Do you know the myth of Cassandra?  A quick primer - Cassandra was a Trojan princess and priestess to Apollo. Apollo, being a Greek god who struggled to restrain his lascivious urges, propositioned his priestess and offered her the gift of foretelling the future in exchange for her love. Who says no to a god - particularly, the god you’ve pledged your life to? Cassandra first said yes, but changed her mind and rejected him. Apollo, like his father, had a hard time with rejection and levied a curse upon her gift - her prophecies would continue to be accurate, but no one would believe her. Cassandra accurately predicted the fall of Troy (specifically, bringing in the wooden horse into the city’s walls). She was later kidnapped by the Greeks and forced to become Agamemnon’s concubine, and was murdered alongside him. Just another day in ancient Greece. Her name became a cautionary tale and a metaphor that endures today. The Cassandra complex is defined as a person (usually a woman) whose valid concerns and warning are not believed or ignored by the populace. Sound familiar? I’ve been thinking about the modern day Cassandras (Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley, Hillary Clinton) and how they rang the alarm bells about Trump. I also studied the lesser known Cassandras - the ones that have warned us of the dangers of monopolistic companies, who gets to be a Cassandra, and what happens when they’re believed. Those who don’t learn from their history are doomed to repeat it, and things are doomed enough already. Enjoy this soundtrack to this week’s #5SmartReads. Interview: Cynthia Cooper, Sherron Watkins, Coleen Rowley (TIME) You may not recognize these names, but you may (and will) recognize the places where they used to work - the FBI, WorldCom, and Enron. “Used to” is the kicker. Rowley, a former FBI agent, who exposed the FBI’s failures in the weeks leading to the 9/11 attacks. Cooper and Watkins were the whistleblowers that exposed massive fraud at WorldCom and Enron, respectively. All of them would do what they did again. But this quote shows how little has changed in the 23 years since this interview was published:
Simply doing the right thing feels like the bare minimum - and even that is too high a standard for so many leaders and their enablers…... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to hitha to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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the Cassandra complex
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