| Color | Nickname | Social construct | Cause worth dying for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orange | StriveDrive | Capitalism, Democracy, and Science | Give me liberty or give me death |
The Japanese were confronting the technological results of The Age of Enlightenment. This was a turn away from the church and God towards looking for the Truth within. From this stage emerged modern science, capitalism, and democracy. America’s Declaration of Independence is a quintessential expression of Orange:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
Self-evident means that when you introspect on it, it becomes clear that it is true. Math proofs are meant to be self-evident. This was the age of Reason. Notice how this puts the source of Truth back in the individual. The purpose of life is now not focused on God but instead the pursuit of happiness. And we need our liberty (freedom) to go and do that. Both free market capitalism and democracy trust the wisdom of the crowd to get us to the best answers. This was a very radical idea at the time, and yet it has worked out surprisingly well. Markets do seem to be a much better mechanism than command economies and democracy is a much better governing system than all the alternatives.
So when those American Black ships steamed into Tokyo, Japan was faced with a stark choice. Stay Blue and inevitably become some western (Orange) country’s helpless colony, or make the switch to Orange. Japan chose to make the switch. This was a remarkable period of time called the Meiji era. Japan is the only non-western country that made this leap during this time. It was maybe a century behind technologically, but because of all those years of peace and prosperity it had a strong cohesive base to build on. Remember up till now almost no Japanese had ever left the country (or if they had, they were not allowed back under pain of death). So Japan sent out Samurai nobles to study what they could learn from the different western countries to find the best ideas and bring them home. Within twenty years Japan was making enormous strides towards becoming an economic powerhouse. Within forty years it became a constitutional democracy and became one of the “Great Powers”. Then, just like the other Great Powers it started to set up its very own colonies.
Which is exactly the problem when people only focus on themselves – it can cause a lot of suffering. Japan avoided becoming colonized but went on to become a colonizer itself. That seems to be where Orange ultimately takes us. The core irony of America is that the phrase “All men are created equal” was written by a slave owner who was forcing his underage slave girls to have sex with him. Yuck. Maybe, just maybe, all those appeals to Reason weren’t as fair and impartial as they claimed. And what about all those people who were not white and male? What about their freedom and pursuit of happiness?