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andillwatchh · 5 months

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After reading it, what lessons you can take from THG trilogy?

Mockingjay deals with rebellion of the Districts toward the Capitol.

What lessons can we apply to current world affairs?

Thank you.

@curiousnonny

okay *takes a deep breath* hii thank you for the ask @curiousnonny! finally sitting down to answer this. for some reason i'm really nervous to jot down my thoughts on this one. i feel like i will never be able to cover everything i want and will end up forgetting some stuff but i'm going to try my best. (edit : so i might have gone a bit overboard... sorry for that)

i think the lessons and messages suzanne has conveyed through her books can be divided into parts. some are about how to act in the reality of these problems and, to put it in the most plainly way, to ingrain the good in our lives. whereas the others are about those problems and the harsh reality of our world.

one of the major things this series talks about is of course oppression and how necessary it is to retaliate against it. funny how people will straight away jump in and chant over those in books and movies, but then suddenly it's a different thing when it happens in real life, but that's for later.

this series covered a lot of grounds in relation to that. and sometimes when i think and correlate it too much to our world i go a bit insane about how uncanny it is because my god are they an accurate depiction of the wars and bloodshed and corrupted governments of our own kind. art imitates life, life imitates art.

for the current world affairs, i will mostly be associating my thoughts with the current situation in palestine, but also a few with what is now happening in congo, sudan, and west papua.

first :

how children are often exploited in wars by people in power. to either gain sympathy, support, or to induce rage, even though they don't actually care about them.

in the hunger games, we saw how the capitol used the districts children to hold on onto that fear they already have over them and remind them of their power. in mockingjay, we saw how president coin used the capitol children by bombing them to make every last of their citizens turn their backs against snow.

but we also saw how the capitol used their own children too in tbosas. how the government used their very students, who were still recovering from the war they went through at a very young age, to be mentors and be beneficial to the games, even though most didn't want to.

like arachne's funeral being blown out of proportion for propaganda use. how lots of the mentors mentioned that they felt used by the capitol for the success of the games. how snow himself even had expressed his weariness of everything that had been going on. how it was all being put on their shoulders, a burden most didn't want.

we see this case a lot too. how high governments preaching for "the safety of our children" or "for the well-being of the young generation" to sway the people's views when really, they don't care about them. they just care about the political goals they're trying to achieve or the societal condition they're trying to protect because it plays in their favors.

how people are able to put a blind eye against oppression and the fact that they are killing children

and in this context, genocide.

the capitol was broadcasting the games. they put it on tv, they made it a whole spectacle and a cause for celebration. you would think that the world outside of panem would step up and put an end it to it after realizing that :

"oh, the capitol has been annually killing 23 children each year for entertainment. and not to mention those who have died under their ruling because of now trivial solvable things like hunger and easily cured illness because of lack of medical resources from their government while they themselves throw up on purpose just to eat more"

but they didn't. and look where we are now.

israel has been occupying gaza for more than the past 75 years (on the Nakba in 1948). the civilians there has been living in an apartheid state (an article for further elaboration). they don't have equal rights on their land just because they were born palestinians. it has been described as an “open air prison”, so alike to the arena the capitol used for the games. how many news have you witnessed about the bombings in gaza before 2023? how many times has this happened, again and again throughout the decades?

thousands of men, women, and children alike are being killed from the attacks (and it's not even from the past decades, only from october 7th) , and over 1.7 millions have been displaced out of their own homes in gaza because of the occupation .

same thing with congo and sudan and west papua. they are currently going through a genocide too, but not a lot of protests or posts on that because not much is aware of it.

with social medias in the play, we've seen so many footages being spread around to show people what actually is happening there. these hurting civilians have had to put aside their mourning for the loss of their family, relatives, and friends just to make the rest of the world hear them. so many have had to put their injured children, brothers and sisters with missing limbs, and their people under the rubble just to make the media see them.

this is why spreading awareness is so so important. it's the least you can do if you don't have the means to donate or help in any other way. so many parts of the world is suffering and it's necessary to bring them to light. don't be like the capitol citizens, blinded by medias and glamorous shows that are being fed into us daily so we won't see what the actual problem is.

