Relating Squid Game to Environmental Advocacy

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Can We Relate Squid Game to Environmental Advocacy? 

While Squid Game is primarily a dystopian critique of capitalism and social inequality, its themes can powerfully resonate with environmental advocacy when examined symbolically. Here's how:

1. Exploitative Systems Reflect Environmental Degradation

The Squid Game participants are victims of a brutal system that thrives on exploitation, desperation, and greed—just like our environment is exploited by systems that prioritize profit over sustainability.

Just as players are dehumanized for the entertainment of the rich, nature is commodified and consumed until it’s depleted—often by the same forces of unchecked capitalism.

2. Desperation Leads to Compromise of Values

Players join the game because they have no choice—drowning in debt, poverty, or societal failure. Similarly, environmental destruction often stems from economic desperation, where communities are forced to sell land, forests, or oceans to survive.

It raises a moral question: Is survival worth the cost of self-destruction?

3. Silent Suffering and Environmental Injustice

In Squid Game, the world turns a blind eye to the suffering of players. Likewise, environmental victims—indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolk, low-income communities—suffer in silence, ignored by those in power.

The show highlights the invisibility of the exploited, mirroring how environmental injustices often go unnoticed.

4. The Illusion of “Fair Play”

The games are rigged to benefit a few, despite the illusion of fairness—just as climate summits and green policies often serve corporate interests while neglecting the most vulnerable ecosystems and populations.

True environmental justice requires breaking free from systems that only appear to offer equal opportunity.

5. One Life Can Spark Change

Gi-hun’s transformation—from a desperate man to someone who rejects blood money and chooses to fight the system—mirrors the awakening of a climate advocate who refuses to be complicit in destruction.

Environmental change often begins with one person’s courage to challenge powerful systems.

Squid Game as a Metaphor for Environmental Struggle

Squid Game Element Environmental Parallel

Players exploited for entertainment Nature exploited for profit

Wealthy elites betting on lives Corporations profiting off destruction

Rigged rules disguised as “games” Greenwashing & false climate solutions

Gi-hun’s moral awakening Environmentalists rising in protest

Silent victims & anonymous deaths Climate refugees, wildlife extinction, ecological collapse

Call to Action: From Survival to Sustainability

The show tells us: “The system won’t change unless we resist it.” The same applies to climate and environmental advocacy.

Like Gi-hun, we must:

Refuse destructive systems

Speak out for the voiceless (people and planet)

Push for a future where survival doesn’t require sacrifice of morality or biodiversity

Final Thought

Squid Game is more than entertainment. It’s a mirror. And when we turn that mirror toward our planet, we see the same story unfolding: A rigged game that needs to be rewritten before it’s too late.

It’s time to stop playing — and start changing the rules.

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