Thoughts for the Heart

Category: Original Articles

System Thinking: How Humanity is Swallowing Humans

I — Systems Are Living Beings

You are not you.
You are the world and the world is you.

 

When we think of a system, we tend to imagine a ‘thing’ composed by many parts that somehow work together to achieve a certain outcome. For example, a car is a system made of many individual pieces such as the engine, wheels, doors, or seats, that can move from point A to point B at the driver’s will. However, the notion of a system is just a mental model we create that allows us to categorize the world for practical purposes. If we take a more holistic approach, we realize that the vehicle uses oxygen to burn gasoline, but we don’t consider the air around us a part of the car despite not functioning without it. Every singular system is composed of many other small systems or is itself a part of a larger one. And they all follow the same rules, repeating themselves over and over again. If we go to the most fundamental level of physics, we observe that we are all made of the same quantum fields and atoms obeying the same fundamental laws. In a sense, our reality is merely an infinite reiteration of the same phenomena. Continue reading

We Are All Addicts

We Are All Addicts

It was a Tuesday when I knew my mother had covid-19. Since we had been in contact chances were I was also infected. Friday, my suspicion revealed to be true. Official quarantine had already been going for two months and what followed were three weeks of complete isolation without ever leaving my house. This experience was quite different. I was now paying attention: I read, researched, and studied not only the virus but how the world was reacting to it. More importantly, I began to watch myself. What was I doing?

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O Que Significa Ser Português? Em Portugal e no Mundo.

Tendo vivido quatro anos na Austrália com a futura possibilidade de obter cidadania Australiana, algo me fez voltar à Pátria. Várias razões pessoais influenciaram esta decisão mas não contam a história toda. A saudade de que tanto se fala na língua portuguesa é real. É real no sentido em que poucos países conseguem criar este laço de afinidade tão profundamente. E não se sabe explicar bem porquê. Isto porque não se explica, sente-se.

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Are Video Games Art?

The divisiveness of this question is interesting from the get-go as this is a topic meaningful for many people, while others will outright dismiss the question itself as ridiculous even before attempting to answer it.

Personally, I find this thought exercise interesting for different reasons: I’m a 31-year-old male (typical gamer demographic) who played various videogames during adolescence with a fervent passion but was always criticized by family and close friends as “wasting time.” Eventually, life got in the way and I stopped it out of guilt. However, the desire to play never disappeared, as if it was dormant all along and not just a “child’s whim.” This makes me challenge the almost fundamentalist criticism of videogames. Secondly, in this era of endless entertainment where everyone is constantly consuming content, this question quickly turns into an argument of what art is, and what makes some mediums reputable and others not quite as accepted.

Ultimately, it is important to recognize the importance of this topic because whether we like it or not, videogames, virtual reality, streaming or social media are here to stay. They are shaping the way we think and interpret life (particularly younger generations), and there seems to be no legal or moral authority to guide us in our escapism. If you’d like to know how gamers might be shaping the way we consume entertainment check my WoW Classic article.

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World of Warcraft – The Great Social Experiment

Diagnosis of a Lost Generation: World of Warcraft & Nostalgia

As an on and off video game player, the “new” release of World of Warcraft Classic didn’t go unnoticed to me. Perhaps more surprisingly, was the fact that if you were browsing YouTube, Reddit, Twitch or other mainstream digital platforms you probably heard about it too. I’ve followed its announcement, the hype in between the launch, and the launch itself up until now, where it’s still going strong. All of this was fascinating and intriguing to me. After all, WoW Classic is just the same game that initially existed 15 years ago: unpolished, grindy, slow and punishing. And yet, people wanted it more than ever. The noteworthy aspect is not the game itself, it’s the apparent philosophical change among gamers – particularly young male adults – of what they want from a video game. Why is this relevant? I believe this change transcends video games and it’s a counterculture scream that will echo in many other areas of society. A preview of what’s to be. It’s the reason why this article is not intended only for WoW players but for all those interested in our current culture and its evolution.

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