Oh, world

[dancingwolfgrrl]

I was going to post something cute about maypoles and how Rites of Spring is eating my brain, but it turns out that Osama bin Ladin is dead and my corner of the social media universe seems torn between rejoicing (a minority position, I think) and telling other people to stop rejoicing.

Comments

Re: I swear this is relevant but I'm having a hard time explaining why

[dancingwolfgrrl]

Well, I think it's one way of looking that helps us avoid absolutism as a way of understanding our experience; the more we can tolerate shades of grey, I tend to think, the better off we are. The balance of this kind of thinking with some way of understanding integrity seems like a big deal to me.

[kcatalyst]

I don't believe in Hell either, but even so this "If we would wish him into Hell for being an Infidel, then we are exactly his mirror." makes no sense to me. There's a chunk of Americans who hate Bin Laden for being an infidel, but mostly it's for, you know, killing thousands of people. Some of us frown on that. I'm pretty sure that doesn't make us his mirror. I'm not sure what I would expect if I believed in Hell, because, well, then all sorts of things could be true. But the conventional understanding of Hell is that it's a place where bad people go, and I'm really, really comfortable with the idea that he was a very bad person. Because, again, the killing thousands of people.

[dougo]

I think "we want(ed) him dead" is not totally accurate. We wanted him caught, and I think if he were alive but in custody there would be as much or more rejoicing (and less telling other people to stop rejoicing). The reason I think we're better off than we were a day ago is not that he's dead but that the questions of where is he, what might he be planning/funding, why don't we know where he is, and are we still looking for him are all now answered (or moot). It may not be the best way to have resolved these questions (although it's arguably better this way than to worry about show trials etc), and there are plenty more (and more important) questions to be asked and answered, but it's a big clump of loose ends that have been tied up, however messily.

I know this is a tangent that is probably not very relevant to the points you're making, but it's just something that's been bothering me about the reactions so far.

[dancingwolfgrrl]

I think we're both using "we" loosely here. I definitely heard "I'm glad he's dead" from at least one person in a context where "arrested" didn't seem like it would've satisfied her; I hear that that's not your experience and it's not mine either.

[dougo]

By "we" I meant "most Americans". But I have no evidence of that, just a gut feeling.

[dilletante]

the thing that always disturbs me about the finding-without-only-what-you-find-within notion is that it seems like it leaves little room for growth. and it does seem to be true, in general, that if you just can't conceive of something, it can be right in front of your face and you'll never see it. but does that mean you never can learn to see it? and if it doesn't, then how can you learn it? people often seem to report in practice that searching outside themselves helps them see new things-- "travel broadens one"-- and maybe they then find that those things were inside them all along, but they weren't doing much good there before, were they

[dancingwolfgrrl]

My experience is that learning to see things in oneself is a lot like learning to hear recording artifacts in music: it's a teachable skill that often centers around the aha moment when you finally perceive the thing, and once you've learned to see it, it is annoying as fuck a lot of the time :) I think external experiences -- like travel -- can sometimes give us the skills to see what was there all along, and also that sometimes things just look different against a different background, as it were.

[soong]

In this big complex world, I'm gonna be a big complex person and say that while I have large chunks of myself that want peace and love and sustainability, I am also a little satisfied that the good guys won this battle and the big bad man is dead, and I'm a little bit uncomfortable with feeling that. I'm gonna go with that, all of it. And I'm still going to keep advocating for the best possible future I can see at every step, and make the pretty-good realpolitick trying-to-be-better decisions in person as I go.

[dancingwolfgrrl]

I think that if "thank god he's dead" is a piece of where you are, admitting it (at least to yourself) is totally the right thing to do. There's a real idealism-pragmatism thing in this that you've nailed, and it's tricky!