OSAMA IS DEAD, REVENGE LIVES ON.

not appease their grief and how could it? There is only so much a public catharsis can do for the intimacy of loss. It is a beautiful feeling to find ourselves nursed back into a sense of community as a nation after being torn apart by economy and politics for a decade. But, as a species, I’m tempted to ask, do we still need a common object of hatred to do that?

As the youth across Muslim countries today stands up for justice, democracy, freedom and independence, is the message we truly want to send out to them is that democracy can be set aside when our hurt is really too much to bear? That yelping for joy around the stake we burn our enemies at, is the level developed, democratic and evolved nations are at? That this what they have to live up to? That what is truly to be considered as the continuation of an act of war, in a long-lived battle across many years and many nations, can be elevated to the rank of smug personal justice? Certainly we are inclined to think of it as such, we, the wounded souls, but as a nation, shouldn’t we show a little restraint?

This is not about bothering your sense of entitlement, forcing some sort of guilt out of you, or the freedom to go about your business that is your American birth-right, it’s about elevating the debate a little over the gross satisfaction of being the winner. Sure it feels great to nurture our natural, self-righteous anger and spit it back in the face of those we have defeated. But weren’t we already doing this in the stone age? “Obama : 1, Osama: 0” read the posters, “In your face!”, “America rules!” Why am I reminded of College Football? Or the sophomoric spoof “Team America”’s tagline: “Fuck, yeah!” ?

In sports, in ethnicity, in religion, in politics, human nature will look for excuses to unleash its original hate, it’s primal self-assuring need of us vs. them. Hate is what killed left and right of all enemy lines, what killed the jews, the hutus, the shiit, the croats, the gays, hate killed Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, hate is what made 911’s tragedy possible, hate is always the one who kills the cat, a hundred percent of the time.

So maybe I’m not really in the mood to shoot beer into the air in recognition of it. Maybe it’s time we finally go about wound-healing in a slightly more mindful way. Rather than leaping headlong into the same atavism that got us fighting for food, territory and survival in the first place. Look at us. It is a computer we are standing in front of, connecting thoughts, facts and emotions in real time across the world, out of thin air. Isn’t it time we apply our formidable ability for evolution and progress to ourselves as well?

In the end, today, Bin Laden’s death gave a chance to the world to re-address the terrifying trauma that 9/11 had been to its collective psyche. And this is a good thing. But perhaps we should use this time, not only to reflect on the hurt we were dealt and the confusing effects it had on us – or where the party’s at; but to reflect on the mechanisms that make such catastrophic events possible, in varying scales, on a daily basis, the world over.

This weekend hundreds lost their lives across the American South; last month, thousands of innocents perished in Japan. President Obama said, “ There is nothing we can do against Mother Nature.” There is, however, something we can do about our human nature, one individual at a time. Because, incidentally, we do have some control, if not on how our feelings arise, on how we respond to them as conscious, thought-endowed human beings.

Now’s just as good a time as any.

Or we could just keep going. Who knows, same causes might yield different effects this time around?

That’s when I’ll host my party.

Osama Bin Laden is confirmed dead- US has his body.

Osama Bin Laden Gone: Will A Nation Find Closure For 9/11?