‘Looking around – with everyone wearing the same athleisure, staring into the same screens, drinking the same coffee, pouring it into the same-looking plastic faces – you wonder when did all this happen?’ Illustration: Spectral-Design/Getty Images/iStockphoto View image in fullscreen ‘Looking around – with everyone wearing the same athleisure, staring into the same screens, drinking the same coffee, pouring it into the same-looking plastic faces – you wonder when did all this happen?’ Illustration: Spectral-Design/Getty Images/iStockphoto Philosophy Modern life is stuck in a sea of sameness. The pursuit of beauty is a necessary antidote Brigid Delaney Everything has become so frictionless and optimised that concerted efforts must be made to turn back towards beauty and individuality – even if it has no explicit market value
B y the time it’s 5pm on a Friday, the headache and dry eyes have well and truly settled in. Maybe it’s a long day in front of your four screens while funnelling white noise through a large pair of headphones to cancel out the calls of your co-workers. Or maybe it’s the almost chemical wash of white fluorescent lights that shine from the low ceiling in your open-plan office, or the feeling of enclosure as you look out the window on to the reflective walls of other towers.
To lift your spirits, you decide to treat yourself to a weekend at a beachside Airbnb.
But the town is not how you remember it as a kid. The farmland has been turned into identical housing estates broken up by highway-hugging shopping centres with the same Guzman, Woolies, Chemist Warehouse, Dan Murphy’s and Priceline as all the other shopping centres.
They’re not the only things that are samey. The cars in the car park are mostly white or grey, and stepping out of them, people are in near-identical athleisure or shorts and T-shirts.
Read more The Airbnb is how it was depicted in the pictures (minimalist, fancy handwash in the bathroom, Anko soft furnishings) but there is something dispiriting about it. Just like the cars, the interior is grey and white, and it smells of surface cleaner. It’s a house devoid of colour, personality and character.
The beach itself is still beautiful, but coming out of the ocean you can’t remember where you left your towel. Every inch of sand is taken up with the same stripy Cool Cabana tents, rendering the visual landscape hectic and disorientating, as if you’d hit your head and were seeing double.
At the cafe (minimalist, blond wood, pot plants, $7 flat whites) you run into some people from school who you haven’t seen for ages. You can’t quite put your finger on it but they look different, weird almost. There’s something uncanny about their faces, with their foreheads smooth as a screen, their lips and cheeks plumped.
Looking around – with everyone wearing the same athleisure, staring into the same screens, drinking the same coffee, pouring it into the same-looking plastic faces – you wonder when did all this happen? Where did all the beauty go?
I t’s difficult to believe we are lucky enough to be born on a blue, watery planet that is covered in flowers. And that on this planet everyone is a completely unique individual, all 8.3 billion of us, with our own specific way of expressing ourselves, our unique faces and bodies, our idiosyncrasies, desires, aversions and tastes.
Because right now we are stuck in a sea of sameness. Whether it’s the design of our offices, the interior of our houses (major paint brand…