The Sword and Laser discussion

I figured someone would have done this post by now, but in the hope of being the thread topic I want to see in the world, I figured I'd go for it. I've got some anxiety (the kind where I talk to a professional about it and take some medication), and figured there should be a discussion thread to talk about that aspect of the book. I was partially thrilled and partially appalled to go through a book with a main character with anxiety even though it doesn't exactly mirror mine.

For trigger warnings, for folks who haven't read it yet and are on the fence, I'd really encourage you to give it a try. Just before halfway (this is a very minor spoiler) (view spoiler)[ Sun-Tzu compels Ren to allow him to see the inside of her house. (hide spoiler)] This is a passage that will allow you to gauge for yourself if you can finish the book or not. The pressure on Ren mounts for much of the rest of the book, but it was that first incident that really got my heart-rate up.

There's some things about how Ren processes things that really rang true in my experience. There's a connection (though perhaps not a causal one in either direction) between her anxiety and introversion. Ren often finds it easier to do extra work than to talk to anyone about how unfair that is. It's easier to be the only printer expert in town than to explain to someone that it's unfair for her back-ups to allow her to do everything and let their own skills atrophy. And it's easier for her to follow Mack's instructions than to bring other people in on the problem. This makes it easy for Mack to persuade himself that Ren agrees with his actions rather than that he is practically blackmailing her into compliance. Ren knows that this is cowardice, but this only confirms her impulses that she's better of staying away from other people.

I also love that Ren does the brain-computer equivalent of often preferring text communication to talking. I had a co-worker who would drive me wild by receiving my carefully composed email, not reading it, and just calling me immediately to have me explain it to them. I'm certain they never conceived of this as an imposition. For them, perhaps, it was an imposition that I would have them read a paragraph or two of text rather than talking to them face to face.

Anyway, I'm glad I read it, and I'm hoping some other folks got something out of having an anxious POV character too.

I have much the same feelings as you. It was the same point in the book where I was like, " Oh no. This will not end well for her." I was so angry at Sun-Tzu.

Until that point, I wasn't sure if I liked the book or not. Once there, I was invested and really liked the book. I immediately started the second book, and I'm enjoying that one as well.

Seth wrote: "I had a co-worker who would drive me wild by receiving my carefully composed email, not reading it, and just calling me immediately to have me explain it to them. I'm certain they never conceived of this as an imposition. For them, perhaps, it was an imposition that I would have them read a paragraph or two of text rather than talking to them face to face."

Justifiable homicide.

I might be kidding. Probably not, though.

I wrote a ridiculously long post over-sharing about my anxiety, but deleted it to spare everyone. Suffice to say that I feel your pain.

I would 100% agree. There are (rare) occasions where it is simpler to explain things in person so that the other person can ask questions at the right time and you can both be sure you are understood, but the number of times I have had to ask a very simple yes or no question only for a circular argument to form because the other person hasn’t actually read my question, only for me to get told off for messaging rather than calling, as if my carefully worded, very clear question wasn’t good enough……grrrrrrrrr - murder is clearly the only solution!

I share the sentiments on this thread too. I definitely got some solace out Ren’s similarities to my own bad head stuffs.

I read this book almost exactly two years ago and I wonder if it might hit differently if I read it again. I found all the stuff about hoarding and mental health very well written and moving, and I appreciated the overall exploration of how a colony on another planet might develop around its own rituals and secrets. It’s a book about the psychology of groups as well as the psychology of the individual.

As for emails vs calls, my favourite example was the time I sent someone an email asking a straightforward question and she rang me up to tell me she didn’t have the time to answer. But she apparently had the time to harangue me.

Ruth wrote: "As for emails vs calls, my favourite example was the time I sent someone an email asking a straightforward question and she rang me up to tell me she didn’t have the time to answer. But she apparently had the time to harangue me.."

Oh my god.

If that were to happen to me, it’d be yet another murder in a small English village to be investigated by the plucky local vicar.

I also have an intersection between anxiety and hoarding, except I’m not the hoarder. (In fact, some years ago my wife and I stopped buying gifts for each other on holidays and birthdays because we’re both exhausted by how much useless stuff we have.)

