Good Enough: Why Your Mediocrity is Saving the World

Have you ever watched a car chase scene in a movie, and the hero’s hair is in her eyes, looking totally badass, and thought, yeah I could be her?

Well, you’re not wrong. In this scene that is real life, the hero is you – just not for the reasons that Hollywood would have you believe.

As world leaders, executives, and activists prepare to descend on Brazil for this year’s COP30, the rest of us are just trying to make it through the week. We’re not writing climate policy or investing in carbon capture technology (but wow well done you if you are!). We’re working, commuting, cooking dinner, and maybe trying to fit in a workout every now and then. In other words, we’re living our ordinary, mediocre lives.

Let me give you some good news: this might be the best thing that we can do for the planet right now.

A recent report showed that the top 0.1% in the UK – think private jets, super-yachts and mansions – are emitting 53% more carbon since 1990. And the rest of us? We “regular people” have actually cut down by 26% in that same time.

There’s really no doubt about it, we’re the real heroes in this story.

Because despite the ramping up of consumerism through various platforms (hello Temu addicts) and flashy advertising campaigns on social media, we STILL managed to cut down our emissions.

Pause for thunderous applause!

The Cult of Greatness

In my previous post, I talked about how we’re constantly being told that being average is a kind of failure. The self-help industry calls it “wasting potential.” Corporate culture and capitalism call it “low productivity”. Big Tech has designed all manner of apps to optimize absolutely everything in our lives. Our time, our bodies, our social impact, and even our hobbies – there are apps to “improve” them all.

The problem is that this hunger for greatness is what’s heating the planet in the first place. Greatness builds empires, monopolies, and megayachts. It digs deeper mines and launches more rockets. It extracts faster, consumes more, and congratulates itself for “moving fast and breaking things,” even when those things are forests, oceans, and people.

The world has had enough and it’s telling us so through climate change – the fever of a planet pushed beyond its limits, if you will.

So the next time you come across a message asking how you seized the day, ask yourself, seize the day for whom? What if this “problem” of being average is actually only a problem for capitalism and big corporations constantly trying to sell us stuff? What if there’s a greater entity who stands to benefit from our mediocrity?

The Quiet Power of Mediocrity

That greater entity is, of course, the planet. And what’s wonderful about serving the planet, rather than the top 0.1%, is that it benefits you as well.

The best thing of all is that you’re already doing it right now!

• You’re NOT jetting off on a private plane and emitting harmful greenhouse gases into the air that warms the planet further.
• You’re NOT taking up vast amounts of land for a McMansion that only houses you and 3 other people, and that could be used for regenerative farming and agriculture.
• You DON’T own 13 gas-guzzling, particulate-emitting cars that clog up the roads and pollute the air on a daily basis.
• You DON’T require an overly-stocked fridge (or fridges!) with food that will most likely go bad before they get used and go to waste.
• You DON’T excessively buy and throw away perfectly wearable clothes just because they’re no longer “in season”.

Ordinary people like you and me are already living within ecological boundaries, often without realizing it. We take the bus because it’s cheaper. A lot of us share apartments because housing is expensive. Containers often get reused because waste feels wrong (also, my grandmother will berate me for throwing them away). None of this is glamorous, but it’s profoundly sustainable.

Mediocrity, in this sense, is not laziness or apathy. In fact, I call for a rebranding of mediocrity. Mediocrity is restraint and humility. It’s the quiet art of knowing that the good life doesn’t have to be the biggest, fastest, or newest.

The Call to Mediocrity

If COP30 reminds us of anything, it should be that the future cannot be negotiated in boardrooms alone. It will be lived and saved in kitchens, classrooms, sidewalks, and small choices. By all of us mediocre beings.

Being “just okay” at life might not make for a viral TED talk, but it might be what keeps the Earth habitable.

So, as the world’s elite gather to debate the fate of the planet, don’t underestimate your quiet existence. The world doesn’t need seven billion visionaries trying to “make history.” It needs seven billion people who know when to stop, when to share, and when enough is finally enough.

In a world overheated by ambition, mediocrity might just be the planet’s best hope.

Rinni Amran

Hi! I’m a cultural writer-researcher with over 10 years’ experience in academia. From the warmth of Brunei to the mindfulness of the Nordics, I tell stories that help us reconnect beyond screens and beyond the scroll.