 Have you ever felt like everything around you looks the same? Like every building, every advertisement, every product, and even people's lifestyles all seem to blend together into a single homogenous blob? You're not alone. I think it's going to be very boring, and everything will be the same. I mean people will be the same, I think so be the same. In the early 1990s, two Russian artists uniquely collaborated with a market research firm to discover American art preferences. Through surveys involving 1,001 US citizens over 11 days, they gathered data on favored colors, angles, textures, and themes. This process, replicated in countries including Russia, China, France, and Kenya, resulted in the People's Choice series. Despite their intent for diverse cultural collaboration, the artworks predominantly featured similar landscapes with animals and a blue palette echoed across various countries' preferences. In nearly every country, all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around. Animals in the foreground, mainly blue. After seeking input from more than 11,000 people across 11 different countries, all of the paintings ended up looking strikingly similar. Some people might say that looking for freedom, we found slavery, but I am not sure I agree with this statement. Coming up with something entirely new is harder than ever these days, thanks to the internet's treasure trove of inspiration. Just take our Kenyan cafe owner, who stumbled upon a Pinterest image that sparked a Scandinavian design obsession. Before they knew it, they were ordering new furniture and transforming their cafe into a Swedish oasis. Who needs to reinvent the wheel when you can borrow ideas and make them your own? You watch a movie and you feel you've watched it before. You see a painting and you can swiftly attach it to some meme. You listen to a song and it sounds like a remix of a remix. You read a book and it feels like a rehash of a rehash. You scroll through social media and everything looks like a copy of a copy. It's not just you. Our entire culture is stuck in a loop of repetition and imitation. We're so obsessed with the past that we can't seem to move forward. We're so afraid of missing out that we're willing to sacrifice originality for the sake of familiarity. And for some, what's left feels like a waiting game, sitting quietly, browsing and waiting for others to blow their minds. Societies of people, dead inside, seeking spirituality in the next temple they come across, close enough to their city break Airbnb. While Airbnb aims to offer a glimpse into the genuine lives of locals, many listings across various global destinations have begun to feel virtually indistinguishable, with only the surrounding cityscape differing between properties in cities as diverse as New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Vienna and Madrid. An experience touting authentic experiences and distinct personalities now seems plagued by a lack of variety as homes adopt homogenized design tropes regardless of setting. From one place to the next, the same styles and elements are repeatedly encountered, losing uniqueness in favor of homogeneity. An atmosphere promising distinctive personalities and authentically varied experiences now appeared formulaic as standardized designs overshadowed local color, locations worldwide blended together rather than distinguishing themselves, undermining the original aim of cultural immersion and insight into divergent communities. The look seamlessly integrates the straightforward practicality of bare materials, whitewashed walls, unfinished wood, visible brickwork, with the crisp sleekness of mid-century design icons including espresso machines, papa chairs and shelves devoid of doors or drawers, all softly illuminated with string lights. This aesthetic draws equally from the honest pragmatism of industrial buildings, along with the elegant minimalism prevalent in mid-century modern furnishings and decor. When the contextual anchors of community ties and shared history are loosened, profound impacts emerge in the form of alienation and a lack of belonging. No connection, nothing to ground ourselves in, everything can be anything, lacking a clear sense of aims and principles. We are living in the age of average. Mass production and standardization have led to a culture of sameness, where everything from our clothes to our cities looks the same. The pursuit of efficiency and profit has led to a world where individuality and creativity are stifled in favor of conformity and predictability. Across many creative industries like film, fashion, architecture and advertising, originality and innovation have increasingly taken a backseat to repetition and mimicry of stale conventions and overused cliches. Individuality has vanished. Whether examining art, design, media, everything appears identical. This culture of sameness extends beyond aesthetics and into our education and social systems. The education system is geared towards producing obedient workers, rather than critical thinkers. The result is a society that values conformity over innovation and creativity, leading to a culture of mediocrity. But it's not just the average that's becoming ubiquitous. The rise of premium mediocrity is a phenomenon where luxury goods and experiences are increasingly accessible