This study for me was like a story about “Two Decks at the Same Time and Place”. I landed on an unfamiliar land for me and I needed to survive. Yes, I had a certain amount of knowledge, but I had to look for new ways and exits.

I landed on an unfamiliar land for me and I needed to survive. Yes, I had a certain amount of knowledge, but I had to look for new ways and exits.

It was possible, like people from the Grafton ship, to unite with someone from students, to find friends for life, but I followed the path of Invercauld and remained alone and was looking for people and acquaintances from outside, not at the university.

I can boast of my result, I have friends from the USA, France and Ukraine, and these are close ties. I signed up for Pole Dance classes (I’m a pole acrobatics coach in Russia).

From what I conclude, it is not always necessary to be in a team, although I found out that there is a whatsapp chat for Erasmus students only in the third month of study and it turns out there were special events for international students. Was I offended? Sure. But resentment and my personal feeling, it does not depend on anyone. It’s my mistake that I didn’t find out about it, but I had a good 4 months in Athens.

Two Decks at the Same Time and Place

Psychology classes have given me a lot of food for the mind. After each lesson, I went out and thought about different things, but the main idea remained in me and became more and more overgrown with arguments. I’m lonely. The more we went through the system, the more often this thought came. Yes, we are one common system of people, we work for each other, we teach each other and communicate. But we are all moving away from each other.

This is facilitated by artificial intelligence. We go to the global network and do not want to get out of it. It’s cozy and warm there and as if there are people there who understand you, you console yourself with the fact that I have a lot of subscribers, my videos and photos are watched, but is it so. Your photo is forgotten here and now. Can you remember what you watched on social media today?

The other day I came across an interesting movie “Her”, it’s about artificial intelligence. I was amazed by this film to the tips of my fingers. I thought it was just another boring and hackneyed science fiction. But this is not so, this is a film about artificial intelligence and how it separates people. We are so lonely that if we find someone who can listen to us and go crazy with happiness and go into the virtual world.

On the one hand, we have a friend or even a loved one, on the other we leave the real world. The character struggles with this, he fell in love, but understands that this is only artificial intelligence, but soon he succumbs to attention and the fact that people listen to him and understand that he goes into the world of illusions and self-deception.

Many will say that this is bad, but I will answer that I would like to have a friend who suits you, who listens to you, understands your humor, plus occasionally does your job, because it’s not difficult for him. You realize that someone really needs you. I think AI needs to evolve and replace humans, in some matters, because technology can do much more than humans.

Another movie that inspired me is “Mindwalk”. It was filmed in 1990, but the topics that are raised there are relevant in 30 years. At first I couldn’t believe it. But then it dawned on me that these are “eternal questions” that scientists, politicians, philosophers and poets have been trying to solve since ancient times.

For almost two hours, three human figures loom on the screen, leading a continuous conversation on the highest matters. A physicist, a Politician and a Poet participate in the dispute. They discuss the philosophy of Descartes and Bacon, the structure of the atom, the responsibility of scientists, ecology, the crisis of perception, the theory of living systems, etc.

I liked studying psychology in Greece, it makes me think about many things. I am glad that my journey went exactly like this

We had a task to watch the movie “Mindwalk”.

As a journalist, I can write a good review of this film, talk about the encoding, the meaning of the idea, the characters. But I won’t do that. I want to cling to my feeling, what I felt

I hate movies about love. It was so romanticized, it became too vulgar and accessible. They shoot about all kinds of love, about love for a partner, family, children, business, friends, yourself. But this is the first film I’ve seen about the love of life.

We often associate ourselves with the main characters because they are close to us. The poet became close to me. It makes sense, doesn’t it? A poet is close to a journalist, a person who knows how to work with words and letters. He is close to me not only for this.

All three have lost themselves, but the poet does not have his own view of the world, he sees it through the prism of a scientist and a politician. He does not draw conclusions, he is a listener who finds what is close to him in both.

I like people who can listen. He does not criticize anyone and gives everyone a chance to share their story and view of the world. However, in the end he makes a conclusion, a conclusion for himself. This is a parallel with the viewer, because after this film, the viewer must draw conclusions and realize a lot, as the poet did.