how propagandas and being control of the narrative play such a vital role in wars and conflicts.

just like how it is right now with what's currently happening in palestine. how so many journalists who were stationed there and risking their lives in the hopes of reporting the world on the crisis situation in gaza, are getting killed and attacked by isareli strikes left and right.

another thing i would like to point out, just because i can't get it out of my mind, is how imbalance the power that are being played. like that one chapter in tbosas. we see it loud and clear the significant difference in terms of privilege and who are holding the upper hand in the midst of all the pictures and videos being taken.

remember that part in tbosas when the capitol made arachne's death a major event? but really it wasn't about giving her respects or anything, it was to make a statement. what with making her tribute's punishment a public and broadcasted exhibition. they wasted money on all that when they were still on rocky ground with the economy. just to remind the districts what the capitol could do to them if they step out of the line and remind them of their assets.

the capitol were still capable of spending some to record and assemble that, while the districts are dying out of starvation and natural causes and them.

i have some thoughts, but i’m just going to leave it at how so many countries have played this too. maybe not so much the blatant and brutal part, but how so many of the governments have played the ‘victim card’ to show off to the world too, when they themselves are the root of the problem.

how power and moral superiority corrupt.

we see this in tbosas, mostly, because of the fact we saw it in the perspective of the oppressive government itself. when i was reading the original trilogy, i was wondering how they had come to make that decision and how could they justify it when, at the cost of it all, they are killing innocent lives. children, not even the adults in charge of the first rebellion themselves.

how does one have the decency to do that and not feel guilty? how could they not see how sick this is?

and that's because the capitol didn't see these children as people. to see them as barely above animals was already a rare case. they saw them as rabid, savages, scums of the earth.

they didn't see the loss we see through our third-person perspective because they don't think there were losses to begin with. they felt that letting them to live was already a good "mercy" to give and that these district people owed them. their death had no value to them, and their lives only did because it served them materials to live by.

we saw a lot of this too in our world. how great countries (*ekhem* western countries *ekhem*) have hold themselves above others and see minorities, people of color, people with different cultures and beliefs as violent. when really, whose side had their hands red first?

we saw this happening in the past that led to colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc.

and we still see this happening right now too. everywhere.

for example, like the common views that arabs are dangerous or that muslims are terrorists, which can lead to the dismissing of what israel is currently doing to the people in palestine where the majority of the citizens are muslims.

the US government funding the bombs that resulted in these thousands of palestinian deaths and biden supporting israel on their inhumane attacks is just. you see where i'm getting at. (recent news on their "concerned" thoughts of the 4-day pause)

how the israeli forces can just attack al-aqsa mosque during ramadhan regularly and still able to do it and not get condemnation from lots of the western countries that powers the world. i can't find the recent numbers, but news from november 9th 2023 shows that they have bombed 66 mosques with partial damage to 146 others across gaza.

what are their justification for the damage and injuries? "that hamas are hiding in there", "that they are using it as headquarters." and they can still continue to do that too, bomb sacred places and desperately needed sites with that excuse as a shield for all their atrocities, if this does not stop here.

which leads us to,

war crimes

the capitol bombed an entire district, killing almost everyone there. and they bombed a makeshift hospital in district 8—that's a war crime.

according to the WHO, 39 health facilities have been damaged since the war began (and that's from 20 days ago).

al-shifa hospital, al-quds hospital, al-rantisi hospital , the indonesian hospital. where patients, casualties, and premature babies are.

not only that, they have also bombed schools (including the UN school in the Jabalia refugee camp). i don't even need to explain how this is a place for children to learn and they bombed that too.

