Excess, globalisation and Emotional (dis)ordersBy Dinis Guarda, writer, publisher and web strategisthttp://www.dinisguarda.com and http://twitter.com/dinisguardabased in text published in http://www.dinisguarda.com/post/Excess-globalisation-and-emotional-%28dis%29orders.aspx

Photo: “The skyline of Imaginations” http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinisguarda/3853984886/in/photostream/

“Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes”, Confucious

“Six times more wealth has been created since World War II than in all of previous recordedhistory”, Hiromo Hosoya and Mark Schaefer, Bran Zobe, in Project on the City 2, p. 156, (Taschen)

We are living in an age of emotional (dis) orders. We are living in an age of excesses, an oftendeadly imbalance in the psychological landscape of global, contemporary human society. Theprocess of Globalisation, that is not new, but coming from the XVIth century when Portuguese andSpanish navigators discovered the real size of the globe, creates in its kaleidoscopic perception aninterlocking panoramic fragility. With all the development created mainly after the second worldwar: economic, technological and social, humanity found and produced more wealth that inprevious history, however the excesses of the present urban civilisation created as well acombination of delirium, kinesis and immersion in a sensory bombardment (Scott Bukatman) thathas been something different from the modernity’s random beginnings.

The advances in the globalisation financial and economic interlinked processes managed bypowerful technological devices in even more powerful corporation and organisations while reducingvolatility and giving the appearance of stability created on the other hand a fragile card castle thatcan collapse very simple. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote “it creates devastating Black Swans.We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. (…) The increased concentrationamong banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happenthey are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology ofsmall banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that allresemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur….”

(based in text published in http://www.dinisguarda.com/post/Excess-globalisation-and-emotional-%28dis%29orders.aspx)

in http://www.dadalos.org/globalisation/images/globalisierung_dimensionen.gifhttp://www.dadalos.org/globalisation/grundkurs_2.htm

The fact is that with globalisation a sense of disfunctionality prevails, there is something finite in themythologies that we continue to create in the present with internet tools and multimedia and in themythologies that are the result of various centuries of recording memories in our acts of creationand thoughts. This situation of an abysmal excess of information, knowledge is viewed as anunlimited source of infinite possibilities, for the way in which we live, perceive and visualise theworld, or even how one lives.

The metaphor of the Black Swan, that refers to the more and more large-impacts, very hard-to-predict, and beyond the realm of normal expectations that are part of or daily life, but that we don’twant to see show us that although all the development things are still unpredicted and the fate ofthe old Greek Gods is still there haunting us. It is precisely important in a world that tries to defineeverything and get out of the impossibility of the things that have no definition or hide in theconsume of a society trying not to think to much.

One experiences a vertical pressure that comes very close to being a universe of science fiction,which can be compared to riding up a dizzying roller coaster, where we are surrounded by imagesof inhospitable landscapes, paradoxes, where development and under-development co-exist sideby side, and you don’t have to go to Africa, but just to go to places such as Peckham in one of thecapitals of the financial, social and cultural world: London. However, with all their basic needs onalert, humans have never had such a bewildering array of possibilities before, of so many almostunlimited tools. And once all the premises that guide us from a philosophical, spiritual, social,physic and even economic point of view have been thoroughly analysed, we can see that we havereached a point where we can no longer co-exist, as rational beings, with any conceivable kind ofan absolute notion of truth... And the question is, how can one can live and act in this rhetoric thatsurrounded the modern metropolis where most of humans live in its admirable, infinitelycomplexity, in a complex web of values and counter-values. This globalisation replete with newscientific and technological data that changes every day pushes human to a new array of multiplecomplex narratives.

“Simplicity is a complex topic that has no single answer. We live in an increasingly complextechnological world where nothing is like it is supposed to be, and at the end of the day, it makes

(based in text published in http://www.dinisguarda.com/post/Excess-globalisation-and-emotional-%28dis%29orders.aspx)

us hunger for simplicity to some degree. Yet, ironically, when given the choice of more or less, weare programmed at the genetic level to want more (...)” John Maeda

And in the landscape of this complex and multi-faceted world in which various civilisations interactand fight for survival and co-existence, it is important to closely examine legacies and cultures andkeep in mind the need to withdraw with regard to the hubbub of the mundane world. It is importantto seek out simplicity in things. How much energy and time do we invest in ourselves, how much inothers, at least the ones next to us? This global world, with a lot of collapsing things and everchanging landscapes, world wars, rise of the internet age, Black Monday… it is not necessarily anendless nightmare, as many would have us believe; it is a world that, with all its weaknesses andvicissitudes, has one great virtue: an enormous capacity for mutation and the respective tools at itsdisposal. And it is this desire that can make all the difference, if employed wisely. A form ofadaptation that has, per force, to begin with differences, with each individual and his or herwillingness to make this change. This is the greatest strength of globalisation and of all forms ofhuman expression, namely the capacity to create a live and a personal language at the dawn of thenew century. An unparalleled energy and an energy that is eager to change and shape the worldthat has never existed before in the history of mankind.

