and drive to find things mixed in with the emotional sort of intuitiveness that comes from attuning to your emotions. And, I mean, this is from an internal point of view,

one of the things I've always been fascinated by, it makes me understand Blue Red, is that I've always been somebody who's been voracious on ideas. Like when I was a kid, I would literally pick a topic and then read every book I could on the topic. Oh, volcanoes, volcanoes are interesting, I'm going to read about volcanoes. Space is interesting. Whatever it was. Cryptography. I would just find new passions and I would read everything I could and learn about it.

And at the same time, I've always been fascinated by emotions. I'm fascinated by psychology. I'm fascinated about why do people do what they do? How do people function the way they function? And what I realize is that there's a sense of intuition that some people learn to lean on. And that intuition comes from

being able to sort of have trust and faith in your internal sense. That believe that you have a way to process things that can absorb all the external information you give and give you usable feedback. Now, that is kind of the overlap. I mean, blue and red, I think, when you get them together, really are finding a new way to be the best that you can be. That they're embracing kind of the selfishness of black, their shared color, in the sense that they are

in the sense that they are really discovering who you need to be. Okay, so now let's go the opposite of blue-red. What is blue-red against? So to do that you look at their two allied colors, their other allied colors what they have in common. What do white and green have in common? And that is a sense of community. Blue-red is, because they lean toward black, is much more about finding what is inside you and bringing it out.

about finding what is inside you and bringing it out. What they're not about is, it's not a very community-based color. It is not, you know, what blue-red wants to be is find the internal you and bring it out. Now, that's not to say, like I said, blue is allied to white and red is allied to green. It is not as if they can't use their creativity to do good for the community. You know what I'm saying?

There is blue's sense of building, of optimizing society, and there's red's sense of sort of being part of the group, that, you know, leaning toward green. But blue-red, in its essence, is about discovering the specialness inside you. Blue-red is very self-introspective. I mean, creativity is very self-introspective. And the thing that blue and red does not do is they don't blue and red is fine saying

let me take what I learn internally and apply that externally I'm happy to invent things and then use those inventions for others but blue red sees its contribution to society through what it can do through itself

like blue and red are like I will invent things and then I'll share my inventions and maybe my inventions will help people. But blue and red isn't guided. You know what I'm saying? Blue and red is very internally guided and not externally guided. And that one of the sort of weaknesses of

blue and red is that it is not really thinking about the ramifications to society of what it is doing. Not that long-term, maybe they can't bring some help to society, but that's not what drives it. You know, blue-red is kind of the color combination that, you know, will lock itself away and just turn out invention after invention after invention, but not be cognizant of what's going on in the world around it.

Not be up on current events and not be that, while blue by itself very much quests information external, when blue gets with red, it's driven more toward this filter that red has. And so it becomes very internal. And so blue-red is not that good at sort of observing the world around it, that its focus is in that direction. And that when you look at blue and red, blue-red groups are very much about, so we talk like a faction

or something. Blue and red is kind of about trying to embrace that sense on a larger scale when you get to a group. You know, we want to function. We want to be people who pride themselves on creativity and want to do things in a way that are different. Like, one of the things about creativity, as someone who's very creativity-driven, is I want to... I don't want to do things the way they've always been done. Although, interestingly, a separate aspect

to me is I very much like tradition. I'm not sure this is the blue-red part of me, though. And I think the idea that white and green is very much about tradition, is very much about doing things the way they've been done. You know what I'm saying? White and green is like, you know what's good for the group? Stability. What's good for the group is everybody understanding the system and that white-green is very much about not being internal, not following any of the things that blue-red does. And blue-red is like, blue-red doesn't want to do it the way it's been done before. Blue-red is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the way you normally do it, but what if we didn't do it that way?

What if we did it another way? And so the white-green sense of grounding, of tradition, of doing things the way they've always been done is very antithetical to blue-red. You know, blue-red is like, I want to find the new way to do things. I don't want to do things the old way. And because of that, blue and red is not... Blue and red is probably the color combination that least cares...

Two-color combination. That least cares sort of about... Well, I take that back. Black-blue and black- red also get pretty selfish. I think when you, because black is such a selfish color, the color, its allies and things when combined with it get selfish. But blue, red, very much, I think when I'm looking at sort of his antithesis is blue-red rejects on some level the tried and true, the known. That blue and red is excited to find the unknown.

It's excited to discover the new thing. Blue and red is very much about novelty. Blue and red is very much about a constant sense of discovery. And while that is very valuable, and blue and red makes great inventors, they are people that are looking toward the future. The problem is,

they tend to ignore the past. Now, it's not that they can't build on the past. Obviously, a lot of creativity is combining things of the past together. But I think when they look at the past, it's as a component for the future rather than an entity unto itself. That blue and red can't really just kick back and go, hey, we figured this out long ago. Let's just appreciate that. Where white-green is very much about that.

White-green is very much about we have our ways and we follow our ways. And that is the way that we live. And that white and green can very much live in the past. White and green is very content on saying this is the way we have done things. Let's continue to do them that way. Because white-green believes, white-green is so focused on the community that the problem with new things is it will take time for the community to understand them. Where the old things are understood and everybody's on the same page. But that is a lot of the weakness of Blue Red is, once again, its strength pushed too far is its weakness. Its strength is its embracing of novelty,

of its willingness to always find new things and explore new ideas, and that blue-red is insatiable in its ability to constantly be finding the next new thing. But its weakness is it's so obsessed with the new thing that it's not a fan of the old thing. And so there's a lot of, um, you know, trying to deal with blue red is that blue red is so obsessed on the new that it, I mean, blue red on some level, um, because blue is

trying to find perfection and red is willing to take risks, you get a lot of experimentation in blue-red. Blue-red is sort of like, how am I going to learn? Like blue-red is very, what I like to say, practical science, hands-on science. And then when you get to blue-red, it's like, how am I going to learn? Like, blue is change through thought. I'm going to think things through. I'm going to learn about things. Where blue-red, when you add in the red part, is like, well, I'm going to learn about things, but I'm going to learn about things by doing things. I'm going to do experiments. I'm going to practically learn something. I'm not going to learn it in the

practical, not in the mental space. Like, Blue will think through things and carefully examine things. Where Blue Red embraces the idea that you can learn through risks. You can learn that part of learning is trying things, knowing that they will fail some of the time.

