Interesting. So you want to read about Culler Theory, do you? Well, if you’re willing to read, I’m willing to share. So here’s what I’ve dreamed up:

What is a Culler?

The simplest way to describe “cullers” is to compare them to our understanding of colors. We communicate color by mapping specific pigments to specific words. Without words like “red”, “magenta”, and “burgundy”, it becomes difficult to differentiate the color of an apple to that of a fire truck. Cullers serve a similar function; they define a concept that is difficult to perceive without their use. However, instead of describing an intangible component related to visual perception, they describe one related to physical action.

Cullers are an additional property used to characterize how we spend our time. To “cull” is to select. Therefore, any action which does not involve voluntary choice is effectively “cullerless.” Actions such as breathing, eating, and fighting produce no culler when done purely for survival, as survival in most cases is done more on instinct than something like singing or operating heavy machinery. However, even instinctual actions can become infused with culler if additional purpose or meaning is placed behind them. Most people don’t choose to spend their time consciously breathing, but practicing deep breathing for the purpose of training to climb Mount Everest is quite a cullerful action. The primary purpose of cullers is to classify motivation, in order to better perceive how we spend our time.

What’s My Culler?

I’m sure by now you don’t need me to tell you my culler, but what about yours? If you’ve spent enough time online, you’ve likely seen your fair share of personality tests, simple quizzes that seek to box you into one or more categories and explain who you are to some degree. Maybe astrology pins you as a Virgo and Myers-Briggs says you’re INFP, thus making some abstract conclusion about you based on those categories. Put all that aside for now. With cullers, you’re not looking to fit neatly into a category or two. The truth is that everyone makes use of all cullers at some point or another, same as with colors. Imagine living your life only interacting with one color. You wouldn’t even have access to one finger on your hand with that limitation! However, it should be obvious that we do not all spend our time doing the same activities. If we made a map of how much of each culler showed up, what would it look like? How would it change over time?

When we’re young, there is a strong, often burning desire for us to figure out our identity. We’re surrounded by noise, trying to pull us every which way, forces looking to earn our allegiance and teams looking to enlist us. Invariably though, we’ll come to realize that we characterize ourselves by our actions above everything else. Even if you do something you hate, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. It’ll become a part of you, even if you feel like it’s not “who you are.” No matter how you spend your time, the actions you choose to take end up cullering your life.

In order to internalize something, you have to perceive it. Just as we give names to our colors to essentially make them real, so too should we name our cullers. While it’s merely a small step in determining something as high-minded as identity, I’d call it a foundational one. The beginning to a lifelong journey of finding purpose in what we do is to define it.

When talking about a person’s affinity toward a specific culler, I often describe them as “minded” toward that culler. That isn’t to say I approach every situation with a specific mindset. Being minded toward a certain culler is more of a temporary condition than a character trait. Keep that in mind as I explain the different cullers. We will start with the basics.

Primary Cullers

As with colors, the different types of cullers can be broken down into 3 primary types, which can be combined, manipulated, and disrupted to form every other culler. The primary cullers are redd, blu, and yelo.

Redd – Learning

Redd is the culler of learning. Every word we read, every thought we’re given, every logic puzzle we solve, each one adds more redd into the world. As the most prestigious of the primary cullers, redd exists to advance human society. It is defined by its process, rather than the results it achieves, though it has certainly given rise to many great achievements. Thanks to redd, we as a species have science, logic, mathematics, language, and the concept of storytelling. If you ever get a kick out of reading “fun facts”, you likely have a little redd in you.

Blu – Creating

Blu is the culler of creating, the means by which we create what does not exist. Blu is defined by the end result, the fabled “fruits” of one’s labor. Without blu, we would lack music, art, cooking, and most other forms of entertainment, but blu is far from a luxury in our society. It is also the culler of production, the foundational culler of physical labor. The blue-collar worker is also the blu-collar worker. If you’ve ever found yourself doodling in class, that’s your blu seeping out.

Yelo – Socializing

It is well-documented that humans are social creatures. Through cooperation, we have managed to achieve so much that even the most determined redd or blu-minded individual could alone. The culler yelo refers to all social interaction, both cooperative and competitive. Everything from a romantic date to a deathly duel falls under this culler, inviting everything in between to its party. While yelo favors the extrovert, there’s no one who gets by in complete isolation, especially in our digital age. If you’ve found yourself enjoying a conversation or hitting that ‘multiplayer’ option on the main menu, that’s your spark of yelo.

Secondary Cullers

As some of you redd-minders may have picked up already, many of the activities we engage in constantly swirl these three primary cullers together to the point where they are almost worthless in their primary state. What good are ideas if we cannot create inventions from them? How do we socialize without language? Why paint a masterpiece if we cannot show it to anyone?