My MIL is a collector of many, many things, chief among them being dolls. She had something like 25,000 of them until she had to downsize. She still has over half her collection in storage. She has maintained for years that this is my wife’s inheritance, but the vast majority of her things are worthless since the bottom dropped out of the collectibles market a couple decades ago.

So really all she’s leaving us is a giant headache. Since she’s 90 and has early-onset Alzheimer’s, this bill is likely coming due soon. I try not to think about it but every time I go over to her apartment I get annnoyed about all the work I’m going to have to do dealing with this crap.

I have told her that the only difference between a hoarder and a collector is shelves. She told me that wasn’t funny. I responded that I wasn’t joking. It’s clearly a disease.

When we moved in 2002, it was assumed my wife’s parents would soon follow, so we just had a bunch of their things added to our move. They never did move, so we ended up having to send a ton of stuff back. The movers lost 1/5 of our stuff and ended up paying us $10,000 when they couldn’t find it. None of the stuff they lost was my MIL’s useless tchotchkes. Because of course. Irony, I know it when I see it.

What we didn’t get around to sending back was 27 big moving boxes of Barbie dolls, mint in box, collected by my MIL from 1963 to 2002. They just sat there in our living room, completely filling it up. A few years later, after much negotiating, we finally got her to agree to sell all those dolls. eBay was a big deal back then, but we soon discovered all those Barbie, Ken, Skipper and who knows what else were essentially worthless. There were like 2 of them that had any value; the rest we couldn’t sell for a dollar each.

So we found a local charity that helps families start new lives, and many of them are women and children who flee their abusers, often with just the clothes on their backs. We contacted them and asked if they’d be interested in these dolls. They sort of hemmed and hawed about sanitary conditions of used toys until my wife mentioned they were all in their original boxes, unopened, never played with. Then they got excited and asked how many we had.

“Um, we don’t have an accurate count but it’s somewhere over 400.”
“Did you say four hundred?”
“Maybe 410.”
“Oh my god. Yeah, that’d be great.”

Apparently that was unusual. 😂 They were expecting maybe 20. We’ve been friends with the woman who founded the organization ever since.

When I was fact-checking this post with my wife just now, I said, “I bet those Barbies are worth something now.” You know, what with the Barbie movie being the biggest hit of the year. Her reply was a flat, “I doubt it.”

Still traumatized 17 years later, clearly. 😜

When we gave those dolls away, I was tempted to keep the Star Trek Ken and Barbie, but fortunately I realized that was a slippery slope and gladly sent them with the others.

When I say “25,000 dolls” it’s just a number. You have to see it to believe it. So here, take a look at a fraction of her collection: https://flickr.com/photos/90159524@N0... These were just the “okay” dolls that were relegated to her basement. I put almost every one of those goddamn dolls on those shelves.

If you’re a hoarder, get help. If you’re a collector, also get help. You’re creating a nightmare for your family.

Oh my goodness! That is downright unsettling! But also a little wonderful. And also kinda creepy.

I kinda love collections like this, but of course, if it’s not your thing, it’s nor really an inheritance. Luckily, I won’t have any family by the time I’m that age, so unless I go unexpectedly any hoarding I do won’t be a burden to anyone I love.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "Oh my goodness! That is downright unsettling! But also a little wonderful. And also kinda creepy.

I kinda love collections like this, but of course, if it’s not your thing, it’s nor really an inhe..."

Collections like that are in the same category as drunk people: amusing to see from afar, a total nightmare to deal with personally.

Speaking of creepy, all those really old dolls from 100+ years ago that we had sitting around were eventually stuck into boxes because we just couldn’t take them looking at us any more.

Dogs in the other thread, how about cats here?

Cats with OCD: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsgU5Z...

Those doll pictures look like they belong in a horror movie with the scenario “your eccentric elderly relative has just died and left you a million dollars… the only catch is, you have to spend the night in the basement with the doll collection!”

DOGS and CATS, POSTing together!

Ruth wrote: "Those doll pictures look like they belong in a horror movie with the scenario “your eccentric elderly relative has just died and left you a million dollars… the only catch is, you have to spend the..."

