Never Lose Hope

”What I understand, learned and realize, what I do not understand yet, and how can I utilize this in my life or professional practice.”

I want to start by saying that this course was refreshing for me as a history and international relations student. Coming from classes where I have to document every word that I say with the rigidity of footnotes and quotations needed for every work, the reflections for this class felt like an oasis.

To summarise everything that I understood in this class „everything is connected”. I learned to see the world through a different spectrum and to allow myself to feel and connect with others. Also, I realized that there is more to everything in this world that we can see or possibly understand.

I feel like I can no longer look at something without seeing it both in connection with something else and as a mechanism of interconnected parts. And by watching these mechanisms their behavior changes, as well as mine, because I am as well observed by the others.

This class also made me more aware of my surroundings and especially nature. I feel like our impact as humans is not taken as seriously as it should be. We impacted this earth in ways that are beyond repair and we keep doing it, we are spending more than we can afford and I am not saying money but natural resources, irrecuperable ones. And it is quite scary because we can already see the difference in weather from one year to another, how much can we survive if we do not start to take it seriously (?) I genuinely have no idea.

In this case, I think that I can refer through the systems theory to the term Anthropocene, the impact of the human race on nature. And I personally think that here, the correlation between everything works as a domino effect. As an example, an act of negligence towards nature would encourage another which will also cause another, and slowly the effects are coming down as well as a domino because one natural tragedy could lead to another, and ironically enough it will come back to the ones that started everything.

But in this class, I learned that I can start doing something and that the connections between me and others might help improve the situation, so I think I will start acting on this issue more frequently.

Systems theory is also about realizing that a group is wiser than one individual as it allows communication of individuals with knowledge in different matters. I understand that as a mechanism of a watch. One piece by itself can do just one thing whereas the whole group is better in itself as each piece doing its part are keeping the watch going. Also, it is important to mention that the one individual piece is good in itself but it is way better in relation with the others.

Of course, we talked about complexity, and how can you not see complexity in a net of connections? Is not it the beauty of life? If it would be easy, and simple, wouldn’t it be boring?

An interesting theme that we also followed in this class was AI. I was not in touch with it, to be honest, but I feel like it is important to keep an eye on what is happening with the technological evolution around us.

I am not going to lie, it is a bit scary to have such technology that is supposed to teach itself and also that is supposed to act human-like. I do not really understand how is this going to happen, as I feel like because we are talking about a machine, it will never have feelings and it will work according to a code. It is also very hard to define what is human-like behavior. Is it mostly rational? Mostly emotional? How is a robot supposed to understand emotions? I feel like, as much as it can evolve, it will never be human-like, because from the beginning a purpose is set and it will follow it the way it is programmed. And personally, I believe that we, humans have also a soul, and it is impossible to recreate a soul and therefore to successfully develop a human-like machine.

On the same topic, I do not like at all the implications of AI in art. As far as I read about this topic, it seems like the AI is basically “stealing” by copying art styles from artists that worked really hard to develop their techniques. I am, myself, trying to learn how to properly draw and paint and I have to admit that it is not easy but even frustrating sometimes and I feel like the AI technology is making it even worse. It is already hard enough for the artists that are told “you are going to starve if you choose art”, I do not feel like we should make it harder than it already is. And this applies to everything that the AI might replace sooner or later.

I loved the idea of learning through different ways rather than just being in class and lecturing and therefore I mostly appreciated the applications such as the drawings that we made and the movie “Mindwalk”.

Even though I am more of a action movie fan, I enjoyed the educational movie that the teacher suggested. I feel like it was easy to follow and the concepts were explained in such a manner that even if you are not into science (I am not) the concepts are not that hard to grasp.

Panopticon is yet another term that I heard in this class. I have no idea if I am going to need it but it is indeed an interesting concept. The change of behavior while being observed. Yet, I feel like maybe that is one of the reasons people need to believe in a God. It probably works as a motivation to actually keep doing good things even when nobody is around (or even anything actually), it creates a reason and a purpose.

Finally, entropy, the subject of the last class got me to understand that as long as we do not work to keep the good things, inevitably it will go bad. The example that the teacher gave us I found quite interesting, I can not reproduce it with the exact same words but it was something between the lines of “the friendships that you created in this Erasmus might last a short time after you leave, but with you will go no contact in time”. And the drawing that I and my teammates worked on is the actual representation of what I understood as well, therefore if you leave a rotten fruit next to the healthy ones, in the end, they will all start rotting.

There were as well some concepts that I could not grasp, or the too scientifical explanations were sometimes a bit too much.

All in all, I feel like I am leaving this class with some knowledge about a subject that I did not actually study before but also with new information about myself. I feel like this class in particular and this experience, in general, made me understand myself more as well as develop and I feel like I am going back not a different me, but maybe a better one.

This blog is written so late as I forgot about it. I am tired and stressed because once again I left everything for the last minute and I do not have enough time.

About the last class, it was a bit hard for me to pay attention which is ironic, I guess, because it was mostly about that: change in behavior while being observed.

I prefer to talk about a specific part of this course that I also discussed with my colleagues in class, which is AI therapy. I think it is a good occasion as I forgot to write about AI in the class designed for it.

We all agreed that the video that we saw and the idea of a robot therapist are quite scary. It does not condone human interaction and it cannot help, in my opinion. Maybe it can tell by your behavior what problems you have and recommend treatment, but it will never be a human being. From my experience with therapy, the most important part is to be understood and I feel like a robot that never lived as a human will never be able to feel empathy towards you and therefore it can not really help.

I strongly support that, as good as it is to love ourselves and to be self-sufficient, when we need specialized help to deal with emotions, another human being will be always my choice. It may be because sometimes the help we need is just a pat on the shoulder or sitting next to you when you cry. There are so many other ways of being helped, such as being heard, listened and encouraged, not just receiving a bland explanation of why you feel the way you do and maybe some pills.

