The New Normal Game - Round 3 The Gamemaster appeared in a menacing faceless amalgam representing: capitalism, shadow government, the global elite, colonialism, patriarchy, generational privilege. This is how our players responded, with their imaginings of how we take on “The Man”. Remember to vote for the Possible World you like best. Player’s full-text responses available here: http://www.thenewnormalgame.co.za/round-3/
Possible World 2
“The fact that you’re showing your teeth means you are threatened. You don’t have the most valuable weapon you need. The mind of the oppressed.”
Well done for flexing your power. Sure you have it, but you don't have the people power of the world. We have focused on a humane regime and showing the utmost respect to people - including those who don't support us. If they want to leave the country, we will give them VR headsets so they can experience Athens in the summer. We have strengthened our transnational ties so that we will have support even during this tumultuous period. We are being sent doctors and medical supplies from supportive and like-minded regimes. Individuals from around the world, particularly the African Diaspora, are in the streets marching for us. The fact that you are showing your teeth must mean that you are threatened, and that's a good sign. You don't have the most valuable weapon you need: the mind of the oppressed.
Possible World 4
“ We need a new social contract”
You know what's clear we need a new social contract the money hasn't served us well and it's revealed a lot of cracks now society and the social contract should revolve around a call to action between both genders and also races so that we don't carry forward oppressive patriarchal systems and also racial indignation and racial prejudices from the past this social contract would start out on all platforms available with social media being the 1st one and then a commission of inquiry of sorts some led to the truth and reconciliation committee and determine a way forward as a collective painting a new picture with the same rainbow colours.
Possible World 5
“You, Western superpowers, let’s see where you will get your raw materials to make your drugs, re-build your energy and carbon-intensive economies! When your mining houses leave us, our air will be clean and we can fish fresh nutritious fish, hunt sustainably for wild nutritious meat and walaaaah... go back to basics and thrive like our ancestors did before you arrived.”
Well, let’s see who will have the last laugh!! Keep them sanctions coming....with all the subtlety of Game of Thrones, this kind of warfare has become the default mode of western diplomacy.
Sanctions remain in place against many other weak and vulnerable states, irrespective of whether they achieve any policy goal. They have become the default mode of western diplomacy, the acceptable face of aggression, a casual flick of contempt by the rich against the poor.
Like the emergence of the power of community in Cuba during sanctions, Mzanzi will rise from the ashes!! Ooh, and we have the land in abundance, as soon as your capitalist multinationals leave our motherland, we can reclaim our land, grow our own food, build self-sufficient communities... grind our own mealies. Everyone has to eat, even the lazy bums, hunger will set in and they too will rise to take their hoes, donkeys, and cattle and till the land....:) We will manage to repay you with 50% of our environmentally friendly produced chemical-free produce and still manage to thrive!!! Yes. Anyway, let’s see how you will recoup your billions once we are all cut off from civilization!!! Let’s just see🤩. Guess what, we will grow our herbs and all the colorful... purple, orange, red, and leafy greens to kill the Covid19 and steam it out of our lungs!! We will eat them raw, cook them, boil them to kill this thing!
Possible World 6
“We are chanting for change. We are planting for change. We are using the mandatory personal hiatus to have sun Salutations and boost our immune systems. While we grow the revolution, the army has been living in crowded barracks, being unable to observe social distancing while beating people up. They have eaten GMO food and the accumulated poisons are wreaking havoc amongst their ranks. They are in no condition to serve…”
Life Happens. It's not all just Sunshine and Rainbow The new normal has no place for a rainbow... We are unbanding the rainbow. The once stratified colours colours are melding into a kaleidoscopic reality. IA sneeze has no prejudice.
We are eating fresh vegetables and encouraging growers to share their harvests. Personal hygiene comes in the form of natural soaps, lotions and potions, taking the time to start decolonising our skins. Every garden is surrounded by thickets growing indigenous herbs.
When we are feeling ill, we take a few days off spend it resting snd being cared for by the community.
We, in the meantime, are discussing how there are many more of us than of them. And that what has been holding us back is ourselves. We work at agreeing amongst ourselves knowing that united we are strong. So we begin discussions about reparations. When we are done with questions of who must pay for the damaged climate, the holes in the ground - once-flourishing ecosystems taken from generations to come - and the forests which must be replanted to keep future generations safe from new Coronaviruses; then we can talk about those debts again. First, to take herbs to the army. My ancestors did so and we never saw the wisdom of their ways till now.
Possible World 7
“I am not the player who started this game. I am the 4th generation descendant who has survived the global apocalypse that wiped out the 1% and the 98% who propped them up. The 2022 global pandemic took care of them within the space of a week and without a single gunshot fired. The weapons are rusting in the toxic cesspool that was once referred to as the first world. ..”
I am not the player who started this game. I am the fourth generation descendant who has survived the global apocalypse that wiped out the 1% and the 98% who propped them up. Those who thought that their masters and their wealth would protect them.
