Cassandra Or Jeremiah?

 

I often refer to myself as a Cassandra. The term is generally meant to be a person who takes a dark view of things, someone who expects the worst. I may have been giving myself too much credit.

The original Cassandra was a woman in Greek mythology. She found great favor, as Earth women often did, with the God Apollo, and he rewarded her with the gift of prophecy. As the story goes, she cheated on Apollo, and as punishment for her infidelity he left her with the gift of prophecy but made it so that no one ever believed her. He must have really liked the woman. I would expect an egotist like Apollo to dish out a more severe punishment than that.

As a result, being “a Cassandra” doesn't mean that you're constantly being a buzz-kill by bringing bad news. Whatever news you're bringing, bad or good, no one is going to believe you.

Another God-infected person from very roughly the same period in history is the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. He was alive during the seventh and sixth centuries before the modern era. “A Jeremiah” is a person who is very pessimistic, who is always saying that something terrible is going to happen. Jeremiah was famous for taking a dark view of the present and tending to foresee terrible calamities in the future.

The sources that I checked were silent concerning Jeremiah's lifetime batting average, but he did often hit awful predictions out of the park. Like predicting the Babylonian captivity, and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. And, like I said, he was consistently negative in his outlook.

My big Oxford makes very slight difference between the two as terms applied to people today. A Cassandra is “a person who prophesies disaster,” while a Jeremiah is “a person who complains continually and foretells disaster.”

The notes do include mention of the the fact that the important aspect of Cassandra's fate was that she was disbelieved. It seems odd, therefore, to define the condition as consistently negative. For writers of dictionaries, usage trumps historical accuracy.

There are no real notes for a Jeremiah, only that the etymology is the Jewish scriptures. I like that they add “complains continually.” This too was probably added to the meaning by usage over the centuries.

I am sufficiently negative to wear either description, but I'm leaning towards accepting the title of Jeremiah because of the complaining. Oye, vey ist mir, can I complain!