During the lesson, we were asked to draw what we think, what we feel, our impressions of the lecture. Since no one in our group knew how to draw, I suggested drawing Malevich’s black square.

The essence of the picture is that many people say that they can draw as well, and that there is no sense in it. But for some reason, no one thought of this before. And the meaning of the picture is much deeper. You can’t think of anything simpler than a black square. There is nothing easier than drawing a black square. Nevertheless, it is recognized as a masterpiece.

If it gets to the open auction today, they will be ready to buy it for $ 140 million!

How did such a “misunderstanding” arise? The primitive image is recognized by all art historians of the world as a masterpiece. Did they conspire?

Obviously, there is something special about the “Black Square”. Invisible to the ordinary viewer.

This was the essence of my idea and joke, but if you explain the meaning of the joke, it ceases to be it.

We drew a lot of lines that flow from one another, that intersect each other, but there was one that went beyond the square. It had a great meaning: “Goes beyond!”

The idea of our drawing for me was much deeper than it might seem at first glance. But apparently I couldn’t get the idea right to the guys in the group, or maybe “we are exactly as different as we are the same.” We created something together, painted at the same time, in the same place, but we saw different things.

The whole lesson can be explained by one quote from the great Russian work “The Master and Margarita”: “How fancy the deck hangs out.” During the lesson, we marked on the world map from where each of us came to Greece.

Do you see the farthest single purple dot? That’s where I come from. A small town in Siberia.

If I had been told a couple of years ago that I would study in Greece on an exchange, I would not have believed it for anything. But I’m here. And this is a fact. Another fact is that we all ended up in the same office at this hour, someone was late, someone did not come at all, It was the choice of each individual. Every day, every second we make a choice and it has its consequences. So now everyone sitting in the audience at that time made a lot of choices that brought him to this class and at this hour.

We are like a deck of cards, each time it is shuffled in a new way that it has not been shuffled before, each person shuffles it in his own way and puts it in his own order, which may affect his whole life, or may not affect, or may affect the fate of his friend or relative. No one can predict anything in advance. But all our actions are part of a system that works with or without us.

Love, sports, artificial intelligence, food, drugs. What unites them all?

That’s right, it’s an addiction. People are dependent on people, on sports, you need to lose weight, pump up your muscles and go on a diet. People are addicted to food, many live to eat. Someone can’t live a day without a phone.

It is impossible to imagine your life without a phone, Internet, social networks. Artificial intelligence has become our main drug, we add it everywhere in cars, phones, homes, computers, robots.

We can no longer imagine life without artificial intelligence. He is everywhere, he makes life easier for us, but at the same time he takes away the main resource – our time. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, we give artificial intelligence our time to gain time. But we only pay it on social networks.

Personally, I am ready to give my life to artificial intelligence. I’m not so brilliant to fight it and come up with something new. I haven’t figured out who I want to become yet, and if technology does it for me, I don’t mind.

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts” (Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. 154-155 )

An interesting phrase with which I fundamentally disagree. In the crowd and in the system, a separate component is devalued. He is only required to perform strictly only his functions and responsibilities. He can’t do anything else, because then the system will fall apart, it won’t be the same. Since the violation of the actions of one component leads to the destruction of the whole.

Now the new culture is destroying the traditions and traditions of the old view of art. The old generation does not like it and it stands up for the past. The new is knocked out and changes the life of the older generation, which naturally they do not like. The system of the past is being destroyed and broken, the older generation has to change only because someone combined the sounds in a different order and came up with different music. We have to agree and integrate into the new fashion, in the fact that the young have no ideals, the culture of the past is collapsing, just because a couple of guys wanted to wear a skirt.

One element of the system means much more than the whole. Without individuals, we would still think that the sun revolves around the planet, that women have no rights, that only a girl can paint her nails.

Therefore, one sheep can make the whole flock move.

This was my idea for the title of the class. At first it was just an abandoned thought on a smartphone. But Masha really liked her and she even took a picture of her, and then when we started working in a group, she suggested my title and everyone agreed.

