Sentinel Intelligence
Last December, another Substack writer’s material gave me a revelation, a term foowed why it doesn’t do much good for me to discuss more than portions of what I see.
The example she used from Greek mythology especially struck me.
Once upon a time, a venture with a couple of business partners turned out to be a mess that could not be salvaged. I kept raising flags which kept getting ignored, downplayed or waved away. I brought up signs that there were probably hidden problems, then about needing to fire a key person, then about the finances... The guys (a space lady is only a woman) nodded and charged merrily ahead. At last it reached a point where the brick wall across our path was glaringly obvious to me and they wanted to go head first into it faster.
Frustrated, I exclaimed, “Who am I, Cassandra?”
They didn’t know who Cassandra was. I refused to explain and refused to go along any more. One of them had the decency to look up Cassandra after the meeting, then get in touch with me and say, “I see what you mean.”
How It Began
This didn’t always happen. During my term on the national board of directors of the National Organization for Women, I became an information sponge. It was necessary. If I didn’t, I’d be blindsided when a reporter called for a comment from the nearest board member about something pertinent to women’s rights that had just hit the news. I needed to maintain a general sense of the pulse of what was happening so I would know much of the context already when big events occurred.
The habit stuck. Like any other exercise, the more you do it, the more ingrained it becomes. It’s as though I developed a mental muscle memory.
How It Goes Now
Information comes in. My brain sifts through it, partly with conscious effort and partly in my subconscious, until it has found which items connect with each other (and how) and which should stay off to one side. This isn’t a quick process. It takes time. But it causes me to often see things differently from most people around me. If you can imagine taking a few two dimensional photographs and ending up with a three dimensional sculpture, the effect is like that. I love it.
Realizing most people don’t do this to nearly the extent that I do took a while. Apparently what I did was visible to others. A key person at a major telecom company mentioned it was the reason they chose me for the failure modes and effects analysis on a huge new system they were building, and then to build a first-ever troubleshooting tool to help their network operators tend to the monster. She said I had a rare ability to see the whole picture and its critical details all at once.
Rare? Really? Really!
I have learned to usually not try to convey to people all of what I see about a large difficult topic. Like the business partners, people usually won’t or don’t want to take it in. If I don’t have to lay out all of a potentially overwhelming picture at once, I lay out a portion at a time and maybe hold some of it back entirely.
Jessica Wildfire’s mind works the way mine does. Hers seems to be on stronger vitamins, and I should warn you that she doesn’t appear to hold anything back. She found a term for this way of seeing the world. She explains it better than I do. If you’re curious, see her explanation at OK Doomer.
If you see the world this way too, you know it is indeed both a gift and a curse. I choose to regard it mainly as a gift. I hope you do too.
Haha - only a girl? When I was on assignment a few years ago for the Fort Sill Tribune, I told two drill sergeants their trailer hitch wasn't on properly. They figured this old civilian hadn't a clue. They didn't know I used to haul my art show equipment all over the country with a trailer, so they ignored me. A few minutes later the trailer fell off the hitch. My co-worker who was with me at the time still brings that up!
It does amaze me (shock me, actually) that so few decision-makers can see the big picture and imagine the consequences beyond the short-term gains. Climate change, wildlife extinction, fascism, etc. All of it due to greedy desire for short-term profits or power. Developing a technique to share your holistic knowledge in small doses is a powerful self-discipline. Having step-by-step successes in proving your vision can have more impact, provided the black-and-white thinkers don't hold sway in the face of logic and facts.
Just read OK Doomer and it seems that's been my problem all along. I have Sentinel Intelligence. (My son thinks we are both neurodivergent but I'm not so sure about that.) I stand up for what's right or point out what's wrong many times, and get treated like the troublemaker, even in my own family. I am later proved right, but never ever get an apology. I sooooooo relate to Cassandra. I guess Jesus was a Cassandra, too. And MLK and Bobby Kennedy and Malala Yousafzai and the other good people who try to make the world better and get demonized for it.