Other than mosques, they have also bombed churches (one namely the greek orthodox church, the oldest in the city)

they bombed refugee camps, evacuations routes where they had told the citizens to flee. they have used white phosphorus to bomb gaza, a weapon illegal to use even in wars.

people have cried reading and/or watching katniss' speech to snow after he had ordered for the makeshift hospital to be bombed because it is powerful and incredibly moving to see. it was a spark of the rebellion, and people love rooting for fictional characters overthrowing the government and getting the justice they deserved, especially if said government hit too close to home. but that is fiction.

but when they see real people actually living under tyranny and having their homes being bombed, and citizens being killed every 10 minutes, lots of the same people just look away, refusing to acknowledge it. prefer to turn into a "safer" program instead. when what's currently happening isn't fiction and there are actually CASUALTIES and people dying. most refuse to see it and some even take desperate measures to defend it. and that's insane.

i'm sure there are more i haven't elaborated, but now let's move on to what i think is the biggest takeaway from this series :

that wars hurt everybody.

one of the things katniss concluded by the end of mockingjay is that "it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen." (mj, chapter 27).

i know lots of people have a lot of things to say about suzanne's ending message feeling slightly against violent resistance, but that's not it. she was saying that in return of violence itself, we could've changed it and turned it for the better. all of us, together. (because after all, haven't we labelled ourselves as the superior species of earth?)

but how could we do so, when the politics of our world and our own views of it are so complicated and tangled and tampered, and already so many of us have blood on our hands? that’s the question.

"i think that peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children's lives to settle its differences. you can spin it anyway you like."

we saw the entire problem being elaborated more in tbosas. how the hunger games was to punish the district because of the rebellion they incited, and of course with the aftermath of the war still fresh in their minds, the capitol citizens agreed or did not mind it.

but what they did not realize or refused to remember was that the district had taken a stand against the capitol because of the capitol itself. (which i think also connects to the recent events, but). because they had had their lives taken from them while still living it, because they had been robbed of their rights to live as human beings should, because the capitol had reduced them to slavers for their purposes and their purposes only.

i see it as an "if only." on what we could do instead of what we have been doing for millennia. what we could be evolving to instead of resorting to more wars in the future, had everything had not happened.

but how could we form peace all around the world when so many of reigning and powerful countries that was the start of all of this in the first place only advocate for diplomacy but doesn't actually practice them? how could we, when control and greed and take, take, take has always been the motivator? but that's a talk for another day.

as we all aware of, oppression, wars, slavery, genocide, ethnic cleansing etc are still happening in different parts of the world. we unfortunately did not leave them in the old history books and became better like we would all like to believe. so, where does that leave us? when the money power hungry governments are still out there to get others and us and all we, the rest of the world, can do is watch?

so let's talk on WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.

learn and educate yourselves on the matter.

i know only a few people will read this, but i'm going to add links either way :

on palestine -> comprehensive masterlist , thepalestineacademy.com , decolonizepalestine.com | on congo -> m23 cobalt mining in congo (2) | on sudan -> ICC, CNN, sudan genocide | west papua -> genocidewatch , research paper on it, the guardian.

spread awareness.

this is the very least you can do. just tell people what you know, let people acknowledge it. information holds power, that's why we have seen so many journalists being killed trying to get some. it's not useless. even if you don't have a big following or whatever, app like twitter and tiktok relies heavily on algorithm. just giving likes or retweet/repost could help a lot on it reaching a wider audience. a post on tumblr, on the other hand, dies with a like— so reblog!!

social media has a bad reputation for false information, and i'm not saying it is a misconception but seriously, what does most of the big (especially western) news channels tell us? lies, cover-ups, lies. so take advantage of the accessibility of the internet to share information on what's happening, but do make sure to use your own media literacy while doing so too.

donate, if you can.

but make sure to check who are in charge of the donations too!

you can also join rallies or protests, but do it according to regulations. don’t do things that can be harmful to other people’s safety or yours.

so, to wrap it all up :

the hunger games is a series that tells us about injustice and how it could go on so long without any repercussions due to suppressed voices and silenced speeches. so share those voice of theirs, let the world know and see and hear them. because we can't let history keep being repeated over and over again when ours has held so many bloodshed and costed so many of people lives in between them.

#i'm scared to post this #no scratch that i'm terrified #the hunger games #thg #tbosas #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #free palestine #free congo #free sudan #west papua #long post #talking

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