Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #796: Green-Blue Philosophy

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

This is number ten in my ten-part series on the philosophies of two-color pairs. In this podcast, I talk green-blue.

I'm not pulling into my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today is going to be the tenth and final in my two-color philosophy series. So I finally got up to green-blue. So, okay, there's a certain number of questions out there with that. So let's start with talking about what the colors are. So first let me explain green and blue individually, and then we'll talk about how they get together. Okay, we'll start with green. So green is a color that believes in growth through acceptance.

Green believes that the world is perfect the way it is. There's no need to change it. In fact, the key is understanding why it is the way it is and accepting it. That once you realize that you're a part of this amazing world that you live in, once that you understand the web of life that you are a part of, once you understand your role in the world, you have to accept that and live it. And that's how, to green, that is how you're happy.

Okay, so blue, blue says that you are a tabula rasa, that you are a tabula rasa, that you are a blank slate, that you can be anything that you set out to be, that the goal of life, it wants perfection through knowledge, that what it wants is it wants to be the best version of itself that it can be. And through education, through experience, through tools, through technology, that it gets the things it needs so that it can become the best version of itself. Okay, so right away, we can see the conflict in here. I mean, these are enemy colors. So let's start by talking about the inherent conflict between them. So the conflict between them is the nature versus nurture conflict, right? Green believes that you are born the way you are. Your genes dictate who you are.

You are born with all the qualities that will make you who you are born with. The things that you will excel at, you are born with. Well, blue, blue believes, you know, not in nature, but in nurture, that you can become anything, that you are clay to be formed, that you are not born with any but in nurture, that you can become anything, that you are clay to be formed, that you are not born with any, you know,

you get to be who you are because you choose to be that way, because you train, because you study, because you learn, you know, you become what, you know, your strengths are not, you're not born with strengths, you are, you learn the strengths,

you grow into your strengths and become part of it. Not really grow in, I guess that's green. You, through execution and doing things, you build yourself up to gain your strengths. Okay, so right off the bat, there's inherent conflict. One side is like, you were born a certain way,

and the other side is, you can become whatever you want. Okay, so how do those two colors get together? Like, what do the two colors have in common? So one of the things I like to look at when you talk about why they have in common is, first, let's look at their shared allies. So the shared ally is white, right? So white is all about the good of the group and the idea of trying to do what's best for the group at large. And so when blue and green get together, whenever enemy colors get together, they tend to bond through their shared ally, basically. And white very much has a sense of the group. So when blue and green get together, there very much is a sense of we want to look at the world around us and understand how we can impact that world.

Now, the interesting thing is, and this is where blue and green, blue and green are the two colors that care most about information. Now, blue is looking for... Blue cares more about the future. It wants to gather information to change and to adapt. Where green cares about the past.

Green very much cares about what happened, who its ancestors were. Green wants to understand and study what was because it wants to replicate that. So it's interesting that both of them seek information, but for different reasons, right? Blue seeks it to improve itself. Green seeks it to better understand who it is, right? But they are the two colors that most value understanding things. Now, once again, blue is more about knowledge and green is more about wisdom.

So how it uses that knowledge is very different. How it uses the information is very different. That blue is a little bit more proactive in wanting to sort of find the thing it needs, where green is more about understanding and finding, you know, green is trying to seek out known information and blue is trying to find unknown information, essentially. But the two colors both have this sense of, like, once again, blue looks forward, green looks back, but they're both looking somewhere. They're both trying to understand something. You know, blue believes if it can understand the future, it can guide what it's doing. Where green thinks if it can understand the past, it'll guide what it's doing, right? Each one of them is looking in a different direction.

But the key to any sort of pair is looking at where they overlap and understanding that. Okay, so blue wants to learn everything it can about everything, essentially. Green wants to understand everything that is. Now, blue cares more about potential than green does, and green cares more about sort of what was than blue does, but both of them care about that. You know, green does believe in evolution. Green does believe things slowly change.