As with colors, it is rare in nature to see primary cullers in their purest form. Generally, we will be dealing with much more nuance, but knowing the primary cullers helps us to simplify the world and more easily perceive it, as we couldn’t possibly process all the cullers flying at us in everything we do. So to help the reddness in us process this concept a little easier, let us go over the secondary cullers.

Purpol – Innovating

When you combine the mental acuity of redd with the creative potential of blu, you end up with purpol, the culler of innovation. When an artist studies anatomy, they can create greater works. When an inventor creates a microscope, the scientist can advance their understanding of germ theory. Purpol seeks to bring forth new ideas that result in new creations, combining the redd’s love of learning with the blu’s love of creation. If you’ve written fanfiction or looked up life hacks, you’ve got that purpol flame in you.

Orinj – Performing

Redd and yelo easily form a symbiotic relationship to create orinj. Orinj is the culler of spreading information through social interaction, which is funnily enough, a very anti-orinj way to describe it. It invokes the performing arts, social manipulation, marketing, color commentary. Orinj is the culler that dresses up the prestigious redd in yelo’s fashionable wardrobe so people will pay attention to it. If you’ve ever found yourself flamboyantly waving your hands around while telling a story or keeping a straight face while uttering a bold-faced lie, that’s your orinj on display.

Grean – Cooperating

The purest form of yelo involves two or more parties interacting with one another, but what if they actually did something together? Grean is the culler that brings the creative prowess of blu into the mix and lets a group of individuals perform much more than one can on their own. While the benefits of cooperation are self-evident, even the most hostile to yelo can be amicable to grean, as interaction isn’t strictly required to complete a group project. Grean can see rise to a club, a union, a skyscraper, a triple-A video game, or even an entire nation. If you’ve ever asked someone to help you with something or sought to help someone else, that’s where your grean lies.

Neutral Cullers

As you may have surmised, the cullers can be further broken down into more specific subcategories by combining primary and secondary cullers. You can have redd-orinj and blu-grean, and so-on, but I’d like to focus this page on what I call the thirteen “core cullers”, the ones that I consider to have the strongest identities for defining walks of life. The next category would refer to cullers that occur when you combine all three primary cullers together. When all three combine to an equal degree, you end up with the neutral cullers.

Wite – Problem Solving

Cullers have no inherent morality baked into them. Through great art we can both inspire and indoctrinate. Through great ideas, we can make both penicillin and chemical warfare. Through conversation we can cheer someone up or torment them. Wite as a culler, is no different. As the embodiment of all other cullers combined, it uses them all as a means to its own end. It refers to actions driven by a desire to solve problems in the world. While problems cannot be fully removed, wite nevertheless pursues their removal. Whether it be an issue of injustice in the courts or mold in the sink, the wite mind seeks to clean things up. Naturally, wite has no purpose if there are no problems to solve. To that end, wite needs a little blak to give it meaning.

Blak – Problem Creation

As previously stated, cullers have no inherent morality. They define what is, not what should be. Blak is the opposite of wite, the absence of all other cullers. Blak pursues the creation of the problems that wite seeks to remove. While this can indeed be malevolent, blak is only as evil as wite is good. If wite’s destruction of what it perceives as problems is evil, then the creation of those problems is good, and vice versa. Bear in mind that the creation of problems is how all games are made. It is only through the existence of blak that we are able to have darker cullers than wite to begin with, as a world without problems would have nothing to learn, nothing to do, and nothing to say. In essence, blak can find practical purpose by counterbalancing the excesses of wite. Thus, blak depends on wite to give it meaning.

Grey – Decision Making

Both wite and blak are capable of creation and destruction. Wite destroys problems and creates solutions. Blak creates problems and destroys that which would ‘solve’ them. Wite and blak are opposites in all endeavors, despite neither of them being purely good or malevolent. When it comes to morality, it is rarely so black and white (pun intended). The complexity of nature has given rise to an arbiter, one to decide what should be done. That is the function of grey. Grey seeks to bridge the gap between the fabled angel and devil on its shoulders. Grey is the culler that goes into the (hopefully) unbiased decision-making process. When unburdened by other cullers, the grey-minded can theoretically be completely objective. However, cullers are like germs, far too prevalent and contagious for us to be immune. If grey was the only culler we had, we essentially would not be human at all. Thus, grey is dependent on all other cullers to give them meaning.

