Thanks for this comment. I was both very moved by this post and unwilling to lean into it due to fears I couldn’t articulate. “fear of being eaten” is a pretty good match for what I was feeling, and having read the post I feel much more able to distinguish shadowmoth situations from being-eaten situations.
Some aspects that seem important to me for distinguishing between the two:
do you actually want the goal that struggling is supposed to bring you closer to? Did you choose it, or was it assigned to you? how useful is the goal to the non-helper?
how much work is the non-helper saving themselves by refusing to help you? In the shadowmoth case it was hurting the non-helper, which makes not-helping more likely to be genuinely for the moth’s benefit.
is the struggling recurring indefinitely, or is there some definitive endpoint? or at least, a gradual graduation to a higher class of problem?
can you feel something strengthening as you struggle?
is there reason to believe you’ll eventually be capable of doing the thing?
is this goal the best use of your limited energy? maybe someone should help you out of this cocoon so you can struggle against a more important one.
There’s also the question of the non-helper as an instance of a class, and you as an instance of a class, and the resulting implied ecology. Or to say it a different way: apply TDT to the shadowmoth / meal question. To say it a third way: if people like me react to situations like this—involving some relationship with someone or something—in such-and-such a way, then what trophic niche are we opening up, i.e. what sort of food are we making available for what sort of predator?
I had had individual thoughts like “of course in this case the alien woman is, you know, bad for kidnapping him and torturing him”, but the particular ecosystem frame feels probably-useful for generating followup questions. (It’s also thematically resonant with the themes in the book!)
This thread did motivate me to add an additional disclaimer to the post.
Thanks for this comment. I was both very moved by this post and unwilling to lean into it due to fears I couldn’t articulate. “fear of being eaten” is a pretty good match for what I was feeling, and having read the post I feel much more able to distinguish shadowmoth situations from being-eaten situations.
Some aspects that seem important to me for distinguishing between the two:
do you actually want the goal that struggling is supposed to bring you closer to? Did you choose it, or was it assigned to you? how useful is the goal to the non-helper?
how much work is the non-helper saving themselves by refusing to help you? In the shadowmoth case it was hurting the non-helper, which makes not-helping more likely to be genuinely for the moth’s benefit.
is the struggling recurring indefinitely, or is there some definitive endpoint? or at least, a gradual graduation to a higher class of problem?
can you feel something strengthening as you struggle?
is there reason to believe you’ll eventually be capable of doing the thing?
is this goal the best use of your limited energy? maybe someone should help you out of this cocoon so you can struggle against a more important one.
are you going into freeze response?
There’s also the question of the non-helper as an instance of a class, and you as an instance of a class, and the resulting implied ecology. Or to say it a different way: apply TDT to the shadowmoth / meal question. To say it a third way: if people like me react to situations like this—involving some relationship with someone or something—in such-and-such a way, then what trophic niche are we opening up, i.e. what sort of food are we making available for what sort of predator?
I found this a particularly helpful lens.
I had had individual thoughts like “of course in this case the alien woman is, you know, bad for kidnapping him and torturing him”, but the particular ecosystem frame feels probably-useful for generating followup questions. (It’s also thematically resonant with the themes in the book!)
This thread did motivate me to add an additional disclaimer to the post.