As those of you whom regularly read this blog already know, I am and was a bookworm. So I have some practice in being a lonely, marginalized, social isolate. Without becoming an angry, derailed, messianic maniac.
Since the lockdown, I have read and interacted with:
Beloved, Blue Monday; Catch-22, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Genesis (Bible), The Lady in the Lake, The Mirror and the Light, Pirkei Avot, Rebecca, The Rooster Bar, Sweeney Todd, The World that We Knew, Troubled Blood, Where the crawdads sing.
I have also taken courses to qualify as a contact tracer from Coursera and to qualify as an examiner for the MOCA. I also took CE's in neuropsych from Elkhonon Goldberg.
In between, I taught at college and served as a medical expert.
In my lonely youth, summers were spent reading, writing short stories, and illustrating them. Interrupted by hitting a tennis ball against the side wall of the house. Now I write a blog and have published on behavioral strategies for COVID management. Since the Y opened up, I swim or work out. Last April, I bought a bike and try to go bike-riding, when I dare.
When I was pre-literate, my brother and I used to write plays and perform them on his stage (a wide closet) for my bored, less than enthusiastic parents.
If I complained of boredom, my mother would suggest I vacuum. When I rejected that, she interpreted that as "not being bored then."
During the days of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott, whole families would either write plays and perform them, or perform previously written works. In the diary of Anne Frank, they would read from Shakespeare and practice English. Similarly, in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," the children were mandated to read from the Bible and from Shakespeare daily. In the Puritan days, children would read the Bible, embroider samplers with verses, knit, chop wood, etc. Was it them who said, "Idle hands are the devil's playgrounds?" To say nothing of idle minds who read without understanding. The leaders were middle aged, some with fragile minds, all with hateful minds.
All this is to say, being lockdown doesn't have to lead to lunacy. It leads to lunacy when you have people only "consuming" (but not digesting--digesting would mean analyzing/understanding, etc) social media whole hog and just going down the rabbit hole into full blown mania. Come on folks--really--Democrats are all pedophiles running secret rings to enslave children? I would just say it was a few loonies, but these were doctors, lawyers, firepeople, military. People out in the world, educated, interacting. And yet, they were just as likely to fall prey as our hillbillies.
What factors led to lockdown lunacy, aside from the lack of digesting?
Isolation
Credulity
External locus of control
Obedience
Lack of brainstorming
Emphasis on agreement
Anger. Anger anger anger, which drives away anyone who might have a divergent outlook or output.
Random people becoming town scolds.
Fear of "the other." Vague, shapeshifting others with whom they do not interact in positions of equality.
De-individuation--people were there dressed like Vikings. I guess dressing in Nazi uniforms and goose-stepping would be too obvious.
Debasement of anyone who doesn't agree with them.