Once upon a time there was a republic called Color Land. There were green people in Color Land and there were purple people. There were also two main professions: farming and medicine. It happened that in Color Land green people were more likely to be farmers and purple people were more likely to be doctors. Nobody knew if this was due to differences in innate ability or interest or something else, but nobody particularly cared, or thought about color much at all. Everyone had an equal chance to become a doctor or farmer, all of the doctors cared for everyone equally, and all the farmers provided for everyone equally. Color Land wasn’t perfect, but it was a generally happy and prosperous place. All of the people in Color Land had enough to eat and were cared for. They all had a purpose in society. They had a job and they knew that if they did their job well, society would function well.
Color Land had some really great schools where young people trained to be farmers and doctors. The professors in the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Medicine worked very hard to make sure young people got the training they needed to contribute to society. All the purple people and all the green people, all the farmers and all the doctors, everyone in all of Color Land was proud of their schools.
At some point that no one could remember very well, some of the schools had added a Department of Color Studies. No one was quite sure what they did there and they used funny words and said funny things that no one could understand, but they seemed harmless enough so everyone just left them alone. Color Land was a free country, and if some people wanted to have a Department of Color Studies and say strange things that no one could understand, well that was ok!
After the Departments of Color Studies had existed for a while, a professor named Carla started giving some lectures that became very influential. She had developed a new way of looking at Color Land called “Theory.” Some of the other faculty noticed that Theory didn’t actually make predictions that could be tested like theories usually do, but Carla tended to yell at people who disagreed with her so they kept their mouths shut. When Carla lectured on Theory she would say things like, “the epistemic hegemaniacal structural post-deconstructed semi-convergent Zarathustrarian viewpoint clearly demonstrates…” then smile, daring anyone to disagree with her brilliance. There was always a certain portion of the audience who had a sneaking suspicion that Carla was making up fancy words to cover for the fact that she didn’t actually have anything intelligent to say, but they made sure to clap enthusiastically when she finished talking because they were worried that otherwise someone might think they were too stupid to understand the fancy words.
After everyone had gone along with Theory, Carla started to introduce some of her other ideas. She said that despite what everyone could see around them, the whole system in Color Land was bad and evil. Everything about a person was defined by their color and if something bad happened to purple people, it must be green people’s fault. And if something bad happened to green people, it must be purple people’s fault. But at the same time, strangely, purple and green didn’t really exist. It was all in everyone’s imagination. All of the differences between purple and green that people thought they saw since childhood didn’t really exist. If you said they did exist, you were something called “colorist,” and it was very, very bad to be colorist. Even more bizarrely, she also said a purple person can magically become a green person if he just decides that he feels more green than purple. Everyone else would have to remember that he is green now, and they better not slip up and call him purple by mistake! Because that would be colorist. Finally, she said that it was a major mistake to think that the purpose of the schools was to develop new medical and agricultural techniques and to train students. Instead, the point was to figure out who in Color Land was colorist and get very angry and yell at them until they learned how to “be better.” Carla called her new ideas “colorsity.”
Some of the professors in the Department of Farming and the Department of Medicine started to get a little worried about Carla, but they didn’t really know what to do about her. In general they agreed with the importance of being encouraging to all students and treating everyone equally, and many of them thought that this is what she meant when she said colorsity. They also didn’t think anyone would actually take her strange ideas that seriously, and they didn’t like having to get in arguments with her because she would yell at them and call them colorist. So they did what came naturally to them: they continued to teach farming and medicine and ignore Carla as best as they could.
But one professor of farming named Dr. Johnson disagreed. He said that what Carla was saying was actually really dangerous. If you took her at her word, she planned to destroy everything about Color Land. Dr. Johnson reminded everyone of the history of a country called Shape Land, where a crazy square named Vlady had blamed triangles for all of the problems in the world and taken over Shape Land. He then killed all of the triangles and most of the squares too. Millions of shapes had died. Dr. Johnson said that what Carla was saying wasn’t actually all that different from what Vlady had said.
A lot of professors said Dr. Johnson was overreacting. He had an agitated way of talking and wily eyes, which didn’t help. He also seemed pretty condescending sometimes. They told him that Carla seemed harmless. Who could possibly care if she had some kooky ideas about colors? What did that have to do with people or shapes getting killed?
