Othering Genius - The Myth Cassandra of Troy

In this episode of the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast, the focus is on the myth of Cassandra of Troy and the societal dynamics that led to her downfall and the collapse of Troy. Cassandra, who could see the future with perfect accuracy, was ostracized because her dire predictions clashed with the self-serving perspectives of those in power, particularly her father, King Priam. The analysis delves into the neurological and psychological contrasts between Cassandra's multidimensional thinking and the two-dimensional, hierarchical thinking promoted by Troy's leadership. The discussion highlights how societies systematically suppress and marginalize individuals with unique insights, ultimately leading to their downfall. The pattern of dismissing truth-tellers like Cassandra is shown to be a recurring theme throughout history and cultures.

Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Gifted Neurodivergent podcast. Today we're going to talk about the myth of Cassandra, of Troy and how a kingdom can other genius so profoundly, the entire population turns on it when it needs it most, right before it collapses.

Cassandra was a young woman who could see the future with 100% accuracy.

She was a princess of ancient Troy. She was beautiful, intelligent, born into luxury and abundance, well-educated and treated well by her family until she hit puberty. This starts off as a typical teenage puberty story and then goes absolutely sideways because there's nothing typical about Cassandra.  But there is a lot typical about her situation.

A massive gross spurt led to something extraordinary for her. She's an outlier who had high somatic intelligence and in puberty, her cognitive was able to catch up her body and mind fully, and her intelligence ensured she was aware of everything. To the degree that it terrified everyone else around her.

She was reporting terrifying things because everything going on around her was terrifying. When you live in chaos, you report chaos as a future state. It was a war she was living in. She was sharing it in the most urgent manner, and anyone trying to deny they lived in a war and that the future was disastrous, was not going to take it well.

Messages from the future presented with great urgency are never received well.  When you have integrated intelligence and see these insights, it's like a eureka moment. But if it's a negative insight, it comes with massively unpleasant emotions.

We tend to see anyone with high emotions as insane. She had a lot of drama and these very clear insights coming up, so she was reacting strongly and people around her didn't have the same experience.

They didn't have this knowledge. They didn't know what it was like to be her.  Her father, the king, cared very much about his image and they all went along with that.

The answer lies in the way our brains process reality. Most people think we all see the same world and just simply have different opinions.   We construct different realities based on how our brains are wired. Those  who have more wiring, more connection between our mind and body intelligence have profoundly more real understanding, and use it for more perspective taking.

This is part of a survival strategy that our intelligence creates. Cassandra is operating in a multidimensional thinking survival strategy. She's taking in more information from multiple perspectives simultaneously

Her father's political concerns, her brother's desire, Helen's trauma, the Greek's response, the military implications, the economic costs. Her brain's building this complex multilayer model of reality that includes all of these viewpoints and how they interconnect, and then what the outcomes could possibly be.

The people around her are operating in just two-dimensional thinking. They can only hold one perspective at a time. Usually, it is their own. And how King Priam looks at the situation, they take the perspective of themselves and the kings. That's it. One could say the entire industry of the castle, or the kingdom has been modified to teach and enforce.

That protects perspective taking of those at the top of the hierarchy. Those at the top, like King Priam can only perceive their own because that's all they've ever been taught to perceive. And the longer they're in that state, the more extreme it gets and their expectation of others to also think in that manner.

The king is incapable of seeing Helens, his sons, the Greeks, or Cassandras thinking, or their being as separate entities of their own. He believes they should see what he sees, care about what he cares about. He does not care about their motivations or responses. He's singularly focused on his own.

When Helen of Sparta, now Helen of Troy first enters Troy's court, she's attacked by Cassandra because Cassandra is overwhelmed by the motions that come up with the message that this woman is going to start a war that ends her entire family, her kingdom, and destroy her life.

Of course, though, from the outside, this looks like Cassandra's losing her mind because here she is attacking a poor woman who was brought in by her brother, kidnapped from her home, where she had a husband and a life.

This is what leads to the entire war that results in the loss of Cassandra's everything. This is the soap opera of all soap operas with Cassandra’s at the center of it, because she's the person who can see and explain the whole show.

The neurological differences going on here is resulting in two outcomes. One is King Priam, seeing the world filtered his through his own needs and desires. And Cassandra seeing the world filtered through everyone else's needs and desires but her own. Her brain is doing what we call survival processing.

Research shows that when you are under isolation or threat, your brain can switch into a mode where it becomes incredibly good at pattern recognition, memory consolidation, and seeing connections across different domains. In trauma, there's a small group of people who are so sensitive that they will do the opposite of breaking.  They unify to whole

The most sensitive brain enters a mode where it becomes incredibly good at pattern recognition, memory consolidation, and seeing connections across different domains. Everyone has this when their brain is holistic, but they go beyond that. They get better than what average would be if their brain was never fragmented?