It’s like I’ve lost myself in the last few months, it’s strange for me, because I always know what I want. This situation seemed to bring me back to my place and reminded me that I want to become a journalist, that creating headlines and text is my vocation. In a short time I can create something that will make you think and accept.

In the last lesson we talked about ecological networks. An ecological network is a model used to describe the different elements in an ecosystem and the network of
relations between them. That is, another system with its own laws and rules.

Understanding ecosystems, then, leads us to understanding relationships. This is a
key aspect of systems thinking. It implies a shift of focus from objects to relationships.

Another term is the Anthropocene. It is an “epoch” starting some time in the past and on the whole defined by anthropogenic carbon emissions and production and consumption of plastic goods that are left in the ground. It’s terrible that we were able to bring our problem to such global problems.

I don’t understand why people use and test nuclear weapons, because it kills all living things. Yes, it is clear that this is a big business, and people earn money from it. Plus, these weapons do not make it possible to start a war, because they are a deterrent. But can’t people be more human to each other?

I understand that only together we can understand life, but we still need to start with each individual person, then it will turn into a system and will be able to influence our lives. Otherwise it’s pointless. Because to change the world you need to start with yourself

In the last lesson I learned a lot of new terms and philosophical trends coming out of them.

Self-organization, also called (in the social sciences) spontaneous order, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent. It is often triggered by seemingly random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation. Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability.

And finally we found out and understood what the hashtag that we put at the beginning of our blog means #emergence

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry, and many psychological phenomena are known to emerge from underlying neurobiological processes.

That semester I was supposed to study and live in Greece, but they didn’t approve my visa because of the lockdown. This semester I was offered to come again, and I agreed, but until the last moment I didn’t believe it. But here I am.

So far I’m only getting a negative experience, but that’s not bad either. I still haven’t registered for the e-class, so there will be problems with exams again. My English is terrible, so I have to take pictures of the slides that the teachers show and translate them into Russian. Besides, my eyesight is terrible, and this is a convenient life hack to at least see what is written on the presentation.

Finally, I saw my teacher off camera, although I have been studying online for 2 out of 3 years because of the coronavirus. In general, there are many problems with this thing, for example, I have a Russian vaccine that is not recognized in Europe. I have to explain forever.

I didn’t really like the topic of the last lesson, we did this at school when we were 13-14 years old. It seems to me that knowledge in Russia is deeper (and useless). Therefore, it is easy for me to study in Greece, my brain is not so heavily loaded with information, but on the other hand, the language barrier kills me.

The topic was related to the system. This is a twofold thing, and you need to look at the system from different sides. A bowl of fruit may or may not be a system at the same time. The lesson was more focused on abstract thinking and philosophy.

I was hooked on another moment. Everyone says that wolves are great and they saved the ecosystem and made it better. But no one asked the opinion of the deer they killed. And how did they live now? They lived in safety, and now they have to live in a state of constant threat. Yes, the wolves have done much more and their contribution is invaluable. I feel sorry for the deer, no one asked them about it. It’s sad.

So the rulers change the lives of society by exterminating some layers, maybe it’s good for the whole country. But no one asked how bad this segment of the population is now.

As British sociologist Paul Willis argued in the 198os, when youth attempt to change their socioeconomic standing, they often risk alienating their home community.

Taken out of context, what teens appear to do and say on social
media seems peculiar if not outright problematic.

The intended audience matters, regardless of the actual audience. Unfortunately, adults sometimes believe that they understand what they see online without considering how teens imagined the context when they originally posted a particular photograph or comment. The ability to understand how context, audience, and identity intersect is one of the central challenges people face in learning how to navigate social media. And, for all of the mistakes that they can and do make, teens are often leading the way at figuring out how to navigate a networked world in which collapsed contexts and imagined audiences are par for the course.

Electronic media like radio and television easily collapse seemingly disconnected contexts. Public figures, journalists, and anyone in the limelight must regularly navigate disconnected social contexts simultaneously, balancing what they say with how their diverse audiences might interpret their actions. A context collapse occurs when people are forced to grapple simultaneously with otherwise unrelated social contexts that are rooted in different norms and seemingly demand different social responses.