Mitchuation Update - Quarantine Fun

As Indiana and the Indianapolis begins to lift restrictions, I thought I would give an update on how things are going here.  We are all moved in.  Everything is in its place, pictures are on the wall, and murals are painted. 

It's really starting to feel like home.

We've been safely getting to explore a bit of Brownsburg.  There is an amazing trail system here and we've been walking it a lot.  Getting bikes and looking forward to biking the trails as well.  We've been continuing takeout Tuesday and discovering a bunch of great places to eat here.  Unique, local restaurants with great food.  We've found the best donuts we've ever had at Hilligoss Bakery.  Discovered a great ice cream shop at Mandy's.  A great local coffee shop.  Our favorite pizza.  Etc.

As indicated in the Be Ingenious post, we've discovered the Royal Theater in Danville nearby and have been getting concessions from there every other week on Fridays for movie night.  Our little part of showing our interest in keeping these places up and running.

We're really excited that the drive-in movies are reopening here.

The projects have kept us busy and have kept us from feeling trapped.  We've had so much to do, it's been great to focus here.  This past weekend was the first one where we didn't really have a home improvement project.

So, we did a thing.

We dyed our hair.  Well, we temporarily sprayed Jude's.  The rest of us went through the full color process; I've got the bleached hair photographs to prove it.  Now was the time to do it if we were ever going to do so, especially as I will not be heading back into the office physically until August, most likely.  It was a tedious, silly, and fun bonding experience on Sunday.

Other's have noted our hair helps us look like the emotions in Inside Out, so we put a little bit of that above in the photographs.

We've really just used the time to be together.  To be creative.

I did want to share the murals Jamie completed for the kids rooms.  She knocked them out of the park and the kids both love their rooms. 

Jude's took inspiration from the old Disney short A Cowboy Needs A Horse and Avalyn's took inspiration from the Audrey Hepburn canvas seen in the picture of her room.

I guess they really show us in a nutshell.  To find levity, to find optimism in this time, we turn to creative outlets.  It's our nature.  Beyond faith, it is what is keeping us centered.

So, we'll keep looking for fun, silly, creative outlets to throw ourselves into.

In the interm, we'd like to know what you are doing to keep sane in this time?  How are you finding enjoyment?  What brings you happiness in such a time as this?

Be Ingenious

It's been easy to focus on what has been cancelled, shut down, and prohibited in this season.  To think of all the things we can no longer do, places we can no longer go, things we can no longer buy.  To view so much as non-essential and really re-evaluate what is essential.

For non-essential businesses especially, it can be very easy to focus on the negative.  The worries, the frustrations, the hurts.  

Every once and a while, though, you find one that gets ingenious.

In Brownsburg, we get a weekly paper in the mailbox, containing local news and interests, etc.  It's been fun to get to know the community and learn as much as possible in a time when it's hard to get out there and actually do so.  One column they have is on local food recommendations.  Now it has turned into where to get takeout from.  

What we discovered this past weekend was the Royal Theater in Danville, IN.

Here is a business in an industry that has been hit particularly hard.  Not allowed to be open, no new films coming out, no one able to go to the theater to watch.  And yet, this theater had a great spark of an idea.

This theater took its non-essential business and focused on what it could do in an essential time - sell food.

For several nights a week, the theater has been open to sell take out concessions.  Popcorn, drinks, candy.  Whatever you would need to make a home movie night a little more like a theater experience.  You can purchase outside or inside and pick it up to take home (or just enjoy in the car).

They are promoting it on their Facebook page and suggesting movies to watch, connecting with things like the Lionsgate movie of the week on Youtube.  Really engaging their customer base.

It was something that caught our eye, and captured our attention, so of course we went and got some for our Lord of the Rings marathon this past weekend.  And we'll be going back this week.  

It's an ingenious bit of business, making an opportunity when there seems to be none.  Moving from non-essential to essential by their particular business focus.  They are even selling cloth masks in the lobby (got a couple of those for the kids as well).

This is an example of how we get through this kind of crisis.  How businesses, how churches, how individuals get through seasons of great change - by adapting and changing with them.

Hopefully, as things are starting to open back up, and as they will not be immediately springing back to normal as we might hope, we can see more of this type of ingenuity out there.

