When I was in high school, I loved taking personality tests. Categorizing someone’s cognitive disposition always interested me. What makes a person happy, or conversely, angry? What kind of people gravitate towards particular careers, and more importantly, why? It was as an easy-to-swallow personality indicator in a time when you are most unsure about yourself. Seeing the change from one personality to another as your grew inspired self-reflection. I’m sure there are career psychologists who sneer at this particular methodology, but it is fun to look at. But is it useful?
This ability to categorize our emotions and desires into labels is immensely beneficial to a writer. Think about it: in any profession where you have to replicate a personality you are not, it helps to have a cheat sheet of what might bother or entice that character. It serves as a barrier that prohibits your own motivations from bleeding into your work or else all your characters might suffer the same tragic flaws over and over again. If you know the hidden motivations, desires, and irks of your characters, it will be easier to have readers identify with them, and thus, become more likable or real.
Tests like the Meyers-Briggs, a very popular online personality test, fall flat for this purpose. These tests often assume that an individual can fall neatly into a congruent package. Very rarely do they showcase faults or shortcomings, rather displaying what makes you unique. Do you like to plan and have a disdain for incompetence? Clearly, you are an “INTJ.” Are you the life of the party, bursting with energy and gusto? “ENFP” all the way! What is failed to be conveyed with these descriptions is a lack of interaction between other personalities, notably conflicts. Conflict is at the heart of every great work. Illuminated conflict you didn’t know existed is pulls us in the most. It’s why we love stories about redemption, war, unreachable love, or inner turmoil. Without conflict, life is just about existing.
Meyers-Briggs inability to explain your own inner turmoil is the biggest mark against system. It fails to describe the complex inner struggles that a lot of us go through. How do you neatly describe someone who encourages you to go out and make your mark on the world but then does not allow you to fail? It’s impossible within those systems because they assume people are defined by their labels rather than how their personalities interact with other characters. People do not waltz through life and ignore their surroundings. People object to things, rationalize their unwise actions, and empathize with those similar in thought. You need a system more adaptable than what these online tests can offer.
I then discovered a personality labeling system so deeply rooted in conflict that satisfied my needs. I became enamored with using it to help describe people in my life, characters in entertainment, anything I could to give a label to. You could have two personalities who their very nature is pitted contradictory to one another. I made small, innocuous tests to see if it had worth. Once I had a handle on what personality traits someone had, I would ask what they felt about the opposite spectrum. Almost every time I got a emotional response. If they were talkative, they would go on about the deep moral issues they did not like. If I played devil’s advocate, the person in question got more intense. Only mentioned a conflicting opinion invoked a dire response.
I think what we don’t like is often just as important as what we do. Ever go out to eat with people and no one can decide where they want to go? People love to stand idly by and wait until someone else chooses. Ask them where they don’t want to eat and you will immediately have candidates scratched off from the list. The same works with personalities. Someone might not be able to describe why they are, but they sure can explain what they are not.
In this system, there are five distinct personality descriptors that form a hexagon to show their relations to one another. Points on the hexagon that touch are sympathetic to each others cause, whereas those on the opposite spectrum are vehemently opposed to its view of the world. Here’s when it gets tricky: what if you can combine attributes together to form complex emotional dualities, or even trinities? Forcing two opposing view points creates a fragmented individual who does not make sense on paper, but more often than not exists in the real world. It creates turmoil. Someone who shares half of your beliefs but not the full picture and why they oppose it are all laid out. It works brilliantly for the use of writing.
This system was not discovered by an emotional intelligence scientist or an author, as you might expect. It was developed by combination mathematician, although he did have a Ph.D. His name was Richard Garfield, a Philadelphia-born game developer who is most known for his creation of the first modern collectible card game, Magic: The Gathering. It is in this game that these traits were defined and became essential toward depicting individuals beliefs.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with this level of nerd culture, Magic is a card game about defeating your opponent by casting spells and summoning creatures. If you believe this is not exactly grounds for deep psychological analysis, you would be right in most cases. People tend to romanticize their hobbies, which I am also guilty of. I once tried to explain to my father that working together in an online MMO is akin to real life work experience. No, I don’t believe that anymore. You can excuse me; I was sixteen. However, every facet of the games mechanics has been designed around five worldviews that drive the game’s fundamental theme of conflict home.
The five traits are described as colors that represent its core principles: White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. In the game, you build color-coordinated resources for to play cards from the corresponding group. From the moment you start to make your deck, you are forced with the task of choosing specific colors to play as, usually two. You simply do not have the resources to use cards from every color at once. Even on top of that is that your play style might be more akin to playing Blue than Red. If you’re starting to worry that this article is devolving into game theory, fret not. We’re going to jump back to their philosophical design in a moment. It is important to know the basis of the game because it forces your choice of play style, and by proxy, why you would choose one color over another. It forces you to pick a side and oppose another.
Each of the colors has a goal they want to achieve and obtains it in a particular manner. To sum it in one sentence phrases:
White wants peace through order.
Blue wants perfection through knowledge.
Black wants power through opportunity.
Red wants freedom through action.