I mean, I’m seeing a full case of Raggedy Ann (Annabel) dolls, so horror movie indeed!

Found this Guardian Long Read article about extreme hoarders and how the authorities in the UK try to manage their situation:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2...

Interesting stuff- something I hadn’t previously considered was how much of a fire risk hoarding is.

I'm finding the discussion interesting, but in a kinda squeamish way. Got no problem with people who have anxiety and perhaps modest hoarding issues getting together and talking about it. If the book brings that about, it's to the good.

I've been asking myself if I would tell the story below and kept holding off. Guess the answer now is "yes."

I just don't feel like this is an accurate portrayal of hoarding. Everyone brings their personal experience to the book and this one doesn't gibe with mine. I don't find that hoarders need any triggering event. It's a sickness, one that I have never seen able to be treated. At best the symptoms can be minimized.

Trike went on in detail about the hoarding relative he knows, and that's just fine. TBH as many dolls as as that one collected my thought was "at least it isn't dirty." I've got a story as well and don't want to get as far into the personal details. But I'll describe the hoarding.

In this case the relative in question wasn't into hoarding things, but rather animals. Mostly cats altho the number of dogs alone were above local statutes. As to the cats. We aren't talking a few. Think "over a hundred."

There was no triggering event for this person. She simply started collecting cats and wouldn't stop. The condition of the house didn't matter, loss of human relationships didn't matter, only hoarding mattered. I could describe in detail the overwhelming smell of cat musk, the stench of urine and feces, the fleas, but I'd rather stop short of grotesque.

Some of the book's depiction rang true. The lying to preserve the hoarding, the dishonest promise of change, the short term implementation of what other people considered improvements only to go back to hoarding - yes, those seemed on to me. But the idea that modest anxiety gets triggered to full on hoarder house did not. Hoarding is a progressive mental illness that needs no impetus.

The person in question continued animal collecting until she died. Her husband (yep, married despite it all) then took care of them, but took no more in. At least there's that.

I don't know if there is some clinical psychological information that says hoarders have a triggering event. If there is, it does not gibe with my personal experience of hoarders. To that extent I found the book's depiction simplistic.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Trike went on in detail about the hoarding relative he knows, and that's just fine. TBH as many dolls as as that one collected my thought was "at least it isn't dirty.""

Hmm… well, here’s a question: how does one clean 25,000 dolls?

You don’t. They look clean from a distance but they aren’t. Dust, mites, silverfish, spiders… so, so many spiders. No, it’s not garbage and it’s not rotted food but it’s also not a well-maintained museum. My wife couldn’t spend any time there because it triggered her asthma; I always came out of that room itchy.


John (Taloni) wrote: "In this case the relative in question wasn't into hoarding things, but rather animals. Mostly cats altho the number of dogs alone were above local statutes. As to the cats. We aren't talking a few. Think "over a hundred."

There was no triggering event for this person. She simply started collecting cats and wouldn't stop. The condition of the house didn't matter, loss of human relationships didn't matter, only hoarding mattered. I could describe in detail the overwhelming smell of cat musk, the stench of urine and feces, the fleas, but I'd rather stop short of grotesque."

I get that. I’ve been in animal rescue for 42 years, so I’ve seen my share of hoarding cases. Many of my dogs I posted in the other thread came from hoarding situations. The Chihuahua I have now is one such.

Here’s a video I made back in 2010 about one of the hoarding cases we had in New Hampshire. TRIGGER WARNING, obviously. I didn’t describe the details but you can see the deplorable conditions they were in. Don’t watch if you’re easily upset. Even though it has a mostly happy ending for the dogs, the first half is hard to watch.

https://youtu.be/cGV-Fzo5jQk?si=WuNSX...

I don’t understand why people do this, but it’s an ongoing battle we wage.

^ I will not be watching that video. Have seen too much of that in my life. Glad you're doing animal rescue, they need good humans.

From the couple of articles I read from places, one from the Mao Clinic, and I don’t remember where the other was from. It sounds like a disease that is not fully understood. They talk in tendencies, and how it sometimes does this, and sometimes that. It seems to genetically sometimes run in families, but not definitively, and often not at all. It usually starts small, and gradually gets worse over time, but not always. Signs can show up as early as teenage years, but sometimes later in life. And yes, for some it is managed and does not appear very bad, until impactful, or stressful events, seem to cause it to get worse. But in others that is not the case.

