The Zing of Feeling Enmity

Polarization Has Emotional Roots

I did not want to be in a support staff position. I wanted to be in operations and run the show, even if it was a small show. I did, eventually.

“No, this is Mine!” my four-year-old grandchild shouts. It’s the aftermath of unwrapping Christmas presents. After being coached by her parents, she agrees to share, allowing her cousins to look, just as she can look at and touch their presents.

Is this how it starts? Mine and Yours?

After too many years trying to figure out the motives of “Those On the Other Side,” I decided I was looking at the argument rationally, all wrong.

Sports Teams, Gang Members, Politics, Corporate Zeal

When I lived in Minnesota, the Yankees owned the Twins. If it was a crucial game and the Twins were playing the Yankees? The Yankees would win. I was thrilled when the Twins won the Division, only to be sorely beaten by the Yankees for the League Championship. Even when the Yankees merely came to town, in a non-competitive game at the end of the season, they seemed certain to win. I hate, hate, hated the Yankees.

I have identified old friends because they wore a team hat in out-of-team territory. It’s a way we define ourselves. When I lived in a border town of Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings on the Mississippi, the bars and sports fans were designated by signs in the windows — televisions tuned to one or the other team games. When Bret Favre (and then Aaron Rodgers) moved to New York, some churches sported changeable signs that said “God will never leave you for the Jets.”

Gang members might know each other by the sports hats they wear. Bloods -red- wear Chicago Bulls and Crips -blue- wear Seattle Mariners or LA Dodgers.

Current political candidates may sell hats and shirts in “their” colors and with their logos. It’s affiliation, again, by uniform. Red and blue.

Few Real Enemies

I have had few real enemies in life. I’ve been lucky, I suppose. I used to get roused by passions for our side, whichever side that was.

I had a colleague I loathed. Others said of us, “They could not be in the same room together.”

I thought he was a con man trying to gaslight others in the name of doing good. (“The last act is the greatest treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” T.S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral). My belief was justified when he was sentenced to five years in prison for misappropriating funds from his charity. Did I feel good about his getting caught in a criminal act? You bet.

Engaging in an unwinnable battle increases the odds of victimhood. Maybe we all are victims in some constructed world we — or someone else — create. Maybe we are members of the hated Elite. Maybe we are Losers. Maybe we aren’t the smartest, the prettiest. Maybe we are.

We want life to be fair. We played by the rules we were taught, but the rules changed.

We were set up by a hospital we worked with, two different healthcare organizations that were to develop two different post-hospital rehab services. I look at it now and recognize the very well-respected health systems CEO was developing a survival-of-the-fittest test for post-hospital service providers.

I know shark-teeth competition is supposed to be for those in the capitalist realm. Two real estate companies, or two brands of food or clothing manufacturers, or two banks. When we work in a charitable organization that provides healthcare or services for those in need, we’re doing Good Work, right? Without the competitive spirit? Ah, the Us/Them default urge rests within us, even when our inheritance is, as it was for each of us, a faith/charity-based care system that had morphed into multi-state non-profit corporations.

It’s hard not to hate the Yankees. They have too much money. Their market is too large.

Except when I lived in New York City, and the Yankees won the World Series, and subway cars erupted in cheers or walking down an almost-empty street I could hear the cheers echoing out the windows and down the short canyons. Then, we were the best — every one of us. New Yorkers, united.

We want to Win

It’s the Left Behind series. For those who don’t know the reference, the Left Behind are stories about what happens when the Rapture comes, and those of us who aren’t Believers are left behind while others are raptured away.

The losers will be winners then. Those who aren’t believers will be left in buses without drivers or abandoned in precarious circumstances. The Rapture promises the zing of revenge, ultimately.

A raft of recent streamed network or television series have portrayed characters with no sense of values other than “What’s in it for me?” I get hooked into a few episodes, a season, but then ask “Is this giggle at the narcissistic, sociopathic characters what I want?” Yeah, it is, sometimes.

Extremes irritate me. Are they too woke? Think authority is the answer? Too politically correct? Give up individual freedom to support an agenda?

One of my biggest competitors was a manager in the other post-hospital organization who shared many superficial similarities with me, but she also presented very differently. She wore spiked heels, matching jewelry, and little Chanel-type suits. I was more the earth-mother type. I felt less business-like, less sharp, next to her. Maybe she disliked me too, I don’t know. I know her title in her organization was a level above mine in my organization. I resented what I perceived as her superiority.

When I look back at the situation now, it was so silly of me. I wasted a lot of mental energy on her/their situation instead of ours. In my organization, we all wanted to Beat Them. I could have been a different voice. But I wasn’t. Instead, we beat ourselves up.

Fear, like in the horror stories and thrillers, zings.

The truth is we both struggled financially. By the time we had finished construction and were up and running, arthroscopic surgery for some procedures had changed hospital stays and rehab into day surgery and discharge. Health improvements meant decreased costs (and less income for us).

Until COVID-19. Then, the separate rehab hospitals, with their isolation from acute care, provided a desperately needed service to people recovering from COVID-19. Whatever the change in the world’s situation, good or bad, some winners and losers provide the services now needed, or provide services no longer needed.

It is overwhelming, our polarization, our competitive advantages. We not only have to redefine them, but we have to redefine us. And it’s not pretty. We provided a legitimate, compassionate, and needed service. It also probably saved the product niche.

That’s why I do have a problem with those who will define whatever the industry as bloodthirsty capitalists making a lot of money on other people’s needs. Well, of course, we have those industries. The financial inability of some home insurers to continue doing business in particular states is example one. We might all complain about rising insurance rates until insurance isn’t available at all.

It’s one of the advantages of retirement. I don’t have to participate in the fray, which to be honest, charged me up. I hated the zing of enmity and loved the thrill of competition.