Column: Are we overglobalized? The importance of individuality and independence

By A&E Editor Navya Chitlur

Walk across the street and every house looks the same. Everyone wears the same clothes, watches the same movies, partakes in the same social media trends. Joggers, blue jeans, 67. Boba tea. Tesla. Gnarly. Every movie is the same as the next. 

Since the 1980s, globalization has taken over the world by storm, easing international growth and communications, connecting cultures and people all over the world, and increasing diversity rates. But in the process, in an unintended, inevitable consequence, we’ve become monotonous. Individualism is on the rise again, but not in the way it’s supposed to be — consolidation of individual goals become factors of societal success scales; individual choice is influenced indirectly by trends that are now on a global scale, making everything and everyone strive towards the same or similar goals regardless of the privilege of individual autonomy. 

McDonaldization is also taking root globally — a term coined to refer to increasing brand similarities and simplification — perpetuating the sameness of American and global culture. As a writer and artist, I’m always looking for the intricacies and novelty of life, from physical media to flamboyant and vibrant art — something that has progressively become harder to find. Pre-1980s isolation and less pervasive technology fostered creativity in LSD-like designs: imperfect combinations in fashion, clashing colors for art, psychedelic undertones for posters, and real creativity in architecture. But over the years, we’ve begun to prioritize minimalism and simplification, choosing efficacy over things that hold meaning. Buildings have gotten more geometrically simple and gothic or intricate architecture have become things of the past. Logos like Adidas, Pepsi, and Google have leaned into easier legibility and simplified font over detailing. It’s harder to draw inspiration from things that are made to be simple. We’ve lost creativity in the process of all this deconstruction, and as a result, we’ve lost the vibrancy of culture and humanity.

In recent decades, globalization and intercontinental communication has led to technological developments and innovation on a global scale, which began as a boon for furthering the accomplishments of the human race, but developed into something more dangerous. Through developments that could only stem from intercontinental trade, resources, and engagement or debate, society has progressed at a breakneck pace to the point that it has almost led to a recession. Overreliance on generative AI tools has led to lower overall brain engagement, according to a 2025 study done by MIT, and easy access to information has eroded our memory retention, and in many cases, led to lower levels of curiosity. In addition to this, most of the global population is shifting slowly towards a widespread culture rooted in social media influence — an international, global culture rather than a selective one. While this is beneficial for intercontinental communication and cultural transfer, overuse of it is furthering the McDonaldization effect, extending the sameness of culture onto a global scale. Social media influence has now become a major influence in society, where influencers and trends are seen and followed by most of the population — whether in architecture, or in job markets. With only what is estimated to be 2.5 billion of the population being cut off from social media, the majority of the world follows this flow. Most of what we say is a regurgitation of something else; everything we do is influenced at least fractionally by popular messages floating around social media. This congregates not only in our cultures, but also our personalities; algorithms and news headlines propel the popularity of selective things in ways detrimental to niche interests and hobbies. We lean towards what is easily accessible, letting individual traits take a backseat as the propagation of prominent jobs, ideologies, and interests is furthered.

At MSJ, almost every student strives toward the same common goal — and though there is nothing wrong with a common goal, our monotonous intentions have begun to define us in fatal ways. Get into a T20 college, get a job that pays well, live a comfortable life. We rarely have diversity in the type of lifestyle we choose to lead or the type of people we want to become, and in this way, we learn less about the world and each other. The “Mission Bubble” mindset isn’t just limited to MSJ, but captures the gradual inclination of career goals on a global scale to have the same socioeconomic end goal. At MSJ, most students tend to pursue medical or technical fields, a trend that extends to a national level. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, technicians, nursing and medical services, and data scientists have had some of the highest growth rates in job popularity. We’ve equated economic comfort with self-actualization, freezing our lives on the first few stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We’ve subconsciously confused individual morals and ideologies with those consistently prescribed to us by external values. 

As an artist in the MSJ environment, I almost fell prey to this mindset myself. For the longest time, I undermined the importance and value of art, expression, and philosophy for the sake of supposedly greater pursuits like mathematical or medical advancement, forgoing the things I loved for the sake of meeting societal standards. What drew me back was realizing that individuality, culture, and diversity is what makes humanity beautiful. I constantly find myself mourning the past, borrowing from old styles, vintage posters, late 1900s films — things that are often weird, bizarre, and at the same time, new and unique. It’s extremely tragic to lose the things that make us unique and dangerous if it gets to an irreversible point. 

As most cultures now have access and exposure to the same or similar media, thought processes, conventionality, and most of everything is shaped by this intercontinental communication. We need to regain our diversity personality-wise, in counterculture and divergence. We need to regain our ability to unabashedly express, whether through art, or maximalism, or true passion in whatever field one chooses to pursue. We need to understand that each of us have different lifestyles, mental processes, and experiences, inherently, and we are wasting that on monogamy when we could be using it to portray the depths of humanity. “Be yourself” might seem like a generic statement, but it’s what we need if we don’t want to fall into a colorless world.