More on this tomorrow...

Quarantine Dangers - Gaslighting

In 1944, MGM released a new motion picture entitled Gaslight, starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, and a very young Angela Lansbury debuting in a particularly wicked role.  The film was based on a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton entitled Gas Light and was the subject of a previous British film in 1940.

Now, it is impossible to talk about Gaslight and its relevance today without spoiling it, so please forgive me.  It is an incredible film and well worth the watch, so if you want to pause this and go watch the film and come back, I understand.

In the film, Bergman plays Paula, the niece of a world famous opera singer.  When Paula is 14, she witnesses her aunt's murder and interrupts the murder's attempt to steal a set of priceless jewels.  Paula is sent to Italy to study opera and grow.  Years later, she meets and marries Gregory Anton, played by Charles Boyer, and moves back into her aunt's old townhome at No. 9 Thornton Square with her new husband.  Here, things take a turn for the bizarre.  She seems to start forgetting things.  She hears footsteps in the attic, when no one else does.  The gas lights start to dim and flicker, though no one else notices (hence the name of the film).  Pictures disappear from the wall.  Because of this, Gregory keeps her isolated at home, implying he is doing so for her own good.

Paula eventually discovers that her husband is not what he seems.  He is really Sergis Bauer, her aunt's murderer, and he has been causing all of the bizarre activities and blaming them on Paula.  He removed the pictures.  He is dimming the gas lights.  He is searching the attic for the jewels he left behind all those years ago.

This underlying theme of the film has come to be referred to as gaslighting.  A form of psychological abuse in which the victim is gradually manipulated into doubting his or her own sanity.  It is a particular tool of narcissists, who use it to continually position themselves in the right and make their opponents doubt themselves.

Gaslighting requires a victimizer or group of victimizers and a victim or group of victims, and depends on the victimizer convincing the victim that their thinking is distorted and that the victimizer’s thinking is correct and true. It creates cognitive dissonance in the victim, making them question their own thinking, perception, and reality testing, leading to low self-esteem, and may facilitate confusion, anxiety, depression, and even psychosis. It is designed to foster a dependency on the victimizer, a learned helplessness making the victim more susceptible to the victimizer’s control.

It generally plays out over time, through increasing doubts in the victim’s thinking or perception.

I raise this discussion because this is the most recent form of danger we are seeing in this quarantine.  Large scale gaslighting regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.

It's in that insidious logic that says only X amount of people died, so Covid-19 can't have been all that serious, right?  Or that we didn't overrun the hospitals or use all the ventilators necessary, so the stay at home orders were unnecessary, right?

It's in the President rewriting his position on and his handling of the outbreak repeatedly.

It's behind the Fire Fauci movement.  In Trump saying the anti-stay at home protestors are practicing social distancing.

It's in the memes that overplay the comorbidity issues that we are seeing.  You know the ones.  The ones that are talking about a car crash victim showing up at the hospital and being treated as having died of Covid-19.

It's saying Covid-19 is just the flu.

Look, I'm not trying to say we have issues that need to be dealt with, questions that need answered about comorbidity, about true mortality rates, and about how to balance the disease and the economy on a global scale.

But if you are seeing news items or shared posts downplaying the severity of the virus and effectively saying our protective measures were not needed, you are being gaslighted.  Because we can measure the impact the disease has had in fatalities.  We can hear the first hand accounts of the severity of some of the symptoms.  We know it is more serious than the seasonal flu.

Arm yourself.  Gaslighting works because it makes you doubt what you know to be true.  To combat it, make sure you have verifiable, true information.  Get your news from sources that are known to be fair and true.  Stay up to date on statistics from first hand sources like the CDC and the WHO.

Please note, though, that facts and truth are not going to change someone who is engaging in gaslighting.  They will not make them back down.  You will not get that cathartic moment where the manipulator gets their comeuppance.  This is particularly true of narcissists, who will continually dig in their heels and find new ways to save face.

Being armed with the truth is more about staying sane yourself and recognizing the manipulation when it is occurring.

Stay safe out there.

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?"

1984, George Orwell

Quarantine Dangers - Misinformation

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Mark Twain

Of all the dangers on social media today, mis- and dis-information is running rampant.  Insidiously, such posts focus on a piece of true information to then what "feels" true.  It's where we get the famous "alternative" facts.