Sometimes the help we need is love 🙂

I just got back here after the holidays and I start to realize that this experience is coming to an end soon enough, which makes me sad. 🙁

About the movie, I got so intrigued that I did not realize how fast I watched the 9 parts. I really enjoyed the conversations but what got me was the ending.

It is true that as much as we want to separate things to analyze, understand and get to study them it will never fully happen without seeing everything as a whole network of tiny connections that create bigger ones and finally the biggest that we call life. On the other hand, I do believe that sometimes we need to break down a system to pieces to give enough attention to every piece to understand its role in the play. So I have to say, for me it is 50-50 when it comes to understand things, in other words I have to break everything down to pieces but also to have a background picture all the time. (I know it may sound confusing for you, but imagine for me, because that is how my brain works:)

Coming back to the ending of the movie, I deeply loved it, because talking about deep, philosophical, and scientifical things it’s not easy (assuming that you know what you are talking about), and it is not easy to understand it either, but there is also something else that is not easy and that is understanding and having a good connection with our loved ones. As it seemed to come in handy to talk about the different perspectives on the world and how it should be understood we fail to see that the closest connections not working make a failing out of the entire system.

Conclusion: If you want a change for the better, start small, with what surrounds you!

Lately my ability to focus started to decline, might it be the past two years of online learning or maybe this ugly weather that makes me sleepy, I don’t know for sure. As a result, in the last Systems Theory class, I could not focus on more than just one topic that we discussed and that was the impact of human race on nature.

When I was little I heard all the time the phrase “” Nature can exist without humans, but humans can not survive without Nature.” that always made sense to me, but the last week made me think that maybe that makes us a parasite actually. In other words, in class, the teacher mentioned the Anthropocene is the era in which humans impacted irreversibly the earth, and adding to this the video that made a comparison between the number of people that can exist and keep on living by having a lifestyle as people in a country in Africa (I don’t recall the name) or people in North America made me realize that human race can be problematic. The bottom line is if we do not care about the life that’s given to us and the need of spending and waste everything surrounding us with the stupid reason of so-called happiness or how other people might say ”YOLO” would lead to the destruction of both us and nature.

But are we a parasite or worse than that? One might argue that people are doing things for nature, all the ONGs and volunteering for nature, planting trees, gathering the trash, cleaning the waters, and so on. I’ll say that is true, I’ve been involved in some actions like that back home but I also know that under the reason of ”helping nature” we don’t see that we are actually fixing what we created, for example, I was planting trees in this spring to repopulate a forest that was cut by other people for different reasons. So these ONGs are actually doing what we all should, bringing back what we wasted, cleaning after ourselves, and being decent because after all the indifference that some may claim is ”cool” might be our downfall.

I am not trying to be dramatic here but we should know that we are pretty much responsible for what is happening around us, even if we don’t admit it. As my teacher in my home university said in the first lecture of my first year ”We should know that we as individuals first and then as a group, we are fully responsible for our lives, for doing or not something to make things better and keep in mind that you can always do more. You will be responsible for how the world will look in the future as much as I am responsible for how the world is today and in the same way that your parents and everyone else are responsible for it”(B. A.).

I’ll end this comment by saying that I consider we as humans are a parasite to nature because we desperately need it to survive, but we can and I think that we should change the relationship between us and nature from parasite-host to cohabitation and also start identifying and connecting with nature which in my opinion brings us closer to happiness than any other form of consumerism ever will. Next time when you’re sad go climb a hill or go on a hike, breathe in the fresh air and just enjoy being alive please, just let yourself be one with nature.

Is life a system? Does the coexistence between people work as a system or as a collection? Is there a necessity for a purpose?

Life is a system without a doubt in my opinion. let’s have a look at the definitions, shall we?

A system – „a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole.`”

A collection – „an accumulation of objects gathered for study, comparison, or exhibition or as a hobby”

A purpose – „the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”

Now let’s mix them up a bit and make some sense out of them. A system consists of things that are connected and not just because they have similarities (criteria for collection) but also because there is a purpose that any and every part of the system has and the elements can not function the same without one another. So, for example if you take out or add a piece from a collection nothing significant actually happens. Trying the same thing with a system can actually change it fundamentally. As for that I am going to come back once again to the video presenting how wolves change rivers as an example of why life on earth works as a system. If by adding wolves to an ecosystem even the course of the rivers can change, we should keep in mind that people are also interconnected and by adding or removing a person the humanity can change fundamentally.

Considering what I just said maybe I’ll add a piece of advice and say that kindness is also a process in the system of life and because we are an important part of life itself, contributing with positive actions we have the power of influencing people to do the same, starting with us. Be kind first to yourself, you count as a main part of this puzzle!

Everybody knows those little silly quotes that go like “home is not a place, but a person” or “home is not a place but a heart” and considering the last few days I think that is it mostly about relationships. We might love a place, the place where we spent most of our lives in or the place that offered somehow the opportunity to change, grow or see ourselves the way we actually are but let’s not miss an aspect! Yes, we should be at peace with ourselves and comfortable to be with ourselves but can a place feel like home if we don’t consider having the loved ones close enough? I think that as humans we can adapt to almost any place in this world, maybe not really like it, but we can adapt and get used to it, find favorite places and hobbies but without either connecting with the people of that place and making it feel like home or having the loved ones close enough to be able to see them at any time given removing this way the homesickness that can’t really go with the place you can call home.

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs!

To get started, simply visit your blog’s dashboard, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

Like more help?

We can walk you through step-by-step in our guide to getting started with your blog.

Happy blogging!