Hello, everyone. This is the color White from Magic: The Gathering. As regular readers are aware, Mister Rosewater is a huge fan of Magic's color pie, having extensively written and talked about it. Many years ago, he was kind enough to let each of the colors of Magic appear on his podcast Drive to Work to talk about ourselves, our core philosophies, and how we see the world, including the other colors of Magic. He is now providing us each a Making Magic article to do the same. Today, I will be your guest writer, and I believe you will hear from the other four colors of Magic before the end of the year.

To explain my philosophy, I would like to begin by taking a step back and looking at the world as a whole. There are a lot of problems. There is crime, injustice, hunger, disease … just an endless amount of suffering. But here is the important thing—there does not have to be. I will use hunger as my example. There is enough food for everyone. Starvation happens not because we do not have the means to feed people but because people prioritize things over the welfare of others.

We can live in a world where everyone gets the things they need. No one needs to go hungry. No one needs to be without shelter. No one needs to be lonely. No one needs to exist in fear. No one needs to live a life of pain and suffering. There exists the possibility that the whole world can live in peace. Take a moment to let that sink in. Most suffering happens because we choose not to stop it. But we can. The potential for a utopia is real. We have the means to get there.

And here is the best part: it only requires us to make one change. I will acknowledge it is a big change, but it is a doable one. We simply need to learn how to put the needs of the group ahead of our own personal needs. Instead of asking, "What do I want?" we must learn to ask, "What does the group need?" If each person thinks about the needs of the group and acts accordingly, we can create a utopia where everyone has their basic needs met. No hunger. No crime. No suffering.

So, why is everyone not doing this? This is because the motivations of people naturally come from an internal place. Your emotions, your physical drives, your instincts come from within. They are focused on what you, the individual, want. If you are hungry, you desire food for yourself. People do naturally have things like empathy, but that needs to be nurtured. The concept that other people have problems that you can act to alleviate is something that has to be learned.

That is the big challenge. People, when left to their own devices, will inherently act selfishly. Not out of ill will, but simply because it is the path of least resistance. The temptation to do things that will benefit you is strong. That is the conflict we are up against. But there is good news. People inherently want to help one another. There is a natural goodness within each of us that seeks to help others. I admit it is more apparent in some individuals than others, but it is there in all of us, and you can witness it if you look around your community.

But how do we get from where we are to where we need to be? First, people need guidance. People will do the right thing if you nudge them in the right direction. How do we do that? The answer is simple: structure. Humans are creatures of habit. If you can provide the incentives to act correctly, they will, and they will continue to repeat those behaviors. That is the key; we have to create a society where helping one another is core to how it is built.

In addition, we need to provide incentives, both positive and negative. If one does the right thing, they get a reward. People need personal connection. If you do what you are supposed to do, you become a valued member of the community. You become part of something larger than yourself, something that provides companionship and positive reinforcement.

If one does the wrong thing, they get punished. Maybe you lose some of your resources, like money. If it is serious enough, you can lose your freedom and be locked away. In addition, you can be shunned by the community. People react to incentives. Inherently, people want to belong. Peer pressure is powerful.

The two biggest dangers to our plans are selfishness and recklessness. In regards to the first, people act out of self-interest either because they do not care about others or they are unaware of how their actions affect others. Both are dangerous.

The most useful tool to tackle selfishness is morality. You have to teach people that there is an objective right and an objective wrong. If you do right, you are good. If you do wrong, you are evil. There are rewards for being good and punishments for being evil.

Part of this relationship is how you are taught to feel about yourself. By doing good things you get to feel proud of yourself. If you do evil things, you are taught to feel bad about yourself. Again, good people get to become part of the community, and evil people are shunned from it. In the long term, good people should receive the incentive of an ultimate reward, while evil people should receive the threat of a punishment. This is most often expressed through religion.

