Here is an excerpt from today's message on the Magic game.  I find it very
interesting, and an example of perhaps the effort to draw players away from
their faith, the basis of morality.  If anyone wants the url to this stuff,
let me know.

Helen


The message board thread that Mark's column spawned is one of the most
fascinating I've ever seen. Mark made some intriguing claims about morality
as it relates to black (including that black is not inherently evil (or
always evil) and that every color has the potential for evil) and as of
this writing that thread is up to 7 pages of very intelligent debate on the
nature of morality as it relates to Magic. Its the kind of thread that
reminds how much fun it is to be smart and now I want to use my soapbox to
throw in a few of my own opinions:

I think several of you are misreading Nietzsche. Specially, I don't read
Nietzsche as claiming that you should ignore morality and just do whatever
you want. Instead, I think Nietzsche exhorts each of us to examine morality
for ourselves and make up our own minds about what code we should follow.
Beyond Good and Evil is a fascinating study of the history of morality (in
particular the way in which Christianity changed the fundamental measuring
scale for actions and/or intentions from Good vs Bad to Good vs Evil) and
the upshot in my mind is that we should attempt to move beyond the labels
that we've inherited. The herd blindly follows whatever ethical tenets are
handed to them (by their parents or their religion or whatever) and the way
to separate yourself from the herd is not to ignore ethics, but instead to
think for yourself about ethics and come up with an ethical code to live
your own life by that you understand and believe in. Nietzsches
supermanisnt immoral, or even amoral. Instead he has just evolved beyond
good and evil.(Then again, this might just be what I want Nietzsche to be
saying.)

Im not saying that Nietzsche isnt black. His philosophy is quite consistent
with the color black. I just think his position is more subtle and more
interesting than he was being credited for. In fact, note that my reading
of Nietzsche is remarkably in tune with the way Mark explained blacks
attitude: Don't stick any of your rules on mesays the black mage to the
white mage. My reading of Nietzsche puts him over on the blue side of
black, but he is still inherently selfish, which is the real essence of black.

Meanwhile I think Bart Simpson is clearly black. Bart does tend to create
chaos and I can see why its initially tempting to call him red, but if you
look more closely you see that Bart deliberately and deviously plans to
create chaos because it amuses him to watch. Contrast that with Homer the
truly red Simpson whose actions typically have no real rhyme or reason.
Homer is just guided by whatever his passions tell him to do at any given
moment.

One last thought, which is really just a clarification. There will never be
a simple answer to the question of whether actions or intentions determine
moral right-ness. In fact, this one debate has been raging for thousands of
years and there are very smart people firmly entrenched on both sides of
it. However, all that history is what makes this question such an
interesting litmus test for the colors. When Mark said Evil is not about
beliefs but action she was speaking in blacks voice, of course. White
insists on exactly the opposite position.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this game?