So it's not that green is afraid of looking in the future, and blue wants as much knowledge as possible, and sometimes that knowledge comes from the past, so it's not like blue's unwilling to look at the past. So when blue and green get together, they really have this idea of wanting to both understand the world around them, but impact it. And so the thing I like to say about blue and green getting together, we've used this for the Simic specifically, is improving upon nature. The idea being that blue is about perfection, green is about growth. Okay, well,

what if you mix those together? What if the idea is, what if I use my knowledge and my tools to better understand nature and then do things to improve upon it? And so the idea is it's taking Green's obsession with nature and taking Blue's desire to sort of optimize and putting it together so what happens when Blue and Green get together you sort of have, okay, well I want to study things and learn about things and I want to learn how a duck can swim

and how an octopus can grab things and how a cow makes milk I want to understand all the things, but then the blue part of it says, okay, can we make use of that somewhere else? This thing that makes a duck float, what if a gorilla could float?

You know, it really starts extrapolating and trying to understand. So where blue and green really sort of get a lot of passion is this idea, blue and green really sort of get a lot of passion is this idea, blue and green really get into the scientists of things, really get into the study of things, right? They really are fascinating by how things tick. And then can they use that information in a way that could further things? And the interesting thing is blue by its very nature in isolation from green very much wants to sort of make something that is new. And green in its isolation

from blue really wants to wallow in what is. So the combination of them is this idea of really studying what is, but in a means to change it in a way that improves upon what it is. Which is a very interesting thing, because in some ways, one of the things that happens when enemies get together is the combinedness of them does something that the individuals never do, and in some ways, it plays into some neat sort of conflict there.

Like, the nature-nurture conflict is very kind of interesting when you look at blue-green in that it definitely believes that there's a combination of nature and nurture, right? The blue-green is like, well, some amount of it is nature, let's understand nature. Some amount of it is nurture, let's understand nurture. And so

the interesting thing when blue and green get together is because they're sort of accepting each other a little bit, you get a more whole package. You get something that's a little more cohesive. Like, if you look at things and say, all that ever matters is nature, then you're ignoring anything that nurture could be.

If you're looking at something and saying all of it is nurture, you're ignoring the nature. So it's fun. In fun ways, when blue and green get together, they start having this desire to be a little more exacting and understanding the bigger picture. Okay, so how do the colors differ in a way that, you know, what's their internal conflict?

Well, their internal conflict, obviously, is this nature-nurture conflict. But also, one of the things that's really interesting is another fun thing to look at conflicts is, obviously, enemies have built-in conflicts, but there's a secret second conflict I'll talk about, which is, when you look at the shared ally of the other enemy, okay, so, blue's enemy, other than white,

because white is the shared ally between blue and green, blue's other enemy is red, green's other enemy is black. Green's other enemy is black. Okay, well, black and red, why do they get together? So they care very much about the importance of individualism, right? Black very much wants what it wants,

very selfish, trying to get power, power through ambition. Red, mind the ways, is trying to follow its heart. It's, you know, freedom through action. It wants to do what it wants to do. But both black and red are very self-centric. You know, black is trying to get power for itself. Red is trying to listen to its heart and do what it wants.

It's acting on its emotions. So the interesting thing is that one of the things that sort of, it's not the internal conflict, I guess it's the external conflict, but blue and green, when it gets together, it's not because it wants to help any one thing. In fact, it's not even trying to help individual things. It's trying to understand the bigger picture because blue and green wants to change the world, wants to improve the world. And so they're very anti-individualistic.

They're very not, their conflict in some ways is with the ally of the things against them. And so blue-green very much has this desire. Blue-green is in it because what it is doing is good for the world at large. Like the green part of it thinks that it will, maybe it will do things that help solidify and understand the world around it. And the blue part goes, oh, we can make changes that adapt things. And they sort of come together to make this neat sort of,

like I said, the scientist is really how I think of blue-green. The desire to look around and understand and examine things. And I think there are a lot of different facets. I mean, science is a big and broad category, right? So, I mean, it is, I can see blue-green. A lot of times we tend to, the cynic tends to get bogged down in biology,

in understanding animal systems and adapting them and, but that is more the cynic take on things. I think there's a lot of different ways to do blue-green and that the interesting thing about blue-green is it loves systems. It loves natural systems, and

wanted to understand its system. And the Simic is doing that. It's just looking more at biology. I could imagine, I mean, pick any science, any kind of science I believe blue-green could go at, and could really take and dissect and look at it. Okay, so...