Green wants harmony through acceptance.
Here is a visual representation of each color. Note that each one has two defining traits, like “Parasitism” and “Amorality” for Black. The layout of these are important because it is the tie to the color to the left or right of the description. So for Amorality, it aligns with Red which conversely uses Chaos to match it with Black.
Hopefully, one of these will strike you as something that suits your world view, or more importantly, something that you oppose. It is more likely that you like two or three of them. That’s good, because that means you are a step closer to finding what you believe in and by process of elimination, your colors. Let’s walk through each one of these very briefly to familiarize ourselves with the characteristics. As we move from color to color, we will maintain the order of which they are allied. When we say allied, we mean colors who can emphasize with those around it. Conflict also brings sides together as much as it separates it, and brilliantly the individual colors are torn between two extremes of its view points.
White
White wants peace, and strides toward it through order. When a character embodies White, they see that the world full of suffering. They make great attempts to quell the forces that expel harm on those weaker than itself. Because of its eye for the well-being of the meek and helpless, White sees itself as a moral authority of righteousness. The only way get past the chaos of life is to create societies in which we can take care of each other. The individual is second to the health of the group. We are stronger as a whole than we are divided. To maintain this peace, they set rules and regulations on what is allowed, forbidding anything that might hurt the well being of the group. It keeps people honorable and has life laid out so that it is accessible to all, not just those who can figure out the system and abuse it.
While this might sound like the color of good guys, you would be wrong. None of the colors have any inclination towards one side of the moral spectrum, as it is mostly up to your perception. A color you hail as being genuine is the villain in another’s eyes. Many villains, both in fiction and our world, have White as their fundamental color. The term fascism in its purest form is a White strategy. Fascism prohibits anything that goes against the “state”, or if it strikes your fancy, religion. White squelches dissenting opinions because they upset the status quo. However, just because a character might have White characteristics does not make them religious; but instead, they share the same values at the core of modern religious beliefs. Charity, self-sacrifice, a moral objection to those who would poison their way of life with unnecessary greed. White, through its desire to keep everyone’s needs in mind, also changes slower than almost any other group, as it is only as fast as its slowest member.
Blue
Blue seeks perfection, and believes it is most obtainable through knowledge. The definition term perfection here is a world in which we can fine tune to the perfect living environment. Blue believes with enough information and time, you can always make the best decision for your life. So it takes its time to rationalize outcomes and weigh choices rather than act needlessly. Blue believes we are all born on a blank slate, and with enough planning you can achieve any goal you want. Blue believes you should keep your mind open and shield yourself from your natural impulses, as they can lead to risk and ruin. Because of its value of information, Blue is very cold emotionally. It believes that they just get in the way of true clarity that only data can provide. I read once that Blue might not understand the joke you just told to it, but it would be able to tell you the origin of the language you spoke to it in. Because of its desires to learn, it also is responsible for innovation. A task like programming software is very Blue: a language created to serve the purpose of conveying data, and every slight nuance has large implications. It requires planning and reinvention to maintain and does not work simply because you want it to. Your inputs must be logical, as the machine reads them literally. Blue is both the programmer and the program.
Blue might not understand the joke you just told to it, but it would be able to tell you the origin of the language you spoke to it in
Often a misconception is that if you are smart, you must be Blue because it tends to read and think the most. Far from it. Blue values intellect, but it does not necessarily possess it. It surely does not have the best ability to think on its feet. Because of its reliance on planning, if a proverbial wrench is thrown in its way, it can often squander Blue’s hard work. That’s why Blue characters have backup plans for their backup plans, which forces them to try to rationalize every significant encounter that might happen. Obviously, this takes time. If they are not alloted that time, Blue is often inept and useless. Putting high pressure on Blue causes its cracks to show. In the same light, their thoughts often walk the line of ethical and unethical, which is why they are neatly situated between White and Black. If a choice requires you to have a heart, you do not want to present it to Blue.
Black
Black desires power and believes it can be achieved through opportunity. It is the color of nihilism, individuality, and getting what you want, no matter the cost. Its enemies label it unmoral, which Black believes is inherently a misconception. It believes in amorality, or the lack of morality. It doesn’t exist in Black’s world. Humanity made it up as a code of honor that is often used against people as much as for. Black believes that you have to be open to opportunities to make something of yourself and not be afraid of the hard choices you might have to make. This does not make Black uncaring or a sociopath, but simply it puts itself first in the order of the universe. If people took care of themselves instead of waiting for others to make it right for you, the world would be a better place. To Black, the world does not care for you one iota. And if you are unable to adapt, to think, or to innovate, you get what is coming to you. Use or be used, kill or be killed. Harsh, but this is not a color of rainbows and sunshine. Black has does not sugar coat reality. It did not create the wickedness in men and it does not believe there is anything we can do to remove it. You must be vindictive if threatened to maintain your own survival.
