Everything is given to us in plain sight

It always begins the same way for me — a phrase, an image, a knowing. A woman was speaking about the 2030 Agenda, describing how society could be divided into levels of class. At the very bottom: criminals. Above them: those who resist conformity. And at the top: those who comply fully.

As she spoke, I didn’t just hear her words. I saw the vision. Clear as day, I was dropped straight into the world of The Hunger Games. I saw the districts lined up, each one more stripped of dignity and resource as you move further away from the Capitol. Poverty at the base. Control at the top. A ladder of compliance masquerading as “order.”

That’s how downloads arrive — not with fanfare, but in plain sight. Something lands, and suddenly everything I’ve ever known arranges itself into a new pattern. The film, the agenda, the vision. All one.

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I Used to Be Asleep — and That’s Important to Say

When I first watched The Hunger Games, it felt like a fantastical story. That was over a decade ago. Back then I was doing all the things — married, mum of three, balancing work and childcare, the school runs, the shopping lists, paying the bills. I was living the life I’d been taught to live: neat, obedient, worried about doing things the “right” way so society wouldn’t judge me. I ignored the whispering call to wake up because I was terrified of being wrong. The system felt safe.

Looking back now, that version of me is so familiar it hurts — not because I judge her, but because I recognise how normalised it all was. It makes the point of Collins’ story even clearer: people can be trapped inside roles, not because they were forced there in a single moment, but because life’s small choices add up to an entire worldview. That slow accrual is how control becomes comfortable.

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When Fiction Becomes Mirror: Years and Years

Around the same time I first saw The Hunger Games I watched a BBC series called Years and Years (now on StudioCanal). At that stage it felt like plausible science fiction — distant enough to be a warning. But when I watched it again last year, a lot of those early episodes had already started to unfold in real life. The details that once felt hypothetical felt close to home. That creeping proximity of fiction and reality nudged me out of complacency.

It wasn’t alarmist paranoia — it was recognition. Stories that once felt “too much” began to look like maps. The timelines shifted. The possibility of systemic change no longer felt like a fantasy; it felt like a path we were already walking down. That realisation is a kind of initiation: once it lands, you can’t un-see it.

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Black Mirror — A Taxonomy of Desensitisation

Black Mirror has been a repeated teacher for me. Episode after episode it maps how entertainment, technology, and business logic can erode empathy and codify cruelty through convenience. There’s an episode that reduces human life to entertainment and transactional value — you laugh, you click, you consume, and gradually the human becomes a data point.

That’s the danger. Not the tech itself, but the way we let it rewire us. When compassion becomes inconvenient and spectacle becomes rewarding, the moral centre slips. Black Mirror shows at full volume what happens when culture normalises disconnect. It shows how easy it is to be pulled into a system that values consumption over care and clicks over character.

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Agenda 2030 – The Script in Plain Sight

On the surface, Agenda 2030 speaks the language of hope: “sustainability,” “equity,” “prosperity for all.” But underneath the polished words sits an uncomfortable possibility — a framework of control. A system where compliance is rewarded with access, and resistance is punished with exclusion.

I listened to a woman break it down simply: criminals at the bottom, the non-conformists just above, and the fully obedient at the top. The more you comply, the higher your class. It’s a ladder built not on creativity or compassion, but on submission.

And instantly, my mind dropped me back into The Hunger Games.

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Districts and Classes – A Mirror

Collins didn’t just write a dystopia. She built a parable of class control.

The Capitol mirrors the elites — a small circle who live in excess, insulated from the suffering that sustains them.

The Districts mirror the classes — workers locked into roles, stripped of agency, divided from one another so they can never unite.

The Games mirror compliance itself — a ritual that reminds everyone who has power and what the cost of rebellion is.

Each district is a rung on the ladder. District 12 lives in hunger. District 1 lives in jewels. But neither are free. Their roles are enforced, their identities fixed, and their compliance extracted through fear and scarcity.

Does this sound so far from the class “levels” being floated today? A system where your ability to travel, to eat, to work, depends not on who you are but on how much you comply? The fiction becomes instruction.

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The Prequel as a Warning

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes shows us something crucial: none of this was inevitable. The Games weren’t handed down by the gods. They were designed. By people. By politicians. By elites who chose control over compassion, and then dressed it up as necessity.

The prequel reveals how fragile society was after the war, how easy it was to justify cruelty in the name of order. And once cruelty was normalised, it could be refined into culture. That’s the danger we face now. When “safety” becomes the excuse, submission becomes the price.

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Plain Sight – From Districts to Data Points

The parallels are almost too sharp:

The Capitol’s surveillance of districts mirrors modern surveillance systems, where every move is tracked “for safety.”

The rationing of food and resources mirrors digital IDs and centralised control of access.

The spectacle of the Games mirrors how crises and entertainment are used today — distraction as a political tool.

In Panem, people learn to watch suffering as entertainment. In our world, we scroll, swipe, and laugh at chaos. The method is different, but the intention is the same: keep us numb, keep us divided, keep us compliant.

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Awakening Through Story – The Choice We Carry

It would be easy to let all this feel heavy. To watch The Hunger Games or read about Agenda 2030 and sink into fear. But downloads don’t arrive to paralyse us — they arrive to awaken us. To remind us that once you see the pattern, you are no longer bound by it.

That’s the power of awareness.

The Capitol thrives because the districts don’t unite. The Games continue because people accept the script. The illusion of control only works if everyone believes it’s inevitable. But the moment one person says, this is not the only story, the spell begins to break.

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How to Read the Signs Without Losing Hope

Notice the parallels — when fiction and policy line up, take it as guidance, not doom.

Stay awake but not afraid — fear feeds the system, but awareness without fear breaks it.

Choose compassion over compliance — real sovereignty isn’t about rebellion for rebellion’s sake, it’s about remembering your humanity when systems want to strip it away.

Tell the story differently — art, writing, conversation: these are how we shift collective scripts.

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Everything Is Given to Us in Plain Sight

This is the truth I keep circling back to. Spirit doesn’t hide things from us. The signs are everywhere — in films, in visions, in overheard conversations. The question is whether we will have the courage to see them.

When I watched The Hunger Games a decade ago, I was asleep. When I watch it now, I see the pattern. When I watch the prequel, I know it is both a warning and a prophecy.

And now, I choose not to be a spectator. I choose to write. To witness. To speak. To remind anyone who reads these words that the future is not fixed — it is written in every choice we make.

Agenda 2030, like Panem, is only inevitable if we all agree to play along. But if enough of us wake up, remember compassion, and refuse to let conformity be the measure of worth, then a new story can take root. One that no Capitol can control.