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When people are losing their jobs and money, it's hard to find a cool head. More importantly, understanding and sympathy are also wearing thin, with everyone tempted to play the blame game. Companies look at their workers and see fat, whereas the latter glance back and see something they can no longer trust. Even close colleagues can't see eye to eye, and the resentment can infect every step of any firm's hierarchy. If someone storms into his boss's office to complain about how obscenely he thinks his company's executives are being paid, there's a good chance junior colleagues are gossiping about him on the same count.

As expected, the first waves of industrial layoffs have hit Thailand, although big ones such as are already battering industrial nations have yet to come. Many already are preparing for the worst. The good thing is pessimism is keeping everyone on their toes. The bad thing is, in crises most people naturally retreat into, well, themselves.

If greed brought about the current financial calamity, selfishness is waiting to pounce on the sufferers and consume them. When a gold rush turns sour, the most important thing is how we can prevent it from becoming a witch-hunt. It will get more and more difficult not to think that there are always bigger faults than ours, or bigger culprits than us, that there are those who deserve to be punished first or this world will be totally unfair.

We may be right to think that way. Or we will be eventually forced to think that way because it's in our nature to apply morality in defence of every action. The problem is, in the pandemonium before a ship sinks, no one is really capable ,barring age and sex, of telling with moral precision who does not deserve to be on the lifeboats. And most of all, sympathy is less about recognising goodness than understanding why others are not like us. Selfishness puts 10 people in a 10-man life boat; sympathy can make it 15, with everyone agreeing to take turns swimming in five-man shifts. Sympathy seeks to get as many as possible to safety while ignoring the question of who deserves to survive.

Many company workers have adopted this concept of sharing. They are ready to counter layoff orders with proposals that everyone is ready to take a long leave, say a month, without pay. This can let companies achieve cost-cutting targets without really having to terminate anybody's job. Productivity may drop, but straightforward layoffs will also have the same effect. This solution has what layoff does not: it promotes sacrifice and sharing.

This spirit will be tested as the crisis deepens, though. It may turn out that taking a one-month leave without pay may not be enough and one may need to embrace a two-month payless break to keep colleagues on the job. The moment of truth has arrived, so to speak, but we all are facing more than just one moment of truth.

For their parts, companies need to realise that this is the time for anything but "natural selection". When circumstances toughen, executives naturally will be tempted to see some sections of the workforce as a burden or weak link. Again, they may be right. Try to accommodate everyone and the ship may sink faster. But, again, who can really tell that they are unloading excess or simply trying to survive at fellow humans' expense?

During the dark hours of each industry, motivation is low, and distrust and fear are prevalent. Nothing seems to be going right, and whatever an employer does will first arouse suspicion, which in turn will spawn apathy on the labour side. It's a vicious circle that feeds on itself, and in the end the mutual mistrust can make the clashing beliefs come true: the employers are selfish and the workers are lazy.

The challenge for everyone is how not to lose other things aside from jobs and money. The spirit of sharing and making sacrifices can easily get lost in a stampede, so it should be everyone's obligation to minimise fears and mistrust which could send all scrambling for the exit door in a commotion. Easier said than done, obviously.

Of course, the strong can only carry the weak so far, but maybe this is what the whole crisis, in moral terms, is all about. Everyone had been flying high on superficial strength, but now, being reduced to our real essence, the strong face the simple test of how far they can carry the weaker, while the latter need to prove how much they can measure up to make the heavy load as light as possible.