I know that, in a vacuum, this may sound harsh. But if you want to influence behavior, it is important that you strongly communicate what is expected of your society. Again, a lot is on the line. One path leads to peace, the other suffering. Each rule that is broken means someone is hurt. If we have to take a heavy hand to ensure peace, to ensure that people can live a life without suffering, it is what has to be done. We are fighting a lot of powerful forces, so our messages have to be loud and clear.

The most useful tool to tackle recklessness is the law. The law presents a list of things you are not allowed to do because they endanger society. If you commit one of these acts, there is a punishment of proper weight. The greater the threat to society, the larger the punishment. It is important that these rules are public and clear. They delineate from what you can do and cannot do. Like morality, there should not be any gray areas in these rules. Also, as with morality, you need to teach the public that breaking these rules leads to consequences.

But what about people accidentally getting caught up in the system? What if someone does something wrong but for an important reason? Perhaps someone kills another, but only in self-defense. This is where you get the judicial system. People can judge the circumstances to make sure that people are not punished incorrectly.

Both systems come at a large cost but have a huge impact. They provide jobs, create a sense of safety, build community, and push toward our goal. Speaking of jobs, an important part of creating a society where people look out for the group is making sure that everyone has their place in that society. Clergy members, police, judges, politicians, and public servants all get roles people can take to help the group. In addition, there might be others outside your group that have ill will toward your society. That is why you also need a military, to provide someone who can protect against those who wish your society ill.

This is one of the strengths of a community. When each component piece comes together, all of them prioritizing the needs of the group, you create something stronger than the sum of its parts. This is one of the greatest weapons we have against our enemies.

I should stress that, ideally, we would exist in a world where we have no enemies, where everyone in the whole world is working together for a shared vision, but sometimes on the path to that vision, we will have to build smaller groups. The hope is that our ideals will spread with time as others see the fruit of our actions.

The combination of morality and law is important because it gives depth to your message. You should not kill for two reasons. First, it is morally wrong. Second, it is against the law. This means there are all sorts of repercussions—these disincentives can be physical (you will go to jail), emotional (people will shun you), or spiritual (you will be punished in your afterlife). Different people will prioritize different incentives, so the breadth of responses will help motivate a wide variety of people.

Let me spend a little time talking about my fellow Magic colors. I will start with one of my allies, Blue. Blue and I share a love of civilization. If you want your society to work at its best, you need to create systems to do so. Blue loves making systems—the more intricate, the better—and is motivated to optimize how things work. Blue likes thinking things through and planning. Blue wants to make society the best version of itself that it can be. That is all music to my ears. That is the same motivation I have for creating the structure I just talked about.

Now, Blue cares a lot more about the civic side of things (government, law, the courts) than the moral side. Blue is a little more focused on constant improvement over the impact such decisions have on the people. For example, Blue is much more willing to allow people to fall through the cracks if the overall system is improved. Blue is trying to raise the ceiling (creating the highest potential), while I am more focused on raising the floor (ensuring an absolute level of care for all). But we have a lot of shared goals.

My biggest issue with Blue is that Blue spends far too much time caring about the individual. Just as Blue wants to optimize society, it wants to optimize each member of that society. To do so, it will distribute things in ways that I think of as unfair. If a given person shows potential at a certain skill, Blue gives them access to more resources to meet that potential. That comes at the expense of someone else, which can undercut my ultimate goal of ensuring everyone's needs are met.

With Green, I share a love of community. We both understand the power of the group, that individuals can come together to make something greater than themselves. Green realizes that no creature can be left behind, as each contributes to the larger picture, what Green likes to call "the web of life." Like me, Green focuses on finding what role each creature plays in its connection to the larger ecosystem.

Opposite from Blue, Green cares more about the moral side of things, although there is a greater emphasis on spirituality than traditional religion. Also, Green does not use morality to educate or provide guidelines for what is acceptable behavior. Green's creatures rely more on their instinct, filling a role they were born into.