What does the guild despise? What negatively drives the guild? Okay, that's me getting into the red and black, the idea of... It's very anti-individualism. It very much is focused on systems and improving upon systems. Blue-green loves its systems

and loves understanding its systems. Like, one of the things that's very interesting to me is one of the things that's also fun to do when you look, like, for example, when you do enemies, you also want to find the overlap between the enemies. Like, even mechanically,

for example, you'll notice that blue and green share hexproof. They share flash. They are the two colors, for example, that have notice that blue and green share hexproof. They share flash. They are the two colors, for example, that have the Morrow ability that gets bigger based on your hand size. And in fact, I think they're the two colors that do the most scaling in general. It's funny that green believes in a very natural growth, and I want to sort of become the thing I'm going to be. And blue believes in a very, on some level, unnatural growth that I want outside systems to change what I am.

I want to better myself and make myself more. But you can see in both of them that there is this very sense of progress to them and advancement to them. And so blue and green, blue and green very much are about wanting to

grow and advance. That they don't want to sit still. And that very much when blue and green get together, they're trying to understand kind of what role they can have. Like the thing that's funny is green is all about understanding what role it plays,

and blue is all about finding its own path, right? So when you get those together, there's this very, like, one of the things about blue-green that's very interesting is there definitely is this, there's this sense of blue-green of wanting to explore. Right?

Like, it's very funny. Like, green likes exploration because it's all about going out and seeing the world. I want to see the world for what it is. And blue likes to explore because blue is like, I want to learn everything I have to learn. But when you get them together,

there's this very strong sense of exploration. There's this very strong sense of wanting to understand. It's funny, white is their shared ally, and white is king of structure. But it's funny that blue and green, when they get together, very much want to understand structure. Not build structures as much as understand structure. I mean, blue and white, when they get together, are a little more about building structure. But blue and green are more about understanding the structure that is there. And with blue's influence, clearly there's some desire to improve upon it. But it is very much

in wanting to look out. So it's funny, when I get color pairs together, I always like to look at sort of like, what kind of jobs do those color pair do? So first and foremost, scientists. I've always said that. But there also is a sense of explorer. There's a sense of... On some level, like, it's funny. When red and blue get together,

there's a lot of creativity there and there's a lot of expression there because it's using sort of blue's desire to search with red's passions um but when you get to green instead of it being passion it's more about understanding um the the components that make up the world like one of the things that blue green i think is very fascinated by is um blue-green really believes that there's untapped understanding and that if you can understand better

that that is the impact you know, that blue-green is trying to figure out how to advance things and in order to advance things, it feels like it has to dig deep. So it's a very introspective color. It really wants to understand why things tick. Like, it's funny, for example, when blue gets together with red, it's kind of doing wild creative things. It's designing things

for the sake of designing them. It's just sort of finding out, like, in some level, blue and red are trying to find what doesn't exist, and blue and red are trying to find what doesn't exist, and blue and green are trying to find what does exist. And that's an interesting thing, in that blue, when going with its enemies, blue clearly has its passion for learning, but red and green sort of go in different directions. That red is very fascinated by making the thing that doesn't exist yet,

where green is very fascinated by making the thing that doesn't exist yet where green is very fascinated by understanding the thing that does exist and so anyway that's kind of cool okay so what is the color's greatest strength and biggest weakness I think blue and green's greatest strength is it's love for

understanding and exploration that blue green is the color combination that is going to find out the information of strength is its love for understanding and exploration. That blue-green is the color combination that is going to find out the information. Of all the color combinations, it's the color combination that will, it has the most passion, not passion, passion is red, but has the most desire, I guess, to learn. You know, that it really wants to, or I guess learn is not even the right way. It wants to understand. Blue and green are very much about understanding systems and understanding why things are the

way they are, and then using that information to figure out whether or not there's a means to improve upon it. So blue and green, its greatest strength is its, um, eagerness and willingness to explore and its willingness to sort of, like, it's not trying to, blue and green is trying to understand what is. It is, I mean, it later will then adapt it, but it is first trying to understand what is. And it has this, you know, it is not trying to change things to match its perception. It's trying to truly understand what it is. And it has this, you know, it is not trying to change things to match its perception. It's trying to truly understand what it is.

