Why do we live in the Age of Jester (part 5 of 6)

8 min readAug 9, 2021

The latest concept in futurology.

The rise and catastrophe of megacities

As I have already said, when you need to make a decision, and there are 100,500 opinions at hand, you have to rely only on faith. On the belief that some of the opinions are correct. Well, where there is faith, there are always fanatics, as Hypatia of Alexandria would say.

Fanatics usually prefer simple solutions. Therefore, sooner or later, the maintenance of complex systems in the economy or public utilities becomes burdensome for them. And then comes the collapse of megacities. I will explain why this is important.

During Age of Jester, there was a reset of social obligations by states — education, medicine and further on the list. Of course, it is safer for the elites to start this process with an unpretentious, unresponsive province. First from villages, then small towns — and on an increasing scale.

After observing and drawing conclusions, passionaries move from the province to big cities, because there are still conditions for comfort and development there. The rest get drunk and slowly die out. So the space of civilization is shrinking to megacities.

The main problem: to maintain life in megacities, complex engineering systems and a high-performance economy are needed, in particular, high-performance agriculture (to feed the “creative class”). And if the decisions are made by fanatics, then what kind of economy, what kind of engineering systems?

The ruins of the Roman amphitheater in Nimes (photo of the beginning of the XIX century).

Sooner or later, the inertia of the systems ends. The city accumulates so much waste that even being there becomes dangerous. The productivity of the economy is falling. Why? A combination of reasons: the collapse of transport systems, soil depletion. In general, you can survive only in your own garden.

Finally, the epidemics. Thanks to Covid, we observe that the epidemic is not so much a natural phenomenon as a social one. Success in the fight against it is largely related to the number of beds and doctors per capita, how much these doctors are paid, how much medicines are available. And these are exclusively social factors, and if they are not OK, the metropolis turns into a trap.

In an effort to escape, exactly the same population that used to be clustered in megacities is scattering to the villages. To run a subsistence farm. And does the natural economy need trade, science, international relations and other excesses? They are not needed. Here is a military democracy — it is needed. The community gathered, all the issues were resolved, they dispersed. This is the Age of Realist.

Life is getting better

As you get used to the new conditions, the situation begins to settle down. Specialization appears again, because not everyone is interested in doing peaceful gardening. Fans of more thrills go into bandits, a power struggle begins between the latter, or the Age of Warrior.

The war of everyone against everyone gradually leads to the establishment of a new Nash equilibrium, when it is easier for the surviving bandits to agree than to continue fighting. This is how wise monarchs arise. There is security within the borders of their possessions; it means that you can trade, develop crafts, revive cities — a golden time, especially against the background of yesterday’s chaos. Or, in another way, the Age of Caregiver archetype.

Against the background of well-being, fat accumulates, and you can already afford something great. Travel to distant lands, any scientific discoveries. More precisely, the discovery of miraculously surviving old books. This is the Age of Seeker.

Seeker sees how others live. And he has the idea that life in his native lands can also be different. Better. So there is a temptation.

Minor, cosmetic changes are most easily given:

- Are we really worse than the Saracens? — the Seeker thinks. — Let’s also wear shoes with a narrow toe (bullets)?
- Let’s!
- And let’s also make fitted dresses?
- Well, of course!
- And with laces?!
- Yes, with laces!!!
- So maybe, in order not to get up twice, we should build churches in the same style: with a pointed top and carving?
- Exactly! Brilliant!

Seduction, cosmetics — these words belong to the arsenal of the Lover archetype, don’t you think?

Another disaster

Sooner or later, the potential for minor changes is exhausted. Gothic cathedrals were built, novels about knights were written — but you want it to be as beautiful in life as in a book. A request for more radical changes is being formed. And this means higher risks.

Imagine yourself a European feudal lord. Expensive oriental fabrics and other luxuries require funds. Where can you get them?

Increase agricultural productivity? This is a very long way. Scientists from the local university have so far learned only to comment on the Code of Justinian, and how will it help in agricultural technologies? True, there are alchemists, but everything is unreliable here.