Then one day Carla led the color studies people out of their Departments of Color Studies. The color studies people said that for the sake of colorsity, every department had to have the exact proportions of green and purple people as in society at large, regardless of ability or interest. If anyone disagreed with them, they would chant slogans that Carla had taught them like “COLORS BAD, COLORSITY GOOD!” and blow air horns in their faces so they couldn’t speak.
Dr. Johnson tried to talk to the color studies people. He said, “You are good kids, and the future of society depends on you. Ten years ago you would have been training to be farmers and doctors so that you could be productive citizens of Color Land. It’s not your fault that Carla has taught you this ideology. Try to take a step back and think about the consequences of what you are doing. After you have thought for yourselves, if you still think Carla is right, then go ahead and keep doing what you are doing. But think for yourselves first.” A few of the color studies people found this pretty compelling and left the group, but most just got angry at Dr. Johnson and said he was being a terrible colorist. They said that his speech was violent and that it had harmed them so much that they didn’t feel safe with him on campus, and that he needed to be fired for this. They chanted “COLORS BAD, COLORSITY GOOD!” at him for a while, but then got distracted because a professor in the next building had ordered fried green tomatoes and actually said “green” out loud, rather than saying fried g-word tomatoes, which was “so not cool,” so they had to go yell at him.
Eventually some of the professors in the Departments of Farming and Medicine started to adopt the colorsity ideas. They were mostly good people who had devoted their lives to training young farmers and doctors. They really cared about their students and society and were trying to do what was best for Color Land. They thought that the best way to make this happen was to implement some of the ideas of colorsity. One part of colorsity that they thought was especially important was to have equal proportions of green and purple people in their departments, regardless of their interests or abilities. Also, whenever someone introduced herself she would have to state whether she was green or purple, because it would be colorist to assume that she was the color she looked like. In addition to promoting a safe space that was inclusive to all color identifications, this had the added benefit of exposing anyone who refused to state his color or was just generally confused about what was being asked of him as “tone deaf” and not sufficiently committed to colorsity. Finally, they decided that colorsity was one of the “core values” of their schools and every time they hired a new professor they interviewed her to make sure she thought colorsity was one of the most important things. Dr. Johnson said putting a political test like this on hiring for Farming and Medicine was a really bad idea, but he was so annoying and complainey that everyone just ignored him.
Pretty soon the Departments of Farming and Medicine were stocked with equal proportions of green and purple people, regardless of their interests or abilities. This was very hard on the green professors of medicine and the purple professors of farming. Everyone was suspicious that they didn’t really deserve their job and were only there for colorsity, even though some of them were at the absolute top of their field. Carla said this was terrible colorism, and the only solution was for the Departments of Farming and Medicine to introduce colorsity into all of their classes so that they would stop being so colorist. Pretty soon it was hard to tell the farming classes from the medicine classes from the color studies classes. An old purple farmer visited a farming class with his daughter and was shocked at what was being taught. He said, “The students aren’t actually learning any farming! If this keeps up, they won’t know how to grow food and people will starve!” But Carla was walking by right at that moment with a group of color studies people. Enraged, she shrieked that he was an “Evil colorist!” The old man said that was crazy, given that he is a purple farmer. Then he tried to explain the importance of understanding good farming practices, but the color studies people just chanted “COLORS BAD, COLORSITY GOOD!” over and over again until he gave up and left.
After a few years everything in Color Land was confused. The students graduating from the schools didn’t know much of anything about farming or medicine, but they knew a lot about colors and colorsity. Weirdly, what they had learned about colors now didn’t match up with what everyone had always known. It was strange and didn’t make any sense. It often seemed to be completely backwards from what everyone could see if they just opened their eyes and looked around. But if anyone disagreed with it, someone would yell “Colorist!” and other people would get nervous and join in so they wouldn’t look like a colorist too.
All the while, Carla was expanding her ideas on colorsity. Every day she would write new colorsity lessons on a board and everyone would memorize them. Dr. Johnson said she was making them absurd and obviously false on purpose. The point was to make sure the color studies people would go along with anything she said and never think for themselves, so the crazier the better. When Dr. Johnson said something like that Carla would glare at him, and all the color studies people would glare at him just like Carla did. Dr. Johnson was such a terrible colorist and it felt good to be on the good side and to hate him. As part of her lessons, Carla would change the acceptable words for things frequently. One day purple people were purple. The next they were lilac. Then they were violet, then lavender. The older farmers and doctors tried to keep up, but they were always using yesterday’s term for purple people, which meant they were definitely colorists.
