At any given time, there are somewhere between 20 and 30 billion chickens on Earth. That's at least ten times more than any other bird and roughly three times the number of humans. We're essentially Planet Chicken.
Some experts say that we're now in the 'Anthropocene' — the age in which humans have become the planet's dominant force. Others have also aptly called it 'The Great Homogenisation' or the 'Homogenocene.' As paleobiologists Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz note in The Conversation:
The age of humans is increasingly an age of sameness. Across the planet, distinctive plants and animals are disappearing, replaced by species that are lucky enough to thrive alongside humans and travel with us easily.
(Or unlucky, if you happen to be a chicken or any other animal raised solely for human consumption, especially in an industrial farming system.)
Since the 1970s, the average size of the global wildlife population has plummeted by a staggering 73%, largely thanks to our own handiwork: urbanisation, overexploitation, monoculture farming, pollution, etc. Humans might make up a mere 0.01% of all life on Earth, but when it comes to leaving a mark — especially a destructive one — we're spectacular overachievers.
But it's not just the environment that's being flattened out either.
Our world is full of warnings about systems that squash individuality and innovation. Capitalism's cheerleaders frequently urge us to picture the kind of grey, joyless, and stagnant world we'd live in if not for the saving grace of free markets — we'd all dress the same, eat the same food, think the same things, and shuffle through copy-pasted lives. Do we really need to stretch our imaginations much, though?
Sure, in much of the so-called 'developed' world, we have a dizzying variety of consumer goods. We can choose from dozens of toothpaste flavours and brands, and dozens more of shampoos, milk, cereals, and vitamins. We can buy strawberries in December. And we can have it all delivered to us with a tap of a finger. But a great deal of these 'choices' is just variations of the same thing, manufactured using near-identical formulations, often in the same factories and plants, and sold by the same handful of corporations.
Only 12 global companies control the lion's share of the consumer goods brands lining our shelves. In the US, four firms or fewer control at least half of the grocery market. Industrial agriculture — livestock, grains, seeds and other crops — tells a similar story. 1 in 10 chickens worldwide is owned by a single company: the Brazilian giant JBS.
Fast fashion, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, and automotives are each dominated by a small cluster of multinational corporations as well. In many countries, including the US and the UK, media ownership is similarly concentrated. American media conglomerates also control nearly half of the global market, and in some segments, such as streaming, over half.
What we eat and drink and wear and watch and read and drive is, to a remarkable extent, in the hands of a few corporate Goliaths.
What unites these giants is that, as their power expands, they become complacent. The 'competition' they frequently face is, after all, merely between their own brands. And when that happens, innovation tends to slow down significantly.
The one thing these companies never seem to tire of, however, is gobbling up even more of the market. A recent study in The Wharton School Research Paper notes that, over the past forty years, spending on mergers and acquisitions by major US corporations has doubled relative to spending on research and development. In other words, the biggest players only keep getting bigger, often by swallowing up competitors; competition thins out; innovative ideas become harder to find; and the average person sees little upside. The study also found that, in the meantime, fewer new companies entered the market, while living standards have, predictably, stagnated.
As the study's author, James Paron, points out:
For the typical consumer, there's little to no gain — they are worse off, with weaker growth and fewer new ideas. The real winners are the owners of the most productive big firms, who benefit disproportionately.
That's not to say the private sector has stopped innovating altogether. But even innovation itself is becoming concentrated, with most of the innovation capital flowing into just a few industries.
For more than a decade, venture capital has predominantly favoured tech startups. In one quarter of 2025, over 90% of all funding was poured into just three areas: AI, enterprise software, and fintech. AI alone hoovered up nearly 80% of the total pot.
This tunnel vision means that innovation in other areas receives little attention. But even within the tech industry, including established companies, the quality and breadth of innovation are, well, debatable. OpenAI's latest big move is that its chatbot, ChatGPT, will now have…advertisements. Hello, enshittification.
Generative AI systems are also hardly the untamed engines of creativity and brilliance they were supposed to be. A study published last month in Patterns found that when generative AI produces outputs without human involvement, they converge toward bland, generic themes, even when fed a variety of prompts and explicitly allowed randomness. The researchers dubbed the results 'visual elevator music' — pleasant enough to look at, though fundamentally devoid of any real meaning.