There are other color combinations that don't quite accept reality or want to shape reality in the means how they want it. You know, like, for example, oftentimes when black gets involved in things, black is like, I'm going to make it the way I want it to be. I don't care how it is. I'm going to make it the way I want it to be. I don't care how it is. I'm going to make it so it serves me. Where blue and green are very fascinated

by understanding the nature of what is there and what's going on. Its greatest weakness is that blue and green, and once again, if you go to its main conflict,

blue and green just don't really appreciate individualism. They don't appreciate, um, they're so fascinated in the structure. Like it, it's the person that spends so much time sort of studying,

um, studying others that it's not self-reflexive. It doesn't look in on itself. Blue green does not take good care of itself. and some level of kind of like the stereotypical, that's working so hard that he forgets to eat. That is kind of the nature of blue-green. Blue-green is so exacting in what it wants that it's not worried. And also, it cares big picture, but in some ways it doesn't care small picture.

If it discovers something, let's say it's studying something, it learns about it, it doesn't so care much about the thing it's studying. It doesn't have any, like blue-green, there's not a lot of emotional attachment. Blue in general is the least emotionally attached color. But green definitely has this quality to it. I mean, it has this instinctual side, but that's more when it shares with red. When green gets together with blue, it sort of pulls out its... Like, green also has this very cold quality to it, right?

Green can, like, that's the way it is. And I, like, green is not particularly empathetic. Like, if, you know, you watch a predator eat a prey, Green's like, well, that's just the way it is. That's what happens. That's what, prey is getting eaten by predators. And Green, well, Green does have a spiritual side when it gets with white.

I mean, there is some desire of, but even then, green cares more about the larger whole than it does itself. And blue is not particularly emotional. So the biggest negative of blue-green is that it can't connect with the individual. It can't connect that it can see problems on a larger scope, but it doesn't appreciate that one person is having problems or one thing is in pain. That blue-green really is about trying to,

in some level, fix the larger problems, that it doesn't understand the smaller problems. It doesn't really get that there is... Because in some level, if looking for such the bigger issue, it just can't focus on the fact that there are smaller issues that matter. And as such, blue-green is not particularly... If you want to have a pal to help you, if you're not feeling well and you want to talk to somebody,

blue-green... For example, it's the kind of thing where you start talking with them and they get very caught up not on your individual issues but on larger meta issues that come up. And the other thing is blue-green can get very distracted.

Blue-green is so focused on sort of its exploration that it can get pulled off and it can be super focused and it can lose track of time. A lot of the, there's a lot of like stereotypes of the absent-minded professor

that I think play some space here where, right, where blue-green is so caught up in something that they miss, in some level, they miss the tree for the forest, if you will. That they're so caught up in the forest that they can't sometimes see the tree. And that, I think, is one of blue-green's biggest weaknesses.

Okay. What else can we say about blue-green? The thing that is kind of cool, uh, about the, so, it's interesting. So, uh, one of the things I find is that, um, players often, the philosophies that they align with and they connect to, um, don't always match up with the color pairs that they enjoy playing the most. And so it is interesting in that I don't speak at all blue-green. Like when I think blue-green is from a philosophical standpoint, I got a lot of blue in me, but I don't have a lot of green in me. For those that don't know, I rank myself red, blue, white, black, green in most of these. red, blue, white, black, green, from most of these.

So blue's my number two, green's my number five. So I don't really, I have a lot of friends, you know, like, for example, Dave Humphries, who, before he became a game designer, was a biologist, right, who, like, studied nature. Like, he really, you know, he really connects to blue-green,

and it really is something that speaks to him. It does not speak to me, but interestingly, he really connects to blue-green, and it really is something that speaks to him. It does not speak to me. But interestingly, when I play, like, when I play, like, like Guilds of Ravnica, and I get to pick my guild to play with, I love playing green-blue. I love the gameplay of green-blue. And I think the interesting thing is, I think in the context of a game,

like, where it's not like a personal thing there's something fun about that sort of exploration understanding like in the context of a game I really enjoy it I love all of the like certain combinations it's a very Johnny Jenny combination because their

desire to explore really there's a lot of expression that goes on and there's a lot of neat trying things out. And, you know, if you look at how blue and green function, that they experiment a lot. And they try things. And they make weird things will be made. And in some level

they do it because they want to understand the bigger picture. But I enjoy, it's funny, I enjoy the act of the experiment. So I really enjoy playing blue-green where I don't philosophically connect, anyway a little insight into my personality

okay what else can I say about blue and green um okay, so the interesting thing is um I think when we talk, the thing I keep mentioning when I talk about these color pairs is it's very easy

