Colors of systems

Remember those references to Magic the Gathering I threatened to make in that first blog post?
Now I'll actually be using them.

The part that struck me most about the class discussion on Tuesday was the differences between the system our world seems to run on currently, the system the Jesus seems to have wanted people to follow, how people act when disaster strikes, and where the homeless and their life-style fits into all of this.

The system we currently have reflects the style known as Orzhov (White and Black mana together), using a highly structured and hierarchical system that keeps everyone in a near-permanent state of debt, while slowing grinding away at one's morality in return for greater monetary wealth. White is for the structure and order, Black is for the corruption and ever-mounting avarice.

Jesus' proposed ideas of creating a Kingdom of God here and now by actually being decent people when dealing with one another most closely fits another two-color combination sometimes called Selesnya (Green and White mana). This combination focuses the most on creating a society that cares for and works towards the betterment of all those who are a part of this community. This is also the color-combination of those who are involved in disasters, doing whatever they can to help those around them. However, I would also argue that Jesus' ideals also have aspects of Red mana, which emphasizes emotions, including compassion, as well as a sense of at least understanding individuality that would go along with Jesus' ideas of no-one having authority over others.

As you probably noticed, Jesus' ideals and our current way of running things share one color, White mana, but they use it differently. Our current Orzhov-like way of doing things uses White as a foundation and structure that resists changes to it's core way of running things. Jesus' use of White works more along the lines of caring about everyone and creating equality. As I mentioned in that first post, all five colors of Magic can be positive or negative, depending on how they are used.

Finally, those who are blessed, the homeless, also fit another color-combination: Green and Black. This combination shows up a lot in those who are at the bottom rungs of society, with people make use of whatever they can get their hands on in order to survive. They really aren't focused on anything other than themselves (Black) and surviving for another day (Green).

As a final note, yes this really is how my thought-process works most of the time. I figure out what categories and terms fit with whatever is being discussed, and process the information that way. It's not always Magic, but that just happened to work especially well for this topic. Adios.