Long ago, in another era, I worked as a volunteer following the 9/11 attacks. I began my work serving on a telephone information bank, manned by mental health workers, for the purpose of identifying 9/11 survivors. Working there, I noted an increasing kind of desperation. For example, on that first night (9/12), one of our shift captains informed us that we were to ring a little bell— like the ones used to summon hotel desk clerks— if we discovered that someone on our list had survived. Such was the anxiety; and such, the mad release.

Returning to this work-site several days later, I peeked in on a pep-talk given by a supervisor and was shocked. She was telling the group about earthquake survivors who’d lived for months, possibly years, under horrific circumstances. Her mania was palpable: and with it, the denial that massive numbers of lives had been extinguished.

I realized today that I’m beginning to hear the same quality of stories as the recession builds and unemployment increases.

It takes the form of splitting— of dividing the world into good and bad—- as a way of avoiding the dread of an uncertain future.

Example One: A professional acquaintance, painfully mindful of financial market declines. While having preserved her equity before Lehman’s fall, she nevertheless shops persistently for a discretionary account with a manager who guarantees “safety”— and believes she has found one. How? Her talented manager guarantees regular returns!

My highly intelligent friend is brilliant in what she does professionally. She also recognizes her lack of financial expertise! Nevertheless, despite an era of significant losses, she believes in the fallacy of security. She splits what she knows to be reality ( others’ 50% losses) from her ongoing fantasy of naïve paternal care. This as Madoff sits in jail for pandering to the same fantasy!

Example Two: Consulting to the Board of a community charitable organization, I find myself locked in a pointless discussion with a Board member. She loves the organization passionately, and is a dedicated crusader for the provision of necessities for the newly unemployed (who once earned 6 figures, as she continues to do).
“They”, she says, “should volunteer their services to help us clean the physical plant.” She argues that they have sent their children to Habitat for Humanity, so believe in social justice. “Now its their turn.”

Another member attempts to discuss their humiliation and shame. She pushes it away. “They need to know the value of work!!!”

OK, perhaps it is survivor guilt: she and her husband continue to work at the same level jobs as the people whose volunteer work she seeks to dictate. Yet, I hear a more general and corrosive process: the splitting of Us and Them. “Them” are not simply our mirror image — that we come to despise for the same reason we ignore the same unpalatable traits in ourselves.

Its even closer to home: “Them” were “Us” yesterday. And now we must guard our own sense of wholeness and integrity by using them to define us as their opposites: Thank God we’re not Them !!

Buckle up.

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