Everything affects everything
When Mark began his career all his designs were made on a card by card basis. His though was that if each card was good, then a whole set of good cards would also be good. The mistake that he understood was that the value of each card was dependant on their context. The same card could be good or bad depending on the set it was included in. Over time he learned that everything on a card matters under a context. The art, the card's type and subtype, the name, so on. Every piece of it was part of a much larger construct.
The life lesson is pretty clear. We often miss that things in our lives have more interconnected parts than we are aware of. This forces Mark to be more holistic when making decisions.
There is a lot of research on how food affects our health. How, when and what we eat affect our health and it goes beyond the stomach. Food affects how we think, our sleep, our breath, our blood. It's unfortunate that we don't learn much about our own bodies in school. It very much depends on having great teachers and a school system which is not tied to grades or admission exams. Mark used the term "holistic" and I have to agree and expand upon. I've had experience with holistic doctors and they are generally more concerned about the person in all its spheres or dimensions, while non holistic doctors would focus on diseases. The difference is that by having an holistic perspective a doctor goes beyond the disease and looks for the relationship between mind, individual organs and behaviours. I can state that when a doctor has knowledge on psychology and other fields, such as chinese medicine practices or philosophy, they can offer you some advices and information that other doctors would miss or disregard.
Now expanding to society. Society is society because people relate to each other in multiple ways. There is a very complex web of relationships that all affect us in many ways. I can't go deep into that because I lack knowledge to do so. What I've read about personality disorders makes it clear that they are all personality disorders because there is one key factor: humans depend on society and society depends on humans. A huge part of everyone's lives and personalities is about living in a world where a person doesn't stands alone. A huge part of mental health is about how a person's mind function in society. To cite some examples: narcissistic personality depends on validation and you can't have it if you are alone; paranoid people are paranoid because they fear that there exists a conspiracy against them and they can't trust others; antissocial is antissocial because they disregard society and its rules.
Mark likes to think holistically and I support him. We often miss subtle connection in our own bodies and minds. For example: diets aren't just about what we eat, it's about how we relate to what we eat. Many diseases occur due to excessive ingestion of sugar or salt. Or the opposite, diseases occur due to poor diets which don't include some necessary vitamins. Unhealthy minds are linked to bad habits and bad habits include eating unhealthy food. Sometimes the change can be very small and have an enormous impact in life, such as swapping what you eat at night with what you what you eat during the morning. We also often miss relationships between us and the environment. For example: to support public transportation is not only about global warming or the economy. It also has implications on how we think about our neighbourhoods and how we relate to each other. Excessive number of private cars in a city is one reason for the occurrence of traffic jams, which also impacts on mental health.
As a game designer I'm sure that Mark's designs aren't his alone. If you read Wizard's columnists and articles, a set is the sum of many people's efforts and they all connected their views, ideas, disagreements and agreements. I'd say that one point that Mark didn't mention is that some connections are stronger than others. Some connections might even be unnecessary or unhealthy. This is an unfortunate truth in our world. Not everyone makes us happier or better and some can do more harm than any good, in which case we need to cut off those people from our lives. Some people are positive influences, while others are negative and we should be aware of which people are negatively impacting our lives. The same can be said about food. There are types of food that we can cut ties with without any harm, or at least reduce our consumption. For example: you don't have to stop drinking coffee or soft drinks, but you can reduce how much you take every day or every week.
I can imagine that society as a whole is overwhelmingly complex even for scholars or academics. This complex web of interrelationships is true for chemistry and biology too. I can't offer much advice here other than the relationships within our own minds and bodies are the closest to us and the better we understand them, the better we can do in society itself. I'm not a professional but I'd imagine that level design can be seen in the same way that Mark sees game design. If I make a level it has to resonate with other levels. It has to speak to the player. It has relationships with Artificial Intelligence, art, mechanics, sounds, etc. Much like a magic card depends on a context, a level depends on a context too. In turn, designers and developers make up a huge part of a company's context. A company depends on the market and the market on society.
Reference:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/resolutions-2009-01-05
Dr. Frank Yeomans and the channel Borderlinernotes
Dr. Ramani Durvasula and her knowledge on narcissism
Professor Alan Delazeri Mocellim and his knowledge on toxic relationships (portuguese only)
Dr. Tracey Marks and her knowledge in psychiatry
Professor Pedro Calabrez and his knowledge on life and neurosciences (portuguese only)
Dr. Daniel Martins de Barros and his knowledge on psychiatry and philosophy (portuguese only)