Blue on some level is very afraid of failure. Red, not at all afraid of failure. Red very much is like, we try things, we learn, we move on. And that when Blue and Red get together, you really get that sense of Red's embodiment of chaos and willing to take action. When you bring that attitude to learning, it is a much more

hands-on experience. And it's a willingness to do things with a much higher risk factor to them. You know what I'm saying? That if I would try something and there's a chance it might blow up, well, blues could be very careful that it could blow up. And blue-red is like, ah, blows up, blows up. You know, hey, sometimes things blow up. Now, mono-red

is like crazy dangerous because it just, you know what I'm saying, it'll take almost any risk. Blue, mono-blue will take no risk. So, blue-red is a combination. It almost any risk. Blue, mono blue, will take no risk. So blue-red is a combination. It takes calculated risk. It's not that it does anything,

but it is very willing to push the boundaries to see what it can learn. And because of that, another reason I think creativity is very blue-red is because it's very aggressive and willing to sort of learn things and take action, it definitely is able to learn faster than mono blue can learn.

But it's a little bit safer than mono red. Like, mono red will go the fastest, but at the point where it can... Like, mono red is very dangerous and very self-destructive at times. Blue is very slow and methodical. When you mix blue with red, you get an embracing of new ideas with a practical action element to it that just leads to discovery at the fastest rate.

Blue-red is really good at discovering things, really good at inventing things. Not everything works, and things will blow up, but it's a little more calculated than mono-red. I think mono-red invention is just like, we'll try lots of things, something will work. You know, mono red kind of has the attitude of, if I try a hundred things, one or two will work.

And blue is kind of like, if I learn every sort of thing, you know, I will eventually get there. Like there's a raw numbersness to both mono blue and mono red that when you bring them together, that there's a raw numbers-ness to both mono-blue and mono-red, that when you bring them together, that there's a little bit more practicality of using experimentation to learn in a way that blue and red by themselves will not do. The other thing about blue-red, as sort of a philosophy, is this idea that don't be afraid of the

unknown. Don't be afraid, you know what I'm saying, in that part of being the best that you can be, part of discovery is this it is embracing the best, I think, of both colors. of discovery is this... It is embracing the best, I think, of both colors. It's kind of how, in general, when I look at two colors, it's taking the best of a color and combining it with the best of the other color.

The best of blue is its love of knowledge, is its want to know things, and its quest to try to improve. And the best of red is this willingness to sort of take action and do things and be in the moment. And those two things together create an interesting philosophy. Create a philosophy of perfection through action.

One of the things that's interesting is when you look at, well, once again, there's two ways actually, there's two different ways you can look at it. Perfection through action is one way. So take the end state of one and the goals of the other. Perfection through action means I want to do the best that I can be, but I'm willing to do things to figure that out. The other thing that also is blue-red is the idea of freedom through knowledge. It's the idea that in order to really be who I want to be, I have to learn about myself.

I didn't get as much into that. Let me go into that real quickly. I think we do a lot more of the prior. Like, the is-its more of the prior. Let me talk a little bit about the other. The idea of freedom through knowledge is, how do I be the best person that I can be? By knowing everything about myself. About not being afraid. One of the things that red does is it is willing to take risks and do things. And part of that is introspection. Blue-red is really big on introspection. Blue-red is really

big on introspection. And the reason for that is, right, when you go the opposite direction, freedom through knowledge is, if I want to be as free as I can be, if I want to be the best person that I can be, that means I need to know who I am. I need to understand who I am. And so blue-red, by the way, also is, I think, very big on psychology. Psychology is very blue-red. Because the idea is I want to embrace and understand. Like, I have these emotions. I want to understand these emotions. Blue, mono-blue kind of pooh-poohs and says, I have to transcend my emotions. But when you get blue and red together, it's the

idea of, look, I have these emotions. They do define who I am and have a big impact on my behavior. Let me understand those emotions. Let me look internally. Let me examine. So another aspect of blue-red, and I can see this in me as well, is this idea of that if you want to be the best that you can be, part of that is looking internally in understanding who you are and understanding why you tick and why you do the things you do and why you feel the way you do.

And that is when you get to psychology, right? That's when you get to the idea of, I want to learn about my emotions. I want to understand my emotions. I want to look internally and internally into the people and understand that and so I think that blue red gets to be creativity

but blue red also gets to be psychology also wants to be I want to understand I normal blue is kind of like I want to understand my mind and blue red is kind of I want to understand my emotions I want to get who I am. Why do I act that way?

Why am I sad or mad? Or, like, why do these things happen? And blue wants to understand why that's so. And so blue is very much about being introspective, but taking your emotions and being introspective about your emotions. And so that's another big facet of blue-red. How are we doing on time today? I'm now at work.

Oh, a little bit of traffic. So anyway, I have great passion for blue-red. How we doing on time today? I'm now at work. Oh, a little bit of traffic. So anyway, I have great passion for blue-red because I am very blue-red. So anyway, I hope you all enjoyed today and sort of see

the aspect of blue and red and why maybe there's a little blue-red in all of you. But anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end

of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.