Another recent experiment examining AI-generated lesson plans found much the same: the outcomes were generic, uninspiring, and lacked many essential elements.
As more and more of our online — and offline — environments fill with AI-generated content, we could risk drifting toward the bland and the statistically average as well. And so could future AI models trained on it.
But Silicon Valley's grip on our world predates the AI boom. For years, just a handful of US tech giants have dominated social media, web browsing, search engines, and cloud computing (the literal backbone of the internet). In theory, today's global networks may allow almost anyone, and almost anywhere, to share their perspective and connect with others. In practice, what rises to the surface is overwhelmingly a Western, white, male-centric viewpoint. The English language also dominates the web. And most English content is US-centric.
Unsurprisingly, concerns about Americanisation and cultural imperialism driven by these digital oligopolies and their vast online circus that devours so much of our time and attention are on the rise. The dominance and hyper-visibility of a single value system and a single set of cultural beliefs can inevitably lead to some degree of cultural homogenisation — the flattening of differences. And the flattening of individuality.
Sociologist George Ritzer already saw this coming decades ago. He argued that capitalism, Americanisation, and the McDonaldisation of society — our growing obsession with efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control — would eventually lead to what he called 'grobalisation.' And grobalisation means a world where:
- Consumer goods and media conglomerates wield considerable power.
- The capacity for genuine innovation is stifled.
- Social and cultural processes are largely one-directional.
- Homogeneity prevails.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The Homogenocene began a long, long time ago, perhaps around the time when humans hunted mammoths and giant sloths into oblivion. It then accelerated with the rise of cities and agriculture, and picked up speed even more with colonisation and the industrial age.
Today, we're living through just one chapter in a lengthy story of the erosion of biological and cultural diversity. But this chapter is particularly critical because the extraordinary losses we've witnessed and the changes they've now triggered are unlike anything else in human history. And, most importantly, they're not slowing down.
If profit is the universal measure and endless growth the only goal, then homogeneity isn't a bug but a feature. Whatever can be standardised or sacrificed will be. The erasure of biodiversity is largely an 'externality' of that logic. The erasure of diverse identities, on the other hand, makes it easier to sell the same mass-produced goods and makes people more predictable and easier for those in power to control and exploit.
Capitalism might promise individuality, but only delivers it in market-approved formats. It might also promise innovation, but how consistently does it actually deliver on that, particularly in our contemporary world?
Do most people really need another app, another subscription service, another AI chatbot, or do they need groceries that don't break the bank, a place to live they can call their own, universal healthcare, and childcare? Should our limited resources and time be directed towards pursuits like colonising Mars rather than restoring and preserving our own planet first, and making sure that those who already live here have decent lives?
The cruel irony is that while we might be living in a society where so many things increasingly feel and look the same, we don't all have the same opportunities or even access to necessities. The pillars of a healthy, happy, stable society are often sidelined in favour of the grand ambitions of a select few men (because it's still almost always a man) who've managed to convince some of us they're modern-day heroes and unparalleled geniuses. This is yet another example of how capitalism's inclination towards uniformity reveals itself — we end up governed by a parade of strikingly similar individuals, often with traits like sociopathy and megalomania, because the system keeps rewarding exactly those very qualities.
Building a world where that's no longer the case and that works for everyone, not just some, doesn't mean we all become the same. It means giving everyone the same solid ground to stand on so we can all take a deep breath, step out of survival mode, and let our distinct perspectives and talents come out of hiding.
Innovation rarely comes from the familiar and the uniform. And it's far harder to imagine, experiment, or take creative risks when you're unsure whether you'll be able to pay the rent next month.
If you want to attract butterflies to your garden, it isn't enough to plant flowers that they enjoy as adults. You also need to plant the species they need when they're caterpillars — and caterpillars tend to be quite fussy. So if you find yourself with only the butterfly-friendly blooms, you actually might not attract that many butterflies. Or even none at all.
In nature, reduced biodiversity triggers a domino effect that can be felt throughout the entire ecosystem. You take away one species, and several others follow. And, sooner or later, so does an ecological collapse.
For humans, the situation isn't all that different. Diversity is needed not just for innovation and resilience but also for our survival.
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