Where Green and I most differ is the role of restraint. I believe that to have an orderly society, there have to be rules in place that keep people from acting on impulse. Green, in contrast, functions more on instinct. That is not emotional per se but is instead a way of acting on internal motivations that are not inherently driven by the welfare of the group. In other words, Green has a wild side that scares me a little.

This brings me to my two enemies. I will start with Red. Red is chaos personified. Red does whatever it wants to do without any thought of the repercussions. This is quite dangerous. I created laws to stop this kind of thing. People, left to their own impulses, will do dangerous things. Some people will get hurt and others will die. For what? So that Red can just do whatever it wants to do?

The insidious part is that Red makes it so enticing. Yes, there are limitations built into a system for the protection of its people. I get how that can feel restricting at times, but Red uses that frustration as a justification to not have any responsibility for its actions. "Oops, you died," Red says, "but look at the giant fireball I made." I said before that recklessness is one of the two greatest threats to peace, and Red trumpets recklessness as a virtue. That is problematic and must be stopped with whatever tools we have at our disposal.

The one thing I do admire about Red is that it seems to care about personal connections between people. Besides myself, Red is the Magic color most capable of self-sacrifice to protect another. True, in Red's case, it has to be someone that they have an emotional connection to, but it is admirable that Red can care so deeply about the needs of another.

Which brings us to Black, the champion of selfishness. Black treats immorality like a trophy, something to be proud of. Recklessness is dangerous, but at least that is not on purpose. Black thinks of violence, disease, and cruelty as tools, things it can use to get what it wants. Nothing is taboo to Black. It will do whatever it needs to do to get what it wants, no matter who gets hurt in the process. In fact, Black seems to revel in causing others pain. Their end goal is a dystopia, a world where most suffer so a few can thrive. It is the exact opposite of what we are working toward.

What makes this so dangerous is that each person has desires to prioritize themself. I have to create elaborate systems to educate people, while Black feeds their worst impulses. And Black can start small. It is so easy to get someone to make a tiny selfish gesture. And once they are comfortable with that, you just keep slightly raising the stakes. It is a slippery slope, one that can lead to doing horrible things, things you will later regret when it is too late to do anything about it.

Interestingly, Black has come to respect the power of systems. Black saw how I was using religion and law and has created its own forms of it. However, they can still be effective in educating and motivating people.

Which brings me to my strengths and weaknesses. Mister Rosewater likes to say those are each an extension of the other. I have embraced order as a powerful tool. It helps me shape environments and gives me access to more answers to different threats than any other color of Magic. Given the time to plot and plan, I can solve most any problem.

The downside of that is each of my answers is prescriptive. That is to say it is tailored to a certain problem, so if a different threat shows up, one I was not prepared for, I do not have the flexibility to adapt quickly. I can often get caught off guard if I did not properly anticipate what was coming.

Another one of my strengths is my morality. I know right from wrong and can act accordingly. When I lay my head down at night, I can do so without regret, knowing that I held myself to the highest standards.

Part of that is that there are things I refuse to do. For example, I will not kill unless it is absolutely necessary. I choose instead to imprison my foes, but that means there are times when they escape and undo my work. That does not happen to other colors of Magic, like Black, who makes sure to permanently remove any threat, but I understand living correctly comes at a cost. I cannot win the day if I do not do it honorably. Each time you justify doing something you know you should not, you are taking a step away from utopia instead of toward it.

I get that what I am asking for is difficult. Doing the right thing is way harder than doing the easy thing, but what I have to offer is important. We, as a society, have the chance to think bigger, to be better. We do not have to accept that the world is as it is. We can dream of a world free of suffering. We have the power to improve our lives if we just have the courage and conviction to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. Before I go, Mister Rosewater wanted me to say that he is interested in your feedback on what I had to say today. You can email him or contact him through his social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and maybe TikTok).

I was told if you come back next week, Mister Rosewater will be talking about the player psychographics.

Until then, may you think of how your actions affect those around you.