In this civilization you have to believe that the ending makes the full picture, the movie. It is a worldin a state of mind similar to a person obsessed with the memories of when that given person was 2to 4 years old (when started thinking about death and was terrified of being abandoned by theparents). When ten years ago the first search engines crawlers, algorithms started makinginformation a single database, things would never be the same, yet they are still similar… In all thissea of data, the memories and emotions nowadays are still so intense that one has too delete it inorder to grow up mentally healthy. This world is voracious and has everything in it, so much in factthat sometimes one has to stop and delete info in order to continue the path.

It is a fast and strange reality measured strongly by image of images and perceptions ofperceptions. Blogs and message forums buzzed, with the discovery that a pair of simple Googlesearches permits access to well over 1,000 unprotected surveillance cameras around the world -apparently without their owners' knowledge. Although today our world maps have no more whiteparts, no more “terra incognito”, there is always a new age of geographical exploration that seemsstill to have been initiated. There is always the "incognito", the random, the unknown.

What are we doing? What is happening to us? What needs to be done? What is the most importantdirection, in the path of digital computers that made information readable? What is the goal in theprocess of the re-discovery of something already known, yet perhaps forgotten, the observation ofsomething “for the first time”, evoking the stereotype of the Western hero of the Age of Discoveries,the Wasted Land of T. S. Eliot, or the chaotic songs and madness screams of Ezra PoundCantos'? In this context, ancient countries, continents and civilisations are able to make us see, viatheir ancestral heritage, this call to a forward history of life, an unmatched example of this way ofbeing that is vital in order to embrace changes. A way of being that demonstrates in its vitality anddetermination to progress, wrapped in a patchwork quilt, which, at first glance, might seem to beperplexing and confusing but is simultaneously optimistic, passionate, dynamic and vibrant. It is aprocess of discovering about one self, about one's own occupation and about the art(s) of living in

general. A world of spectrum that is sometimes too intense and makes each one of us runaway.This while we read the sequence of our daily routine in images ontologically. We live in the tip of

the iceberg, in the end and beginning of theories, alone with one’s own emotions, whether they arein disorder or in order.

Photo: “Alone is never really alone” http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinisguarda/3853994782/

(based in text published in http://www.dinisguarda.com/post/Excess-globalisation-and-emotional-%28dis%29orders.aspx)

Abouth the author:Dinis Guarda: Entrepreneur, writer, author, creative, curator and strategic thinker. Combining skills in content, Media / Web / Search/ Social Media industry. Looking for synthesis and relation between theory and practice. Interested both in business and the fastforward research for new directions in the web: creativity, theory, business, technological and commercial/marketing wise. Workingactively in projects that reflects the flows of web 2.0 / 3.0, social dynamics, future of the internet, film, arts and media. Also veryinterested in the global financial and investment flows.In the past he has organised international events in EMEA, India and Africa as director, project manager and curator dealing withfilm, arts and internet strategies. He founded Numero organisation (based in Portugal). He has worked with Portuguese Presidents,corporations and organisations such as DigiArts UN UNESCO, EU Commission), Tate Modern, Gulbenkian, Alcatel.He has published several newspapers, magazines and books such as the book "Corpo Fast Forward", "Fast Forward Body", 2001, apublication under the Porto 2001 European Capital of Culture. He published as well the 300 pages book "Video Arte and Art andEssay Film in Portugal", "Vídeo Arte e Filme de Arte e Ensaio em Portugal", 2008, witth Nuno Figueiredo, (texts, edition andpublishing), N_Books / Número, Lisbon. He started several web sites such as www.numerofestival.com,www.portuguesefestival.com and is starting the new social website www.ikonoklash.com. He is active as editor, essayist, web/SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) / TWO (Total Web Optimisation), geek, artist, writer and poet.

http://www.dinisguarda.comhttp://twitter.com/dinisguardahttp://dinisguarda.wordpress.comhttp://www.ikonoklash.comhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/dinisguardahttp://www.numerofestival.comhttp://www.numero-projecta.comhttp://www.portuguesefestival.com