Allies

I will now post two blog posts inspired by my newest Magic: the Gathering deck. If I had posted them last night, as I had intended, I would have squared away all the blog posts I owe you, assuming that I'm holding to the one-blog-post-per-day rule, which I am. As it stands, even after I publish these next two blog posts, I'll still owe you one for today. Thankfully, I'll have all day to find something that's blogworthy besides my newest Magic: the Gathering cards.

One of the gifts I received for Christmas this year was a new Magic: the Gathering deck. This deck is a White/Red Ally deck, meaning that it uses both White and Red mana and that its core strategy is about summoning Ally creatures.

In Magic: the Gathering, "Ally" is a creature type, just like Dragon or Soldier. Many creature types refer to race, such as Elf or Goblin, and many others refer to occupation, such as Shaman or Soldier. My Ally deck has creatures of many different races and occupations in it. Most of the creatures in the deck are Humans and Kor (which are kind of like Elves), but there are also a few Giants, Minotaurs, and Angels in the deck. Also, most of the creatures are either Soldiers, Warriors, or Knights (though most decks don't mix those three kinds of fighters), but the deck also has Scouts, Shamans, and Wizards in it. There are very few cases in which one creature in my deck shares both a race and occupation with another creature in the deck, yet they all work together very well, mostly because they all decided that they would. Each of them has decided to be a team player, to coordinate their efforts with others, even if their Allies are different from themselves. Despite their differences, they work well together because they each know that they're all on the same team.

Why can't we be like that? People come from many different races and backgrounds, we each have different hobbies and occupations, but I believe that we have many things in common as well. We are all human. We all have the same basic kinds of emotions. We each have a similar sense of right and wrong. Our individual creeds and nationalities may differ, and we may have different perspectives and priorities, but I'm sure there are some things we can all agree on. For example, we all want this world to be a safe and peaceful place to live in (at least, most of us do. There may be a few groups that don't, but I wouldn't consider them allies of humanity). If we all acted on that desire by living peacefully, then there would be a lot less violence in the world. I try not to be hateful and intolerant of others, and I try to be understanding and forgiving toward those who bother me. If we all did that, if we all tried to live together rather than focussing on the things that drive us apart, I think that we all could work together to make this world a safer, more peaceful place.

I may not be the same race as you, and I'd be surprised if we had the same occupation. We probably don't agree on everything, and if we all wanted to focus on our differences, I'm sure we could all find things we could argue about, but why should we? Why would we want to argue with each other and fight against each other when we could work together? Why would we want to be enemies when we could be allies instead?

Perhaps this is all just wishful thinking on my part. Maybe people can't really work together, at least, maybe not everyone, but I still think that we can all choose to be civil with each other, and we can all live together, even if we can't manage to work together. We may not be able to all be each others' allies, but we can at least not be each others' enemies. I think that all of humanity could all learn to live together, despite our differences. At the very least, I think it's worthwhile to try.