Why do we live in the Age of Jester (part 2 of 6)

10 min readAug 6, 2021

The latest concept in futurology.

Gilgamesh

In 1872, the scientific world was shocked by a sensation: an ancient Sumerian legend was found, which describes the flood myth. Almost like in the Bible! So it turns out that the Bible does not lie, or what? Thus, the epic of Gilgamesh became the focus of scientific attention.

Now, after almost 150 years, we can say that the adventures of Gilgamesh are not only the first Flood legend in world history. This is also the first story about the snake, because of which people lost their immortality (hello to Adam and Eve). This is the first legend about the queen who kills lovers, later embodied by A.S. Pushkin in the image of the treacherous Cleopatra from “Egyptian Nights”. This is the first legend about a man who grew up among animals — that is, about Mowgli. Then, this is a thick hint of the future first feat of Hercules — the victory over the Nemean lion. This is one of the characters of the “Red Book” by C.G. Jung, the hero Izdubar; this is how the name of Gilgamesh was originally deciphered. Finally, from three scientists at once, starting with F. Lenormant, I met the opinion that the signs of the Zodiac correspond to the stages of the Sumerian epic.

In general, if Russian literature came out of Gogol’s “Overcoat”, then world literature owes many of its popular stories to Gilgamesh, the ruler of Uruk. And therefore, to find Pearson’s archetypes in a work of such a degree of significance — even if not all, but in exactly the same order as hers — is a big plus for the concept on which the PMAI questionnaire is built.

Epic of Gilgamesh and Pearsons”s archetypes.

Yes, there are nuances. First, taking into account the interpretation of the epic that I met with V.V. Yemelyanov, I have to admit that the epic both begins and ends with the stage of the archetype Jester — that is, the narrative makes a full circle. How does it resemble the circles that the patron of Gilgamesh, the sun god Shamash, winds around the celestial sphere? Secondly, if we can agree with some reservations that the hero’s miraculous crossing of the Sea of Death corresponds to the archetype of the Magician, then it is more difficult to justify the presence of Ruler archetype in the epic.

Total: in the epic of Gilgamesh, 11 of the 12 stages of the literary hero’s journey, which are the basis of PMAI, are clearly manifested. And another one is unclear. They are manifested exactly in the classical order, as provided by PMAI. That is, it is impossible to call Pearson’s concept of 12 archetypes completely speculative. However, only one literary work testifies in its favor. Maybe it’s an accident that doesn’t mean anything at all or almost nothing?

Time for funny jokes

And then I discover a completely unexpected thing. The era in which we live — postmodernity — is nothing but a manifestation of the archetype Jester.

What is a jester? A jester should be joking. And what is a joke? A joke is when we take a certain unshakable rule and do the opposite. In particular, we take a horse and make it a senator. Funny? Yes, funny. Or we take the phrase “The boy glued a model in the club” — and change its meaning beyond recognition (russian pun). Well, in small things: Joker means a tendency to entertainment, irresponsibility, a decline in education, de-intellectualization.

In order not to bore you, I will limit myself to a small number of examples. I first wrote about my discovery in February 2018. What has happened since then? A KVN (russian humour TV show) gamer was chosen as the President of Ukraine. Streamer Tyler Blevins was lured to another platform for almost $1 billion. A famous scientist dismembered his graduate student and co-author. The price of oil futures on the NYMEX was below zero. Unprecedented quarantine measures around the world because of the disease, which, according to official data, is no more dangerous than the flu. Or is it more dangerous? No one knows — and this is also a manifestation of Jester, namely agnosticism. And that’s not all. The football match “Sochi” — “Rostov” (which ended with a score of 10:1), where the goalkeeper who conceded 10 goals is recognized as… the MVP. Now it is all.

When I made this discovery, I did not take it out in public for a long time. Because a lot of questions immediately suggested themselves. Exactly:

1. Do archetypes occur in historical epochs in the same order as Pearson’s, or what?
2. How, without falling into mysticism, can we explain that the behavior of large masses of people is influenced by a certain archetype?
3. Does this mean that it is possible to make historical forecasts based on the Pearson concept? That is, the addition of psychology with history in this case really gives psychohistory, as in Isaac Asimov, or not?

The questions are not easy, you can’t answer them in one sitting. But at least I’ll start.

The upper room is full of people

As soon as I identified the features of Jester archetype in the postmodernity, it immediately became obvious to me that the previous era — modernity — contains many qualities of Sage archetype. Very important that Sage is situated in the Pearson’s scheme directly before Jester.

What is Sage about? It’s about faith in technology, about the power of the human mind. About the fact that all the secrets of nature are potentially available to a person. For example, the features of Sage archetype were manifested in modernity by the idea of how to avoid economic crises with the help of reasonable economic planning, or even build a paradise on Earth. Or the project of a dam across the Bering Strait, with which you can change the climate in Siberia.

And also, in the 1980s, I read in a children’s book about space reflectors that will reflect solar energy to the Earth, thereby performing the function of artificial luminaries — and then there will be no need to spend money on electric lighting of cities. And yet, in 1931, academician A.F. Ioffe proposed to build a house for 1 million people, with a radius of 1 km, which would not need heating; it would be warmed by human breath.

