Oh but I wish to be Purple

Equality is Both Impossible and Impractical...

Well, Impractical first:
If everyone were equal, if everyone looked, acted, smelled, tasted, worked, lived, loved, cried, ate, jumped, ran, swamwell; was good at all subjects in school, succesful in all aspects of life; and was identical in all aspects LIFE WOULD SUCK.
Nobody would exel at anything. Nobody would ever win or lose. All sports would end in ties and all classes would be equally boring or amazing.
With everything would be equally amazing! mediocre, or sucky.
Either everybody finds the cure for cancer! we are all equally almost there, or we all die from it.

and impossible because we would all be the same age, or body shape, or all equally good at hunting or something. There wouldn't be any caribou left. In anycase, we would all be so equal at what we did, when eventually there wasn't enough the universe would collapse and we would ll be pulled apart like a big pig roast.


Well then it was fitting for you to take care how you should be like the rest of men, just as the thread has no design to be anything superior to the other threads. But I wish to be purple, that small part which is bright, and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful. Why then do you tell me to make myself like the many? and if I do, how shall I still be purple?
-Discourses by Epictetus