It's like your brain saying, I need to figure out how the world actually works because my survival depends on it.

Meanwhile, the group around her is experiencing something completely different.  For those who are in cohesive groups, it’s the very opposite effect.

When you're a part of a group that agrees with each other, your brain starts to rely on the others for being right.  Over time it reduces your ability to process information independently.

As Cassandra’s brain is getting sharper and gaining more perspectives. While everyone else's brain is getting more dependent on group consensus, it is atrophying in its capability for independent analysis, both in their own lifetime and through generations.

This is why we don't see this integration as we get closer to collapse. As a result, Cassandra is nearly a genius. She only lacks one crucial limitation to manifesting her genius, and that is the ability to care about herself. Her locus of empathy includes everyone but herself. Most teenagers, even the most gifted ones, have their empathy centered on themselves, and then it extends to others as they get older towards family, to friends and so on.

But that is a result likely of our systems. So, everyone else is going one way while Cassandra is going the other way.  Her locus of empathy includes everyone but her. Most teenagers, even the gifted ones, have their empathy centered on themselves, and then extend it as they get older towards family, friends and so on.

It's developmentally normal and protective for her to have it on herself at her age but she has had something extraordinary and tragic. She has moved her locus of empathy away from herself and given up on saving herself   focusing entirely on saving everyone else.

This is why she can see so clearly. This is why the scapegoats who also end up the hero children see so clearly.  When you remove yourself from the equation, you're not protecting your own interests.  You can see the connections and patterns that everyone else has missed.

She's taking the perspective of everyone else, her father, her siblings, the people of Troy, her mother, and eventually Helen.

Meanwhile, her father King Priam is the opposite. His locus of empathy is so narrow, it includes only himself. He is basically a giant toddler on the throne. He is completely unable to see anyone else's perspective. His empathy is so profoundly limited that he's essentially infantile in his ability to understand how his choices will impact the whole,

Everyone else in the kingdom also must adjust their empathy to accommodate him. They all learn to include him. In their concern while gradually excluding everyone else, some of them to the degree even themselves, the entire kingdom has been organized around one person's emotional immaturity.

This happens again when they bring in the Trojan horse.  As the soldiers are gleefully wheeling in  the giant horse toy, Cassandra runs out screaming, Stop. Stop. This will kill us. Don't bring that in the castle walls. Everyone looks at her parents who are shaking their head in disbelief.  And now are contemplating locking up Cassandra, because they can’t question their own judgment.

No, they only question hers because she's obviously losing her mind because this giant wooden horse is a present. Couldn't be anything more than just, you won the war. Here's a present. No, there's nothing in the belly of it. There's no way impossible that it's anything more than what they want to perceive it as, which is the one that serves them in the greatest light, the one that serves them in the most positive manner.

No one can fathom what she sees. They can't see the ridiculousness of this giant wooden toy as a present.   This is the end of the war toy. Of course, Greece is sending us something we won. We are at peace now.

But nobody listens to her because she's crazy, so they wheel it in. And that night the Greeks come out of that   Trojan horse.  Burn Troy to the ground, and Cassandra is proven right. Again. 

How does a kingdom eliminate the very people that save them? It's not accidental. It's a very specific pattern that narcissistic hierarchies follow. They're so consistent. It shows up across cultures and throughout history.

The first thing that happens is a forced monovision. King Priam decides that there's only one acceptable way to see reality his way. There is peace in Troy. He declares even while they're under siege, anyone who questions this narrative faces immediate social consequences. The system actively compels everyone to adopt this single perspective, and it becomes proof of loyalty to agree with the king's version of reality.

This creates the foundation of everyone else following. Next comes the construction of manufactured reality. Troy builds this elaborate story about being invincible, blessed by gods, righteous and war. David includes Cassandra not accepting Apollo's gift earlier for foresight, and therefore she is less than and we can't trust her foresight  

  Any evidence that contradicts the story can be eliminated or reframed. So, when the Trojan horse arrives, it gets reinterpreted as a gift from the gods rather than a giant child's toy that has   soldiers in it. The system then creates rigid hierarchies where certain voices matter more than others.

Males at the top, females at the bottom. The king's perspective is automatically at the top, correct. By virtue of his position, not   merit of insight, age, and gender becomes ways  to dismiss Cassandra and the devaluation of creators and exultation of destruction.

Military conquest, and honors in battle get celebrated above preservation of life and civilization. Cassandra’s attempts to save Troy, her family, and her people are labeled as hysteria rather than protective, Paris gets celebrated for winning Helen, despite this act, triggering a war that destroys Troy.

