The Doomsayer's paradox

TrialSite News recently published a short but poignant poem under the title The Prophet's Paradox .

I have taken the liberty to adjust it, as italicised, in a few places to make it a more general critique of the many experts who have been predicting doom and gloom that fails to materialise. Alas, I felt it necessary to change the name as well. Follow the link to read the original

The DoomSayer's Paradox

He spoke with conviction, a voice of certainty in a world of chaos.
He warned of the storm, the reckoning, the inevitable tide of suffering.
The threat, he said, would unleash a plague more terrible than hell itself.
And yet, the great surge of death he foretold never came, but alas, could be around the corner.

But still, the expert stands, unshaken, unbowed.
The failure of his prediction is not a failure of his wisdom—
No, it is proof of mankind’s arrogance, proof that we do not listen,
Proof that Nature waits with patient fury,
And someday, she will collect her debt.


After all, are not the circumstances for such a reckoning undeniably stacking up?
Irony whispers between the lines,
For in claiming we are nothing compared to Nature,
He assumes the power to predict Her will.
In condemning the hubris of scientists and policymakers,
He makes himself their mirror image
A man certain of the unknowable,
A mind so sharp it bends back on itself.

And yet, there is brilliance in the madness,
For even the wrong expert sees truths others ignore.
But to predict the end is nigh, or
to name the hour when Nature will take back her dominion.
That is not science. That is not humility.
That is hubris masquerading as revelation.

The tragedy of the doomsayer is not that the world may ignore him.
It is that he must always believe the end is just beyond the horizon,
Even when the sun continues to rise.

(Read the original at https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/the-prophets-paradox-98aa7047)