A house for 1 million people according to the concept of A. F. Ioffe.

Fortunately, this era was not so long ago from us, so we will easily remember these and similar ideas. And we will also easily understand how far humanity is now not only from the implementation of these ideas, but even from a fantasy of such a scale!

When does that era begin? I personally like the year 1859. In that year, Karl Marx finished “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, from which the “Capital” later grew. Back in that year, after the Great Stench in London, there decided to build a modern sewer system, and in Paris, a modern administrative division was adopted (the height of the famous “Haussmann’s renovation of Paris”) — that is, cities are beginning to acquire modern infrastructure. In the same year, the oil industry appeared: in Pennsylvania, they began to make kerosene for lamps. Medicine finally began to acquire the features of science: a year earlier, Ignaz Semmelweis dared to lecture that doctors need to wash their hands before surgery, and a year earlier, Louis Pasteur made the first report about alcohol fermentation — just a little more, and scientists will recognize the existence of bacteria.

And most importantly, it was in 1859 that Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” was published. Few people know, but there were three Darwins. The eldest of them, Erasmus, Charles’ grandfather, published the book “Zoonomy” in 1794, where the main ideas of the evolutionary theory were already outlined. In turn, they were a logical continuation of the “System of Nature” by Carl Linnaeus (1735). However, in the XVIII century, the public was not ready to accept the idea that man was descended from an ape. But in 1859, this idea went off with a bang, the book of Darwin-grandson immediately became a bestseller.

Vivat a table-turning!

It may seem that even before the middle of the XIX century, people more or less relied on reason, so my arguments about the era of Sage are far-fetched. But this is not the case. For even in that very XIX century, such things were happening that would make the hair stand on end for an unprepared reader.

The average person’s thinking is linear. For example, it is obvious that the iPhone X should be better than the very first iPhone. That Windows 10 is better than Windows 3.1, etc. Similarly, history is perceived as a process of progressive development.

Here we are given an introduction: during the XVIII century, religious feelings in humanity have noticeably subsided. Rousseau declares piety to be the opium of the soul. Voltaire blasphemes that God should have been invented, otherwise how could the rich protect their wealth from the poor? Moreover, Robespierre understands this literally and in 1794 really invents a certain cult of the Supreme Being. A little later, Laplace replies to the first consul that he does not need a hypothesis about the existence of God. Reinforcing their new beliefs with deeds, Europeans stop burning witches.

What kind of continuation should we expect with such a beginning? Probably, that in the XIX century a person will “even better” believe in reason and science? Instead, something very unexpected happens.

In 1775, a priest from Bavaria, named Johann Gasner, successfully expelled the devil from the flock. But here a doctor Mesmer from Vienna visits him… and discovers that the method of healing people with magnets discovered by him is similar in its consequences to exorcism one by one! In confirmation, the doctor cures several members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. This is how hypnosis breaks into the scene of world history. Or, as it was called then, animal magnetism.

Over the next 120 years, mysticism takes a convincing revenge on rationalism. And how can it be otherwise when patients in a state of hypnotic sleep begin to talk in previously unknown languages? As it happened in 1789 with the German girl Caroline Heigelin, a patient of Dr. Eberhard Gmelin. Under hypnosis, she had the property of turning into a French aristocrat who had found refuge in Germany from the revolution. This is how subpersonalities and dissociative identity disorder were discovered.

Also, in a state of hypnosis, people demonstrated the ability to clairvoyance… however, this was only the beginning. In the middle of the century, there was a fashion for summoning spirits. A poem is known, allegedly dictated in 1853 at a seance by the spirit of Pushkin. A year earlier, the European continent was carried away by… table-turning. Now you can roughly understand the intellectual atmosphere in which Blavatsky grew up.

Modern books prefer not to recall that period. Therefore, if you want to find out more, you can refer, for example, to the two-volume “Spiritualism” by Frank Podmore. Despite the author’s critical attitude to the nature of the observed phenomena, he at least describes them in good faith.

Yes, there were people who managed to remain skeptical in the midst of the general table-turning! Although not for so long. For since 1882, through the efforts of Charcot (the creator of that very soul), science has begun to look favorably on hypnosis and even on automatic writing. Among the supporters and practitioners of hypnosis, one can meet academician A.M. Butlerov and even the future Nobel laureate in medicine Charles Richet. However, the triumph of hypnosis was short-lived.

Symbolically, the end of Mesmerism came in the same Vienna where Mesmer began. One local doctor experienced difficulties when immersing people in a hypnotic dream. And one day he decided: why get into the unconscious of patients through hypnosis, if the same can be done through dreams? After all, not everyone is subject to hypnosis, while everyone sees dreams. The name of the doctor was Sigmund Freud, and it was 1895.

These 120 years between Mesmer and Freud can be described as the time of the manifestation of the archetype Magician. And I think that from the above material, you understand why. That is, it turns out that the historical epochs went in such a sequence: Age of Magician, Age of Sage, Age of Jester.

But even in Pearson’s concept, the archetypes are arranged in the same order: Magician, Sage, Jester. Well, there is a certain consistency, so it makes sense to dig further.