The system values dying gloriously in battle over living wisely in peace. Once these foundations are set, the system turns its attention to the real threat targeting unfragmented perception. Cassandra is unfragmented. Her ability to see connections across different domains reveals the manufactured nature of Troy's reality.

She can't be convinced to unsee what she perceives.  The system then weaponizes emotion against Cassandra so her response to witnessing ending catastrophe is hysteria, mania, or madness.

Her desperate attempts to convey this time sensitive warning are interpreted as her emotions getting the best of her. The system takes authentic emotional response to a genuine truth and crisis and uses them to say she's crazy.

But Where is everyone else's ability to feel their emotions? They've lost that by othering her reality and any other reality other than King Priam’s.

They also exploit preexisting social biases. Cassandra's Young, she's female. That means you're dismissed. The assumption that females are less than, more emotional, more irrational, inherently unreliable becomes an efficient tool. Multiple biases layer together gender, youth madness.  Emotions create overwhelming dismissal, forcing, a dismissal force without requiring any intellectual engagement of her actual warnings. Or transfer of her emotions.

As the crisis deepens, the patterns intensify collective self-deception and atrophy of critical thought has taken hold. Everything becomes binary.   Committing to what leadership says, eliminating any need for independent evaluation. The group becomes less capable of processing complex information.   Not knowing becomes preferable to knowing, because knowing would require action or questioning.

Bringing in that Trojan horse might've felt good.   But in reality, they should have had more preservation of self.  They chose uncomfortable lies over survival, necessary truth, because they were completely choked off.   clear threats get reframed as divine blessings, and the system chooses death over knowledge of truth.

In the Iliad Cassandra had a twin brother, Helenus.  Helenus had the same gift because Cassandra taught him.  Which makes her gift even higher because she could teach it. 

 But Helenus serves the system when Apollo demands that Cassandra sleep with him to become his prophetess.  She refused.  Helenus accepts a similar arrangement, and he gets ordained as a prophet. He uses his gift to keep himself alive after he gets captured by the Greeks.  He serves the Greeks and is rewarded handsomely given land and titles given ends up with more than he ever would’ve gotten from the Kingdom of Troy, where he was one of the youngest of 50 princes vying for the throne.

Helenus becomes the reason Troy ends up falling. He helps orchestrate the very destruction ca Cassandra foresaw the genius in the end is probably Helena. Troy had two children who had potential genius, and they let go of one to serve their enemy, and the other they ostracized.

As Troy Burns, Cassandra is found in a temple seeking refuge. She is assaulted and sold into slavery to Agamemnon, who takes her to his castle. On the way she's having visions again, and this time she sees that his wife and his wife's lover are plotting to kill him and her when he returns.

But this time she remains quiet.  Her lotus of empathy is back to herself. She learned there’s no use in sharing what she knows, and it only makes things worse, and so she's going to say nothing.

When Cassandra is gone, when Troy is burnt to the ground and the truth can no longer be de denied the chorus, that did not trusting her and siding with the people the whole time suddenly starts asking, how could this happen?  How could anyone has allowed this to happen?

The final act is a posthumous blame placed on the system. And people after it destroy themselves exactly as the truth teller predicted. It maintains that. She was the problem though, not the solution.  If only she had been less crazy or if she had been clearer, then things would've changed. No one says that the whole group was wrong. We look at history and ask, how did people burn Joan of Arc at the stake? She was obviously receiving divine guidance.   Why did we kill Galileo? He was correct.  Why did we lobotomize women for being hysterical when they're pointing out real problems?

We act more enlightened than the people of the past. We shake our heads at the ignorance of them. Just as we do just what they did, we can't figure out what happens every single time the group is trained to think in two dimensions.

We can't figure it out. When leaders go insane, the masses go insane with them. We are baffled by the mass psychosis even as we descend into it.  It’s always the same pattern. Forced monovision manufactured reality.  Hierarchical dismissal. Emotional weaponization. Strategic dehumanization.

The myth of Cassandra shows us this is not how human societies work in rare cases, it's how they work in all cases, it is the foundation of the 2D system.

It's going to be incredibly hard to survive what's coming.  Nature will be relentless in her efforts to clean up the earth. The only people who can survive and show the rest how to navigate what is coming are people like Cassandra, people who have their full intelligence, their 3D intellect, their understanding of how the patterns of nature work, because she thinks like that.

If we acknowledge these people, if we value these people. We could have possibly changed things.

 But I fear it is too late. Creatives, gifted neurodivergence, you have this ability, if we want to survive, we must figure this out ourselves.