It's even where we get the idea that the mainstream media can no longer be trusted.  That is a dis-information campaign on a massive scale and at the highest levels that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the news works.  Our mainstream media sources are generally trustworthy, though it is important to know where their bias lies.  And no, it is generally not as large of a bias you would imagine.  It is also important to remember that their primary bias is towards "sensationalism, conflict, and laziness," as John Stewart would put it, not towards any political end.  Meaning, the news needs ratings, especially now more than ever and the maxims of "if it bleeds, it leads" and "sex sells" remain true.

And because we don't trust traditional news sources, we're putting out half-truths and lies from a variety of disreputable sources because the information they provide sounds true to us.  We don't fact check, we don't double-check sources, we don't scrutinize their claims.

This helps spread conspiracy theories as in the previous post and spread misinformation.

A lot of what we are sharing is based on anecdotal evidence and usually generic anecdotal evidence at that.  A "NY doctor" has shared, "French doctors" are sharing...  No names, no sources.  Just the secret piece of information that everyone else is missing.  Everyone else is overlooking.

At this point, if you are sharing something that seems like everyone else is ignoring, that no one else is telling the truth, or will dare to speak about, then you are spreading a lie.

For example, let's talk about hydroxy chloroquine and azithromycin.  The two drugs that everyone is sharing as the cure for Covid-19.  Yes, there is anecdotal evidence that some patients have improved with such treatment.  However, clinical trials of the drug have just started and we do not have enough evidence to show that it is an effective treatment for a broad population.  Anecdotes start the process, they are not the end.  We need hard, scientific data to be able to approve this treatment for the general population.  Because the historic evidence that we have is that the drug has not been effective against viral illnesses and carries potentially lethal cardiac consequences.  Further, the run on the drug caused by the anecdotal sharing is making it more difficult to obtain for the communities that depend on the drug.

The other anecdotal evidence being shared relates to hospital usage.  Reports that hospitals are near empty or are not seeing the number of Covid-19 cases expected.  You should recognize there is a bit of chicken and the egg here.  The cases are likely lower due to the shelter in place requirements and would be greater if everything was business as usual.  Likewise, reports that individual hospitals or individual wards are near empty only reveals the impact for one particular location, not the greater impact on your area, state, or the country.  If you want hard numbers, go to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us.  This is the organization that the big entities (Morgan Stanley, PWC, Dell, HP, the BBC, the UK, parts of the UN, etc.) are using to get their data.

Every sharing hard numbers can be misleading, if you are not getting information from a trustworthy source like the one above.  Let's take an example showing how statistics are being manipulated right now, particularly with a comparison between H1N1 and Covid-19.  There are people that are pointing out that H1N1 killed 284,000 people worldwide and we didn't freak out then.  That only reveals part of the story.  H1N1 killed 284,000 people over 19 months.   Covid-19 has killed 168,906 people worldwide so far in just three months.  H1N1 killed over 12,000 Americans, Covid-19 has killed just over 42,000 Americans, already and the number continues to climb.

It can seem overwhelming.  I'm sure a lot of this is being shared a bit recklessly.  Without intent, but without research or confirmation.  It may have started as dis-information, that is the original poster wanted to create confusion or to lead away from trustworthy information.  But the vast majority of what is going on online is just people trying to latch on to some answer.  To find some hope of a way out of this.

So what can we do?

A few things, actually.

Before you share anything, before you post about the disease, the effects, the solutions

1. Verify the source - verify where the information is coming from. Is it from a major, well known source?  Is the source historically trustworthy?  Can you actually find the root source of the information?  Do they attribute and cite?  
2. Go to the root - when at all possible, avoid quoting from news outlets.  Instead post information from the World Health Organization.  The CDC.  From Worldometers above.  Go to the people with the data.
3. Think through what you are posting -  "Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid." Bernard Meltzer.  Read through what you post.  If you cannot affirmatively prove it is true, if you can not affirmatively show the information helpful, if it is unkind, don't post.  We sadly have far to many people who have been commanded to be true, to be helpful, to be kind who are ignoring those commandments because they believe their side is right.

