MtG Color Political Compass

[Snatch Steal]

This topic could belong in a multitude of other sections but general is a safe bet

 

 

White puts the good of the group before the good of the individual.

Green stresses tradition and nature over nurture, as well as strictly enforced roles.

Red focuses on self-expression and personal freedom.

Black incentivizes each individual to think only of their own wellbeing.

Blue wants to see perfection and intends to use a collection of resources to achieve that perfection.

 

So basically, Nicol Bolas isn’t just a God-Pharaoh, but also a smug libertarian centrist. Like Sargon.

 

Does your Deck coincide with your political leaning? I main Vampires and lean libertarian, and Nicol Bolas suits my three favorite colors very well. However, my current Commander deck is White/Green, so obviously playstyle can transcend the color pie.

 

What else does this political compass entail? Since character motives are likely tied very closely to their colors, does this bolster our understanding of the color pie?

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

but i play colourless

[Dova]

How does this work for Black/White or Green/Red? 

Black + White = Blue confirmed

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Ohoho boy. I pretend to be YCM's expert on this, so get funking ready.

White puts the good of the group before the good of the individual.

White wants order. Though the focus upon the group is used often to differentiate itself from black, it has shown time and again that mono-white figures act against the group if it works toward their own rules. Authoritarian, whether it be toward a specific leadership, or a commune.

Green stresses tradition and nature over nurture, as well as strictly enforced roles.

Definitely a closer shot than white, but it's important to remember the importance of growth to green. The purest green ideology of green would be a social darwinist, capitalist society. Those in power are there because they are powerful, as nature dictates.

Red focuses on self-expression and personal freedom.

Damn straight. This is why I like red, it's really easy to grasp.

Black incentivizes each individual to think only of their own wellbeing.

Black wants to win. It serves the "self," but whether that refers to an individual, or perhaps an entire nation, can vary.

Blue wants to see perfection and intends to use a collection of resources to achieve that perfection.

Blue just wants to know everything. If given the option between omniscience and omnipotence, it would take the former. Even though the latter can lead to the former, it's just adding extra steps. The strive for perfection isn't the goal for blue, rather being a means to learn better about what the limits truly are.

 

 

 

As for how these all apply to politics... It's complicated, and absolutely does not land neatly on a grid. People aren't just a few colors, ideologies aren't just a few colors. Every real concept has some degrees of each color within, and those fluctuate within it as needed. The best way to see how combinations of color can translate into political leanings is by examining the guilds of ravnica, and even then we can see that the strict definitions by which the colors are explained don't always hold true.

 

The colors of MTG much better represent personal values than political, and things like the compass in OP are reductionist at best, and often misleading.

How does this work for Black/White or Green/Red? Black + White = Blue confirmed

this is a good example of the flaw in such a chart. Red and Green are depicted as opposites, despite being ally colors that share a large common ground

[Simping For Hina]

Giga got the biggest problem in trying to compare the color pie to anything beyond personal attributes. Value isn't the right word here for multiple reasons as it is more of nature and trait rather something purely cognitive. The color pie reflect aspects that all things have a tendecy toward and politics is not limited by such, rather a culmination of.

 

If you want to turn the color pie into something to base sentiment on, you have to understand that the color pie is only grounds to develop an idea but not fully explote that idea. That is why we have things in MTG called "bleeds", because the colors are not simply limited to what categorizes them. The colors have a reflection and a goal but the core structure is not fully realized in the colors themselves.

 

This is a cool idea but one that lacks anything truly vital to what the color pie in MTG is. It is like when people used the guilds to define the same thing, it simply does not correlate cleanly without losing the meaning or aspects of the topics in question.

[Yui]

This chart also begs the question of what happens when color and/or political identities don't match up. Dova brought up the point of black/white and green/red already, but I'll use myself as a clearer example. It's been loosely debated every now and again if I'm Naya (WGR) or Bant (WGU), but everyone definitely agreed during those that I'm White/Green to a T; red or blue is just a third color at best. Yet whenever I take these political chart tests, I consistently end up in the bottom-left where red has been placed. Taking the chart to heart, I should either be up on the authoritarian side, roughly in the middle, or have red as my main color instead of green or white.

 

You could try saying that people with multi-color identities should be put in the middle ground between their colors, but then I ought to be strictly in white's corner instead of red's assuming I'm WGR instead of WGU, and identities such as black/white or green/red would be the same spot as blue. A chart like this is a nice idea, but the execution of such a thing would be immensely more complicated than ths one you've got here. A square just doesn't cut it; you'd need like an octagon at best.