to the middle class. The result is a world where even the wealthy are chasing the same generic experiences and products as everyone else. The pursuit of the good life has become so commodified that it's losing its meaning. This culture of sameness is perhaps most visible in our built environment. As described in a piece by Grist, office parks and other commercial developments are often built using the same generic design templates, leading to a landscape that's indistinguishable from one city to the next. The desire for efficiency and cost-cutting has led to a world where every building looks the same, regardless of location or purpose. So what does all of this mean for us? Well, it means that we're living in a world where individuality and creativity are becoming increasingly rare commodities. It means that the pursuit of efficiency and profit is often prioritized over the pursuit of meaning and purpose. But perhaps most importantly, it means that we need to actively resist this culture of sameness if we want to create a world that's truly worth living in. In today's increasingly globalized and interconnected society, there is a growing and worrying trend of promoting mediocrity. This trend inevitably leads to mediocratic schools and then societies run by and for mediocre people. An important issue caused by mediocracy is that these mediocre leaders do not truly have perspective and understanding of the system. This is because they generally lack the ability to see things in perspective, being installed only in the here and now, unable to really think projectively and imaginatively. They only have knowledge of the system, being perfectly integrated into it, but do not have understanding of the system, unable and unwilling to change and improve it. They have ideas about the system, believing they also have this holistic perspective on things and most of the time they even have the conviction that they have this perspective without truly having it. Here the explanation is given to us, at the psychological level, by the famous Dunning-Kruger effect, which tells us that the more mediocre and ignorant you are, the more you think you know. It is clear, quality begets quality, mediocrity begets mediocrity. An enthusiastic teacher induces enthusiasm and nourishes the curiosity and desire for knowledge of his students. A bored and boring one kills their curiosity, distancing them from school and knowledge. In short, mediocrity is contagious. A mediocratic world is a mechanical world, a world that only allows minimal and peripheral initiative, invention or creation. It is the world, excuse the oxymoron, of mediocre elites. We will only be able to escape it or at least minimize it. More and more leadership positions are occupied by mediocre individuals, semi-incompetence with a single desire to access the system. For this, they mechanically execute what is required of them, without ever asking questions or inconvenient opinions, and clearly without criticizing so as not to upset superiors. Thus, if superiors want simple executors, they are perfect for the system. The problem is when they become leaders, their inability to analyze is chronic. They do nothing but reproduce in the system, hiring other mediocrities who will not shake their arrogance and pride. For this not to happen, we need a quality reflective and critical education. Never forget that critical thinking is the antidote for such imposters. We need more critical and strategic thinking. We need to be more reflective and combative. Or we can stay like this, blocked in forms without substance, obedient. We gently encourage mediocrities. If you are living in a democracy, your desires have expanded, but most of us are living a premium mediocre life. Venkatesh Rao, a writer, consultant and technology analyst, coined the term premium mediocre to describe products, services and experiences that appear to be of high quality or luxury, but are actually just slightly better than average. Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is truffle oil on anything. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, game of thrones and the Bellagio. Premium mediocre is food that instagrams better than it tastes. Premium mediocre is Starbucks italian names for drink sizes and its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation. Actually all the coffee at Starbucks is premium mediocre, I like it anyway. Mediocre with just an irrelevant touch of premium, not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity. What should we do? We must curb the influence of large financial entities that forge ubiquitous yet character depleted environments primarily aimed at commercialization, commodifying the uniqueness of locales. If left unchecked, homogenization will continue to spread like wildfire, reducing all places to indistinguishable replicas, resembling nothing of real substance or original appeal. To protect vivified community spaces from being flattened into fungible assets stripped bare, intervention is needed to maintain diversity and a sense of indigenous belonging now increasingly under siege by all consuming forces of sameness. But here's the thing, creativity is not a finite resource. It's not a zero sum game. Just because something has been done before doesn't mean it can't be done again. In a new and different way.