Are Black and White Concerned with Perfection?
General forum
Posted on Sept. 15, 2024, 7:15 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
In this post, here, Mark Rosewater asserts that blue is the color that is most focused on achieving perfection, which makes sense, since blue cares about knowledge, but I feel that black is actually the color that is most likely to care about perfection, since it is the color of power and domination, and I also believe that one can make an argument for white also caring about perfection, since it is the color of order, structure, and authority.
What does everyone else say about this? Do you believe that black and white are as concerned about perfection as is blue?
"Perfection" seems to be used here as "the end goal of technical improvement and increased efficiency". It's not the perfect (heh) word for the context, but it's close enough to get the general idea across, and it's a lot shorter.
Black cards about improving itself if improvement helps it gets what it, personally, wants. Black is happy to take shortcuts (demonic pacts, assassinations, etc.) instead of putting in time and energy (long-term study and practice, social reform, etc.) if it sees the shortcuts as effective and useful.
White has a very narrow view of perfection, and tends to force that view onto everyone else. It's not worried about objectively improving the world or itself, it just wants everyone to sit down, shut up, and follow the rules.
To drag red and green in here, they don't worry about actively improving anything. Green believes the world as a whole can take care of itself, and red generally doesn't worry about what the future can or should look like, as long as it can do what it wants.
Blue will take the path that makes it a technical expert, digging into fine details and commiting to research, thereby "perfecting" its knowledge of the issue at hand. If something works, it's kept until something that works better is found. If it doesn't work every time, or doesn't have a reliable pattern, it gets tossed. This extends to such messiness as emotions, biology, free will, and so on. Blue has achieved perfection when every facet of an object, situation, or system is completely controlled, perfectly in sync and perfectly understood.
Basically, white says "What will make this better for everyone?" Black says "What will make this better for me?" Blue says "How can this be more efficient and logical?" The word "perfection" is subjective; each color has its view of a "perfect" world. And, of course, this is built around mechanics for a card game, and isn't super useful for actual personality analysis.
sergiodelrio says... #2
Consider what the goal of a color is, not how they get there. Black's ultimate goal is power, period. If that requires perfection of sorts, black will do it. Blue wants perfection, and if that requires xyz blue will do it, etc. Only for blue perfection is a NECESSITY tho. Ask yourself what is means and what is end
September 15, 2024 7:25 p.m. Edited.