Maybe it’s better to attack a neighbor and impose a contribution? Again, selling prisoners of war into slavery… not a bad topic. But investments are needed. You can borrow from merchants. Where is the guarantee that everything will work out? No one will give a guarantee. But if the process goes according to the worst-case scenario, you can at least remove the creditors: accuse them of conspiracy or heresy and execute them.

Now imagine that you are a merchant who has caught the demand for Asian luxury that has developed in the aristocracy in time. Organized deliveries, created infrastructure. Trade is going well, a hard coin has appeared in your pocket. What should you invest the extra money in?

The Industrial Revolution has not yet begun, so it is too early to build factories/steamships. The best topic is war. You find a capable commander, you lend, for the sake of returning the loan, you motivate to attack a neighbor… You have a double benefit: first, you will return the money with a profit; secondly, the winner will receive additional funds and will buy even more luxury items from you.

Where is the guarantee that your borrower will win? And it is necessary to lend both sides at once! So the reason for the Hundred Years’ War is ready.

And where there is a war, there are epidemics and new taxes nearby. And new taxes mean riots. Well, how a civilization gets out of Revolutionary archetype through the encouragement of Creator, was discussed earlier, in part 4 (chapter “Crisis and opportunity”).

History, time and cycles

So, we were able to see the logic in the alternation of historical epochs, without resorting to mysticism. For the Pearson’s concept, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

The advantage is because we have found independent confirmation that the concept really works in relation to the world history. The disadvantage is because the principle of Occam’s razor says: why do we need any more archetypes, if the cyclicity of history is banally described with the help of logic, that is, from the position of purely materialistic reasons?

In my opinion, the main advantage of applying the Pearson’s archetype typology to the world history is that it once again confirms that history is cyclical.

If you think about it, it suggests that it could not have been otherwise. Because history is closely connected with the concept of time. And time is cyclical. The days are cyclical, they all go through the same scenario: midnight, dawn, noon, sunset, midnight again. The month is cyclical and the year is cyclical.

Why should there be an exception for long time periods? Economic crises, for example, are also cyclical, and history also consists of them.

Then the question arises: well, but we guessed about the cyclical nature of history even without the Pearson’s concept. What is it for? Because any cyclic phenomenon can be described in different coordinate systems.

Let’s take a calendar year. It can be described in a day: one year is 365 days. And you can do it in weeks: a year is 52 weeks. And you can do it in months. And even the months will be different: for someone February, and for someone Jumada as-sani, and the difference is not only in the names.

Why are there so many coordinate systems? Because different systems are more convenient for different scales. If our planning horizon is designed for several days, then it is logical to use weeks or months for this. But it is completely inconvenient to say something like “today is the 152nd day of the year”.

The duration of one epoch, if we apply the Pearson’s concept to the world history, is 150–300 years. Thus, this concept is convenient for making forecasts for 50 years and above.

Forecasts

Obviously, in the postmodern era, everyone lives one day, so the planning horizon for 50 years and above is more of a disadvantage than a virtue. In this connection, I will mention a curious bet that I made with a scientific journalist Den Tulinov in April 2020.

Den wanted me to make a forecast for some foreseeable period of time, that is, a very short one. For example, under the Artemis program, the Americans planned to send astronauts to the Moon in 2024. What will be my forecast for the probability of this event, if we apply the Pearson’s concept to the world history?

My verdict: the flight should not take place in 2024, the Americans will postpone it.

Rationale: space travel is a topic from the modernity agenda, that is, in terms of the Pearson’s concept — from the agenda of Sage archetype. But for the postmodernity, or the Age of Jester archetype, it is more logical not to fly to the Moon physically, but to make a film about it or release a computer simulation game. It is much more likely that the states for which the phase of industrialization is still relevant — China and India — will fly to the Moon and further.

Before checking the forecast, and with it the concept, it remains to wait 3 years. But there are already certain circumstances in my favor. The flight of astronauts was the program of Donald Trump, who came to the White House with the slogan of the new industrialization of the United States. 2024 was supposed to be the end of the second presidential term of the Republican president. And the return of Americans to the Moon would be a beautiful symbol of the success of the reindustrialization policy.

But … Trump is no longer in the White House. So let’s see.