If you made it through that title, you’re gonna love this Episode.
This week I’m building on this idea that everything is becoming homogenized. Did you know that, prior to the ‘Anthropocene’ becoming the descriptor for our current epoch, many scientists wanted to call this the ‘Homogocene’? The idea is that everything is becoming the same. You’re going to find kudzu, poison ivy, European starlings, and other invasive species everywhere on Earth.
Anyway, the idea is that it is hard to find original content anywhere, and what IS original stands out either like a sore thumb or, well, like the Grateful Dead.
Think about it, if you want to get a book published, you have to make it through a series of filters. Agents, publishers, formatting, social media following, credentials, etc. And the harder it gets to make it through these filters, the more SAME everything becomes. In other words, future authors copy successful authors techniques, at every filter, to maximize their potential for success. And so all books become the same. Originality, as you might notice, is not one of the filters. Neither is content, really.
It’s about marketability. How well will item or service ‘X’ appeal to EVERYONE. The masses. The conformist identity of the world.
And so it goes. The consumers become more vanilla as the products and services do the same. It is an overlapping cycle of sameness. And it selects against anything new, different, or interesting.
For another example see country music.
And so the idea of improvisation, of balance, of up and down or good and bad, are things not to avoid but to EMBRACE. If we want things to be different, we have to stop allowing everything to become the same.
Full Episode this Friday here at Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom. Thanks for your support and attention.
That’s a great point