Often, people see this color as inherently evil, which is either entirely a misconception or coming from White or Green. It will take care of others if it is beneficial to itself or its goals. Sometimes, that comes with a bit of abuse, but if the one being abused does nothing to halt Black’s actions, it deserves its fate. Black just wants to make its own life as fulfilling as it can be. Power, as we stated before, is the goal of Black. And power comes from the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want to. That requires money and influence, which do not come quickly. So Black works hard to obtain its resources. Now, at the same time, Black is not a color of just hard work. It can also be spiteful, cruel, and filled with madness. Black would harm itself without question if the results were ripe enough. It would think even less of harming someone else.
Red
Red wants freedom, and gets it though acting. Whatever Red wants, it does. It will not sit idly by, instead strapping its boots on and gets moving. It represents emotion, destruction, living in the moment, chaos, artistry, and short-sighted thinking. Want someone to go away? Tell them. Red grabs life by the reigns and reviles in every moment. There is an endless supply of joy in this world that often people overlook. Red just wants to feel alive and not waste time doing tasks that do not bring it happiness. Rather than bottling its emotions deep inside its soul, Red expresses itself, often loudly. It values genuine, unfiltered conversation with others. Sometimes, that contact is very blunt. But to Red, that is what makes life great. However, it can also put itself in a pickle because it does not think ahead. Red often has regret for its actions and the destruction it leaves in its wake. Unlike Black, it is a color capable of deep love. It just chooses to express it very emphatically. Most important to Red is the concept of freedom. Red loathes being told what to do. It thinks rules and regulations are unnecessary as they get in the way of what truly matters. It wants to come and go as it pleases.
A lot of intellectuals like to dismiss Red for its lack of foresight, or hindsight for that matter. It is often a color that hurts those around it and apologies often. However, to call it unintelligent is a massive oversight. Almost every artist belongs to Red, because in order to create, you have to express yourself. Have an powerful dislike for the status quo. Want to inspire those around you to act rather than sit idly by. Through creativity, Red can be ingenious and is capable of creating great works and inventions. But rather than its cold calculated counterpart, it does through its heart, not its mind. Red is the kind of person who lives with three dollars in their back account, but they do not ever have to worry about being truly alive.
Green
And lastly, we have Green. Green wants harmony through acceptance. Harmony is simplistic enough; inner peace, a mental calmness. But acceptance can often be a difficult concept for Western society. What it means is that a Green character accepts their role in the world. You are who you are, and your task in life is to be the most “you” as possible. Anything else is a disservice to your natural talents. When Green looks at the world, it cannot help but marvel at the natural order that the chaos of the universe created. Ecosystems comprised of herds of animals that are naturally kept in check without any interference. Green knows the world works because it has worked for an unimaginable amount of years without our intervention and will continue to do so when we are long gone. If you have ever viewed a NASA satellite image of the universe and felt small, you know what concept Green evokes. That sense that this world is far beyond our imagination, and we should be happy to just be a part of it.
Because of that, Green can be very difficult to change. Its enemies see it as a lazy way of thinking, one that just accepts its own destiny. In fact, Green is the only color that actually believes in destiny; that you have a predetermined fate that is beyond an individual’s control. If a meteor crashed into our planet tomorrow, Green would be most certainly right. However, sans catastrophic disaster, you could argue there is a free will in humanity. Green would argue that point, claiming that we still react to our basic primordial instincts rather than the concept of high society. We’re just monkeys in clothes who think we’re superior to other monkeys. If you argue that we are, Green would respond that an elephant has never started a world war, or polluted our drinking water, or potentially doom us all by encapsulating us with greenhouse gases. There is not better or worse in Green’s grand view; there is is. However, Green denies progress, instead putting value in tradition. It reacts instinctively rather than logically. It can be so entrapped seeing the largest picture it might lose motivation to push forward. Green is not the color that pushes us to go to the moon, but rather finds happiness with a meal a day and being true to our selves.
I mentioned before that the colors bleed into each other smoothly. However, look what happens once you move two points away, say from White to Black. The difference is stark and the viewpoints violently oppose one another. That’s where the conflict exists. Red is continuously pulled between accepting its role in the world (Green) and forging its own path to happiness (Black). At the same time, it has qualms with the way White and Blue handle their business. White, the color of order. Blue, the color of forward thinking.
Simplified, this is a battle of:
FREEDOM vs. SECURITY
HEART vs. HEAD
And these are just the base arguments of each color. Moral questions that entire subcategories of fiction and nonfiction try to unravel. Debates heard in the classroom, dinner table, and political rallies across the country. The depth of these issues is staggering. Its benefits for using in character creation is endless as it reminds you of the internal struggle. An unruly teenager is fighting for freedom against the parent who wants to keep them safe. The teen argues that the parent is stifling, the parent fires back the teenager isn’t thinking about its actions. Freedom versus Security. Red versus White.
But what if a character is both Red and White? What if a person is Red, White, and Black?
The possibilities of what that entails is deep enough to be able to sufficiently label a character without exempting nuance. That’s what makes the whole system brilliant. I want to delve deeper into these ideological combinations in my next article on the subject. These conflicts are deep in their own right and are fascinating in how they manifest in a person and dictates their interactions with the world around them. I hope you found the topic as interesting as I do, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Thanks for reading. Stay colorful, party people.
Dumpster Fire 