Braun – Leading

Of all the neutral cullers, braun stands out as the most “cullerful.” By combining redd, blu, yelo, and any amount of blak and wite, braun is the culler that takes the help and stands at the top. In order to be an effective leader, braun needs some degree of all other cullers. It needs the ability to learn, to create, to speak, to make decisions, solve problems, and maybe even create problems to lead its team. The closer you get to the top, the more braun you will see. While braun may not specialize in any of the individual cullers, the braun-minded is effective at putting them to use. If the goal is to make a restaurant, it can use some yelo to hire employees, some blu to make a sign out front, some redd to research a menu, some purpol to make a website, some orinj to advertise, and some grean to coordinate all the tasks. Chances are though, the braun-minded individual won’t be doing all this themselves. Braun is the culler of leadership and delegation. The culler of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It’s the culler that lets all other cullers stand out.

Off-Cullers

Though the primary, secondary, and neutral cullers encapsulate the majority of actions that inspire our dedication, there are four additional “off-cullers” that occupy a space between the gaps which I believe do an effective job to establish the nuances of our motivation. These are the last four cullers I consider to be part of the thirteen main core. Some consider the off-cullers to be “evolved” forms of the previously mentioned cullers, while others see them more like the dweebish younger siblings. I suppose you can be the judge for yourself.

Mujenta – Applying

As the off-culler of redd, mujenta is a spinoff of the redd-minded’s dogged pursuit of learning for its own sake. By employing just a hair of blu’s practicality, the mujenta-mind seeks to bring a little practice to the theory. Suppose a person takes an interest in driving a car. The act of driving does not create a new product, nor does it necessarily involve communicating with another person. Instead, it is the development of information, but the theory of understanding how to drive a car is distinct from the act of actually doing it. Getting behind the wheel and actually driving the car is where the redd mind turns mujenta. The same could be applied to programming, piano-playing, speedrunning, and learning to use chopsticks.

Cian – Competing

Not quite blu and not quite grean, cian operates on blu’s principle of creation without necessarily creating anything tangible, simlar to mujenta. Cian is the other side of grean’s coin, the spicier form of social cooperation known as competition. Competition drives action just as much, if not more than cooperation, though it’s anyone’s guess which is a more effective motivator. Two people working together can accomplish more than one, but two people opposing one another can inspire both to work harder than they would otherwise.

Goald – Politics

As yelo makes perfectly clear, no man is an island. When you bring people together, you get relationships, along with all the feats and foibles they contain. With people come problems, and with problems come government. In short, when you refine yelo, you get its off-culler goald. Considered one of the two sancrosanct cullers for driving a person’s values, goald can ironically become one of the least favorite cullers of the yelo-minded. The interaction of yelo is generally performed on an individual level, while goald represents the will of the collective, a force that most don’t know how to handle. Depending on the situation, goald can bring both the cooperation and competition of yelo to heights never before seen. If you want to see it for yourself, just go goald-minded in any social situation.

Sillvur – Religion

The off-culler of the neutrals is naturally the one that fits in the least with the others. When people act with intention, there will invariably be those who act for reasons that go beyond the scope of man’s understanding. For that reason, we have the other sancrosant culler, the actions defined by religious motivation. In many cases, this may be an act done in the name of God, but it could refer to any action done for something beyond one’s own will. As all people have something they perceive to be above themselves, everyone invokes at least a little bit of sillvur, regardless of what it’s directed toward.

Why blu, Blutooth?

Now that you have a basic understanding of my cullers, I can briefly describe why I associate myself with blu despite having an affinity for all of the cullers to some degree. The way I see it, the culler that an individual chooses to represent them would be the one that best describes how they choose to spend their time. The culler isn’t chosen simply by picking one from the list. The way a person lives chooses it for them. A person who dedicates their life to leadership has effectively chosen braun as their main culler. A person who pours their soul into helping the less fortunate has likely picked grean. However, much of it has to do with motivation. If a person spends their life inventing a cure for cancer, are they driven by the intellectual curiosity in redd, the desire to innovate from purpol, or the need to solve problems from wite? That’s where the culler really comes from, which is why I came up with the terminology to help categorize it.

As for me, I live to create. My motivations change, my inspirations change, but the desire to make what does not exist remains within me no matter what I’m doing. As long as I have the freedom to create, I know no limits and no tedium. I will be energized by the thrill of creation until the project is done. If I go too long without making something, I will become infused by a deep hunger that I cannot ignore. That’s why I am Blutooth. Sometimes I get cravings for blu, and my “blu tooth” has to be satiated.

So what about you? Do any of these cullers resonate? Do you struggle to breathe when immersed in certain cullers? Are there any cullers you haven’t really explored yet? Maybe give them a try. You never know. My main culler used to be wite.