For me, I can visualize both types scenarios happening. I can totally see it being something that just gets worse over time, as one accumulates more and more things, with no onset cause. As well, as someone who had the willpower and ability to appear to manage it, until they were under enough stress, that they didn’t have the energy to do that anymore and that seems to make them want to hold on to more.

My Grandparents all grew up through the depression, and really tended to hold on to a lot more things (scraps of wood, and other raw materials, among other things) then most people would consider normal, especially my one grandfather, justifying it as being useful at some point. And people saying that after living through the depression many people did the same, but I’m guessing some of that was also mild to medium manifestation of this disease. My one uncle, his oldest son tended to do the same thing but not quite as bad, I helped my cousin clean up some of his and my aunt’s house after he passed, many dumb runs. I also seem to do some of the same, but will admit that these discussions have helped me crystallize that a bit more. And realize I should probably do less of that. But I’m also in a very good state mentally right now, and it is easier to accept, where if I wasn’t it might just bring on some anxiety.

The point is, while personal experiences should shape how we view other situations, they may not be the exact same each time.

John (Nevets) wrote: "From the couple of articles I read from places, one from the Mao Clinic, and I don’t remember where the other was from. It sounds like a disease that is not fully understood. They talk in tendencies..."
Mental health issues are normally referred to as disorders because they describe behaviours (anxiety, hoarding, depression) while a disease describes the underlying cause (cancer, heart disease, etc.) I'm not trying to be pedantic, I think this is tied to your point about articles referring to them as tendencies (another way of referring to behaviours.) Hoarding is a description of the behaviour, not the cause, hence the ambiguity in those articles about how manageable it is and in what direction it develops.

The actual causes of these disorders are often some combination of biological, social or psychological. That's where you get something like hoarding going from manageable to unmanageable in an individual with a biological predisposition that is exacerbated by stress, age, etc. Whereas a lot of people who lived through the depression may have hoarded purely because of the social pressure - people who would otherwise have not but when ya got nuthin' you hold onto anything - in which case its purely a learned behaviour.

Its also where treatment for mental health disorders can range from medication (where there is an underlying biological cause) to therapy or a combination of the two.

Thanks for the correction. I was trying to respond early in the morning before heading to work, and did not choose my words as well as I should have.

I wasn't trying to be critical of your words, I just think it is a distinction that was important to make. I remember making a comment when we read The Jasmine Throne that the princess was a sociopath. Some responses tended towards, "No she isn't, that's just a response to her brother's abuse."

Well, yes, it was a response to abuse. But I think Malini was deliberately written by the author as a sociopath. The key part is that her behaviours and thoughts fit the disorder (because that's how sociopathy is defined.) Secondary is that her childhood was consistent with the sort of traumatic events that are believed to be one of the causes. In other words: that it was a response to abuse is consistent with the diagnosis but either way it doesn't change how her behaviour is classified. Malini had zero empathy. She consistently evaluated people in terms of how they could or could not help her achieve her goals and discarded those who could not. Etc.

Mel Robbins has an interesting video about reframing fear as excitement in your brain, since the physical sensations are similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n8i7...

Tamahome wrote: "Mel Robbins has an interesting video about reframing fear as excitement in your brain, since the physical sensations are similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n8i7..."

I am very excited about this shark swimming toward me!

I legit would be. I love sharks!

Urgh, actually watched that video, and it’s so annoying. Her ‘amazing’ technique is literally no different to the ‘positive thinking’ technique she correctly poo poos earlier. Bah.

This one is on point:


https://ibb.co/XYzj27P

I won't post the baby shark song, do do do do do do.

Today at work I was excited to be stuck in the middle of a heated argument between a customer and a store manager. It was exciting to feel trapped and useless and worthless. I was excited at the prospect of interrupting so that the shouting could be directed at me instead. What an exciting day. I can’t wait for more exciting things to happen at work tomorrow. I have such an exciting job.

👍🏻