The Hidden Code That Runs Your Life - And How to Rewrite It.👨‍💻🖥️🧬

Published: Mon, 06/23/25

Updated: Mon, 06/23/25

Don't Compromise your Values or Beliefs.

Anton Marks

I carried something powerful with me from Jamaica. A rule. A belief. A mindset. Struggle taught me about survival: Use what you have, make it stretch, and make it do until you can do better. That immigrant mindset shaped how I saw the world when I first touched down in the UK. The land of opportunity. But opportunity only means something when you’re hungry enough to see it.

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Believe in yourself and your abilities. With the right mindset, anything is possible.

Where I come from, survival wasn’t theory. It wasn’t a self-help slogan. It was a daily practice. I learned to squeeze every ounce of value out of what little I had—food, money, energy, time. And that taught me something no book or degree could do: your beliefs aren’t just ideas. They’re the hidden code that runs your life. They shape how you move through the world. What you see. What you miss. What you dare. And what you settle for.

⚖️ Afrofuturist Utopia or Dystopia? – A Speculative Futures Challenge. ⚖️

Will the future be a shining Wakanda or a fractured techno-wasteland? You decide.

Africa stands at a crossroads—economically rising, culturally vibrant, but facing deep systemic challenges. What happens when today’s seeds grow into the forests of tomorrow?

In this powerful competition, we challenge you to explore the trajectory of the continent through the lens of speculative fiction. Will your version of Africa’s future be a beacon of harmony and tech-human balance? Or a dystopia where machines enforce tribal hierarchy, climate refugees battle for water, or wealth becomes digitized and walled off?

Challenge Details:
Create a vivid vision of Africa’s future—utopian or dystopian—through an essay or image. You may interpret “Africa” as a nation, city, people, or even a philosophical construct. Ground your vision in a real issue or trend from today (e.g., climate change, AI policy, resource control, pan-Africanism, surveillance, youth culture).

How to Enter:
You may submit one or both of the following:

📝 Speculative Essay (Max 500 words): Describe your imagined future in rich, sensory detail. Is it an ecological paradise guided by ancestral AI? A techno-monarchy ruled by data-wielding oligarchs? What changed—and what stayed the same?

🎨 Visual Submission: Create an original image (AI, digital art, or hand-drawn) of a moment, setting, or character from your utopia or dystopia. Annotate if needed, or let the image speak for itself.

Judging Criteria:

Originality and Insight: How thought-provoking and unique is your imagined future?

Connection to Real Trends: How effectively does your piece extrapolate from current African or global challenges?

World-Building: Does your entry create a believable, compelling setting?

Execution: Writing quality, artistic design, and overall clarity.

Prizes:

🥇 First Place: Full feature in our next newsletter, a $50 gift card, and your entry showcased in our special digital zine "Africa Reimagined 2125".

🥈 Second Place: Feature in the newsletter and a $20 gift card.

🥉 Third Place: Mention in our newsletter and a $10 gift card.

Submission Deadline: 7th July 2025

How to Submit:
Email your entry to marksmanstudios1@gmail.com with the subject line: "Utopia or Dystopia Submission". Be sure to include your name, the title of your piece, and social media handles if you'd like us to share your work online.

🧠 Will your vision inspire hope—or issue a warning? That’s the power of speculative fiction. Show us what tomorrow could look like, and why.

And yet, here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve come to accept: beliefs that got you through one chapter can block you in the next.

When I arrived in the UK, that code—the one that made me resourceful and relentless—also made me wary. I held onto struggle as if it was part of my identity. I’d tell myself, you have to fight for every inch. But at some point, that mindset became a limitation. There were moments when I couldn’t see the open doors because I was too focused on dismantling walls that no longer existed.

That’s what rules, beliefs, and mindsets do. They serve you. Until they don’t.

The dangerous part? They don’t announce when they’ve expired. They don’t tap you on the shoulder and say, Hey, time to upgrade, rude bwoy. They just quietly start making your world smaller. More rigid. They begin writing a story you didn’t mean to tell.

And unless you stop and ask, ‘Is this still working for me?’ you keep running old code on a new reality.

I’ve made it my mission to check in with the code I’m living by. To ask uncomfortable questions. To face down the beliefs that once felt like truth but no longer serve my future. Because what got me here won’t get me there. And it won’t get you there either, Gentle Reader.

I’ve learned that truth isn’t what makes you feel safe. Truth is what holds up when life applies pressure. It’s what doesn’t break when reality tests it. That’s why I’ve stopped treating my beliefs like sacred artefacts. I don’t worship them. I rent them. And when the lease is up? I’m ready to move on.

That’s how you grow. That’s how you evolve.

Mindsets are lenses. They decide what you see, even when you’re staring at the same world as everyone else. Two people can face the same setback. One sees failure. The other sees feedback. Same situation. Different code running underneath.

You can’t change your life if you don’t change the code.

It’s not easy. Updating your beliefs means admitting you were wrong about something. And let’s be honest—no one likes that. But that’s the price of clarity. And clarity is worth it.

I don’t have all the answers. But I know this: the mindset that helped me survive Jamaica’s challenges isn’t always the one that helps me thrive in London. The beliefs that made me a scrappy newcomer won’t help me build my legacy. And the rules that kept me safe as a young man won’t allow me to continue to grow as a man.

So I ask myself regularly: What am I holding onto that no longer serves me? Because if I don’t question it, that code will keep quietly running my life. And one day, I’ll wake up wondering how I got here.

Your life is shaped not by what you know but by how you think. And the only way to live awake is to question that code. To refine it. To choose it on purpose.