As if there were sides at all in this issue.

We'll get through this, but only together.  This quarantine time will either be a great opportunity for growth or it will tear us farther apart.

If you are participating in the misinformation campaign, even unwittingly, you're just contributing to the fracture.

Quarantine Dangers - Conspiracy Theories

"Conspiracy is the myth of the modern age."

Today begins a series on the dangers that are facing us in a quarantine age.  Beyond the virus, the dangers we are creating for ourselves, informing how we respond to this crisis and how we interact with those around us.

These are dangers that are growing via social media, in particular.  We're at home, we are generally connected for far too much of the day, and we are looking for ways to explain what we are going through.

Think about it, myths existed to explain the world around us.  They told how the world was created, why it rained, how the sun rose and where it went, etc.  They even explained why bad things happened, either as a punishment from the gods or as a result of a god's actions.

When we feel powerless, when we feel out of control, we come up with an explanation for it.  And the most obvious way we explain the world around us today is through conspiracy theories.  The "Men in Black."  Deep-state government.  George Soros.  The Koch Brothers.  The Clinton Assassinations.  The anti-vaccination movement.  9-11 was an inside job.  And so on, and so on.

All based on emotion rather than fact.  All selectively choosing information, ignoring other facts and science, and reacting based on what feels correct.  What fits the narrative that they have created.

Right now, conspiracy is running rampant.

The coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab and was leaked or intentionally released.  Bill Gates created and released the virus so he can profit from the vaccine he is creating.  The future vaccine for this virus will contain a microchip that will be the Mark of the Beast.  The virus deaths are being exaggerated and the media is lying to us regarding the severity as part of a deep state plot to perform a test run of taking over the country and subjecting us to martial law and stealing our rights.

Really?!?

Some of these take the smallest piece of fact and stretch it to the maximum extent possible. They then generate an often outlandish tale of good and evil.  That's really the thing - conspiracies help us make things orderly.  They get there in an overly complicated way, but they are generally very orderly.  This person, this group does this for money, for greed, for power.  It clearly delineates good guys and bad guys in stark black and white terms.

Real life is messier.  People screw up.  They act against traditional motivations.  They play against type.  It doesn't follow a straight line.  "Good guys" do bad things with the best intentions.  "Bad guys" do good things for the wrong reasons.

Further, any conspiracy involving the government gives them too much credit for efficiency.  Just look at how long it took them to come together to approve the stimulus and then to delay it so that our dear leader could sign it and make sure he got his attribution.

Conspiracies require groups of people acting in concert and keeping things secret for far longer than people are actually able to do.  Few people will die to protect the truth.  None will die to protect a lie.

In the current situation, each of the Coronavirus theories above has much simpler, more fact based explanations.

The WHO has found no evidence that the virus was created in a Chinese lab.  Coronavirus, generally, is a very common naturally occurring virus.  This one just mutated to affect us, and some of us greatly.

Bill Gates had the foresight to see that a viral pandemic would be possible in the future and has been working on eliminating malaria for a long time. It would seem natural, given his philanthropy, he would be working to find a vaccine.  And he will be taking a loss in the process.  We should promote this kind of action by billionaires.

Any future vaccine will be necessary to stop the spreading.  No one will take the Mark of the Beast unknowingly.  If you believe that, you need to re-read Revelation.  To take the Mark of the Beast, you will know that you are being required to worship the Beast.

The discussion of the exaggeration of viral deaths is part conspiracy and part misinformation/gaslighting.  It's relying on anecdotal evidence based on a specific location to extrapolate it to the world. "It's not affecting me, so it can't be that bad."

It's our job to combat this.  It's our job to check sources.  To verify the news agency's bias.  If you are getting information from Breitbart, it is less trustworthy than NPR or the BBC, regardless of whether you want to believe this or not.

If you are a Christian, it is especially vital, as we are to be ministers of truth, not conspiracy or misinformation.

I get it, we may not like the truth right now.  We may feel powerless.  We may feel out of control.  But we gain nothing by spreading useless conspiracies. In fact, we risk minimizing people's losses and pain.  We risk actively making the situation worse, by ignoring the actual sound advice we have been given.

Let's focus on the truth, on reality for a while, and promote efforts that bring us together.