Only we remained unscathed in our little bubbles of healthy ecosystems across the globe where the army of viruses could not survive. A minority of thinkers and growers and makers who were not too scared and bowed to embrace fundamental change when they had the opportunity.. It was always clear that this future would be no place for those who worshipped the bells and whistles and smartphones: they all died along with their petty gods and outdated beliefs. The laws of man and its myriad, mired structures are no more and will never again be.
Some of us cried for the loss and the stench that lasted on the wind for the first few months, but even that faded along with the constructs that were imagined and installed by the sociopaths and who had previously ruled our lives. Within two short years, a new human nature emerged in complete contrast to the base traits that previously used to thrive within the brutality and bloodlust of the old, new abnormal.
It is 2120 and life is beautiful. 7.8 billion people died. May they rest in peace. They are now a reminder to our species of what we do not want to be. We will never again be crippled and blinded by fear!
Possible World 1
“ I call your bluff... I refuse to call you Baas.Your wives are tired, your nannies are gone. Your security, gone. Your system of inequality is turning against you. No one is teaching your children, no one manufacturing your caviar, no one to cork your sparkling wine.Your millionaires leave the cities in fear and disappear to their bunkers. We take occupation in their homes. With the panic of mass uprisings, baas your workers have taken over your farm, in their thousands. They are working to feed their communities. You threaten to shoot them for theft, but they are too many, even when unarmed, you cannot contain them.
The one thing you have that we never wanted was world domination. You speak as though you are contagion, but you are only the 1% and we know that you are watching in dismay as your garbage bins overflow with maggots, your food, your laundry must be done by yourself and even your army, itself reliant on your exploitation, downs their tools watching as their mothers are killed. You rely on them to 'stabilize' (neutralize) the masses to extract wealth from us, but with no one to cook or clean or watch their children, and with the chaos mounting, their bodies are getting tired. You forgot that we formed alliances with unions. We build an alliance with the military and police unions. It's a necessary evil, much like our black brothers fought your world war and our black sisters tended their wounds, we call them home out of a system of brutalization. We do cleansing ceremonies, we reconnect them to the earth. The psychologists among us provide psychosocial interventions, the Nyangas and sangomas connect us to the rage and cries for justice from our ancestors and help us heal.
You forget that even the measly taste of luxury afforded to the middle class in the global north and south is fleeting, they are aware of this as they too return to poverty, just one generation out of it. Those who have been forced to live in food poverty, were previously unable to feed their families because they were expected to work, now tend to the soil in collectives. For the first time, food is growing as many activists return home to tend the soil.
We do not have historical wealth built on exploitation, you do. And the links between impoverished families and middle-class families are becoming clearer... And you speak as if we are only in the world you call Third, but you have exported the bodies of our ancestors who are filled with rage. You have detained children, you have financialized your criminal system. Your cities are burning and you too are eating cauliflower and spinach like us, except we also have communal stockpiles. We've been planning for months. You govern by fear and we govern by hope.
Our next move is to call on the subversive work we have done to survive. We have allowed our feminist struggle to be co-opted and the mass mobilization to translate to workers' rights, indigenous rights, climate justice, tech rights. As we have always done, in the thick of the night we hack into your electrical and telecommunications system. So we stay connected... We wear masks and do our stay-aways, your facial recognition technology cannot identify us when we do protest.
We have allies who are still able to move out of our countries. They help connect us to the drug companies that were violating your copyright laws and selling at cost anti-malarial drugs and start covert shipments in the thick of night.
Lastly, we stage an insurgency on factories, we are the ones who manufacture. We also remember that most resources you extract are exported and returned to us in shiny boxes. We gather our resources and we start to build again. Not iPhones, not TVs, but ventilators, homes, medicines.
We take turns to rest, we find that those who are with us are more than those who are not.
Possible World 3
“This is a beginning of a decolonised nation. By cutting us off you cut the cord that we couldn't. You just gave us what we wanted, but you don't know this so we pretend to run around like headless chickens. There is enough food, water, and shelter so we can survive.”
Cut us off, bye! This is our chance to start over. Without outside communication and backstabbers, we have a chance to rebuild. Those missing the western world, there are a few unlisted ships ready to take you wherever you want to go to whoever will take you. If you want to go you are free to leave, but you can never return.
Luckily we don't only have farmers in this country. Community by community we start figuring out who has what skills and make lists. We will create a world without you. Sacrificing some things will come at a greater freedom.
We already have the means and resources to build our own technology, medicines, and equipment. We're going to rebuild, my way. I've given everyone chances to come right, all they've proven is that faction upon faction will try to rise above others. Everyone's life is on the line now, it's up to me to rebuild and get everyone on the same page.
Unfortunately, back to level 5 we go. Under the current pressure of a mutating virus we just cannot afford for everyone to be sick at the same time, the hospitals can't cope. The economy has already tanked, jobs have already been lost, everything is non-functional. Rebuilding from scratch is not easy so people will have to learn to go without, they have no choice but to.
I've gathered all the specialists, professors, professionals, experts from every field, religion, culture, ethnicity to help create this new world, all under your nose. You think we have crumbled but we've only just begun... ... See more