But I TOLD you so!

There’s a cartoon by Tom Toro that has recently been doing the rounds on the internet. It reads: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”

It’s funny, because it’s true.

It also reminds me of the ancient Greek myth of Cassandra. Cassandra was one of the princesses of Troy, and as legend goes she was very beautiful and virtuous. So much so that Apollo (the god) fell in love with her and granted her the gift of prophecy. I’m guessing he fell in love with her because of her beauty and not because of her virtue because those gods were total horndogs.

But when she spurned his advances, the god grew angry (the Greek and Roman gods weren’t really known for their magnanimous natures) and he came up with a terrible curse: she would keep her gift of prophecy, but NO ONE would believe her.

And so poor Cassandra was doomed to foresee the future, but have no one listen to her predictions.

Things came to a head when a certain wooden horse was delivered to the gates of Troy. And it didn’t matter how many times Cassandra warned and pleaded with her people not to trust the Greeks bearing gifts, they just laughed at her concerns and ignored her. So she lived to see the enemy pour forth from the belly of the horse in the dead of night to sack her city, kill her people and abduct her, all the time knowing it would happen and being completely powerless to stop it.

We’ve all felt like that, haven’t we?

So I think we can all agree with the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, that the so-called Cassandra Complex is a very handy metaphor to be used in psychology, environmentalism, politics, philosophy and science.

I think we can also all agree that Apollo was an asshat.

But, seriously, is there anything more eye-wateringly frustrating than KNOWING something is about to go horribly pear-shaped and not being able to do anything about it?

It’s like knowing the guy your friend is dating is a total knob who will definitely cheat on her because he made a pass at you behind her back…

And I imagine that’s how many electrical engineers must have been feeling for years while witnessing the slow crumbling of infrastructure and competent management at ESKOM.   

Or on a somewhat bigger scale, imagine being one of the 97% of climate scientists who, with NASA research to back them up, can prove that global warming is happening and we are the cause, while our stupid governments refuse to cut down on dodgy environmental practices.

Of course there’s going to be a part of you that will want to say I TOLD YOU SO when everything goes to hell in a hand basket, but unfortunately that small moment of satisfaction won’t go very far when we’re all breathing tar and getting hit by tsunamis every other day...or whatever they predict will happen when it finally hits the fast-whirring fan. (I don’t know because the predictions depress me too much.)

So tell me, what is your Cassandra Complex? What impending doom do you sense, that everyone else is ignoring? Admit it, you know there's something.