to sort of go to the guilds from Ravnica because in a lot of ways it's the low hanging fruit like it was the first time we had done any sort of factioning based on two color pairs so for the most cases the one exception was white blue

for weird tournament reasons we didn't. But other than the white-blue, we went for lowest common denominator in all of them. And so blue-green, like I said, I think blue-green, when I talk about experimenting and improving upon nature, improving upon nature on some level is a little more cynic than it is blue-green. Proving by nature on some level is a little more simic than it is blue-green because I think blue-green in general – I mean I guess if you think of nature in a larger context and less of just biology, that's fine as a blue-green thing. I think in the simic, we got really into like the island of Dr. Moreau sort of things. And they're really in sort of the weird biological experimentation.

But the cool thing I think is you could take blue and green and apply it to anything. Go in the world and find any aspect of the world and that blue-green would go explore that aspect of the world. Like, for example,

take people. Like, I think I could see blue-green getting very into anthropology, right? Into understanding people. And once again, they wouldn't care about the individual person,

but they'd be fascinated by people as a whole. And so I think that the blue-green sort of personality, if you will, and as I say this, I can see a little of this in me,

so maybe I'm more green than I let on. But the blue-green personality essentially is the idea of there is so much out there that is not understood. You know, the key to sort of bettering yourself is going out and understanding what is already there. And that's the fun part where you can see the green and blue come together. Like blue definitely seeks knowledge, right? But blue and green, like green wants you to accept the world around you.

So it's kind of funny when blue and green get together. It's like I'm going to study the world. I'm going to study what's there. I'm going to study the world. I'm going to study what's there. And in some ways, there's an introspective dive that happens when you go there. Like, okay, I want to understand,

I mean, pick whatever you want to, you know, whether it's, like I said, while the Simic does biology, you could do anthropology. I mean, pick any science or any facet of the world. Blue-green could sort of delve into that and have fun exploring that. That is the sort of the core essence of blue-green is the idea that there are things around us

that I want to understand and I want to go deep. I want to go deep and understand that thing. And then once I understand that thing, I want to apply that thing to see if I can affect that thing. That's a funny thing because I think what happens is green says to blue, okay, you love knowledge and I'm eager to learn about the world around me. Come learn with me, right? And then blue looks at green and says, well, you want, you know, you do believe in adaptation, right?

Well, why don't we just, you know, let's speed that along a little bit. Let's, you know, like once we find something, we can affect it and we can sort of see the system. And so that, my friends, is kind of the core to blue-green. Anyway, that's most of the stuff I want to say for today. I hope, by the way way you guys enjoyed this series um it's fun it's funny i i do so many different things on the color pie that it's fun to just sort of try different experiments and things and so this one's been a little more me being me being philosophical and talking through stuff and um i feel like i learn stuff when i do these so uh at least i'm hoping you guys are enjoying it.

I'm enjoying it. Hopefully we're all enjoying it. So, but as always, I would love to get feedback on any and all I've done. This is the 10th one. It took me a while to do them because of the pandemic, but I finally finished. So I would love to get feedback

and I do want to do future color pie stuff. I know I get a lot of people asking about three color. I got to solve that one. That's a little tricky. As you get more and more colors in, it gets a little bit harder to do definitional stuff. But anyway, I'll try to figure that one out. But if anyone has any good ideas for things to do with color pie, I would love to do other color pie stuff. So I would love to hear any ideas people have. But anyway, I think that's all I have to say today. And I can see my desk, so I'm almost to work. Anyway, guys, I hope you guys have enjoyed this and my other nine podcasts.

And once again, by the way, if you weren't aware, this is number 10. There's nine other ones of this series to listen to. And I have numerous other series on... I've talked about the colors individually. I did a series of podcasts where I spoke as if I were the colors, and I looked at it from the point of view of the color. I've talked about why they're enemies. I've talked about why they're allies.

Anyway, there's lots and lots of stuff out there. So, if the color pie is at all fascinating to you, and, by the way, I've also written about it in articles. There's 30-some articles I've written. So if this topic is fascinating to you and it's fascinating to me, there's a lot of resources that just I alone have done that you can go listen to. And there's other resources that other people have done. But I've probably done the lion's share of it. So anyway, please go read that stuff if it sounds interesting.

And guys, I will see you all next time. Oh, sorry, sorry. I see that I'm at my desk. So we all know that means this is 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.