After colorsity had completely taken over the schools, it started to spread through the rest of Color Land. This was mostly the work of Diavolo and Abram, two of Carla’s disciples who wrote books explaining colorsity for the masses. All of the celebrities in Color Land had to have copies and all of the television hosts had Diavolo and Abram on their shows. Since the books were now certified cool, they sold millions of copies. An interesting aspect of the books by Diavolo and Abram was that they avoided most of the fancy words Carla liked. As a result, colorsity was spelled out in terms that normal people could understand for the first time. Only a few of the people who bought Diavolo and Abram’s books actually read them, and those that did tended to have a sneaking suspicion that despite their fancy degrees in Color Studies from the best schools, the two were not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box. In particular, readers were horrified at the logical errors and the lack of evidence for the claims being made in the books. They also, however, tended not to raise these concerns publicly because that would get you branded an evil colorist.
Things started to go really well for Diavolo and Abram after their books became best sellers. They both started consultancies that charged exorbitant fees to teach companies about colorsity. By this point most companies had experienced some kind of colorsity kerfuffle, which had ended with the color studies people chanting “COLORS BAD, COLORSITY GOOD!!!” at them and scaring off customers. They were desperate to do anything to get Carla and the color studies people off their backs, and they thought bringing in Diavolo and Abram might do the trick. This arrangement actually worked pretty well for everyone involved, and some of the companies were so grateful that they gave millions of dollars to Diavolo and Abram to start institutions devoted to colorsity.
After a few years, Diavolo and Abram were so famous that they were elected President and Prime Minister of Color Land. Well, they were sort of elected. The two main parties were distracted fighting each other over something that didn’t matter very much and Diavolo and Abram kind of slipped in the back door. They quickly created a new Ministry of Colorsity and appointed Carla the Minister of Colorsity. The first thing Carla did was declare elections colorist! When Dr. Johnson objected, a bunch of color studies people came, chanted “COLORS BAD, COLORSITY GOOD!!!” and took him away. No one ever saw Dr. Johnson again. Carla was in heaven!
After a little while Carla convinced Diavolo and Abram that they should give her total control of the government, and that they should take charge of a very important new secret government project code named Narcissus. Their only job was to stare at themselves in the mirror all day and write reports about the brilliant insights this led to each evening. Diavolo and Abram were thrilled to be heading such an important project, and as it happened, the new job suited their skill set perfectly. Soon enough they were churning out hundreds of pages of excellent material for project Narcissus each day.
Since there were no more elections, Carla was now free to do whatever she wanted. Also, everyone saw what happened to Dr. Johnson when he tried to object, which kept them in line. Carla decided that since colors don’t matter, all farmers would have to be purple from now on and all doctors would have to be green. Most of the purple farmers and green doctors were horrified and tried to stop this from happening, but the color studies people came, chanted “COLORIST! COLORIST! COLORIST!!!” and took them away.
Strange things quickly started happening in the hospitals. When a sick or injured patient was brought in, the new doctors were usually busy in urgent meetings discussing how to improve colorsity. When the new doctors took time from their colorsity meetings to attempt to heal someone, they generally found that the knowledge necessary for this task fell outside of the training they had received. To save face they would deliver a mini-lecture on the latest trend in colorsity, pretend they knew how to use a stethoscope for a minute or two, then sneak out of the room at the first opportunity. It was soon widely understood that going to the hospital was a death sentence, so the people avoided it and visited local witch doctors and shamans instead. They were equally ineffective, of course, but at least they didn’t deliver pompous lectures on colorsity as they performed their services.
For a while the new farmers were able to produce enough crops based on the system that was already in place. But they often only grew barely enough. One summer was particularly cold, and there were late heavy rain storms that destroyed the young crops. The new farmers tried to find someone who knew what to do, but they realized that the color studies people had taken away everyone with any actual knowledge of farming. Every crop failed, and nothing was harvested that autumn.
When winter came, people started to die of starvation. First a few, then hundreds, then thousands, then millions. All the green people and all the purple people, all the people of Color Land, felt nothing but misery. In the end, colorsity finally came to Color Land. There really weren’t any purple people or green people anymore. In fact, there wasn’t really any color left in Color Land. Everyone left alive was just a dim, pale shade of gray.
What a beautiful fable. This should be included in course readings as a part of general education.
"Nobody knew if this was due to differences in innate ability or interest or something else"... barf. I bet I can guess which color the person who wrote this article blog is.