Heads on Spikes Are Sooo c.1650.

In an address that stopped a nation, President Obama confirmed for the world what twitter had been guessing for a few hours; Osama Bin Laden, significant Al Qaeda figure and the face of the twin towers attacks nearly a decade ago, was dead.

He had been killed in a firefight in a mansion in Abbottisbad, Pakistan. The body had been dumped at sea. The conspiracy theories began circulating almost as fast and loose as this falsely attributed Martin Luther King quote: "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."

A quote like this goes viral because it resonates with a sentiment which we feel we cannot express for ourselves - perhaps we feel unqualified, or ineloquent, or alienated by the more mainstream sentiments being expressed. In this case, this quote validated that feeling that there was something barbaric about the jingoistic fervour, the chants of "U-S-A!", the self-congratulatory ceremonies and celebration over a violent death.

I watched horror-struck as the plane flew into the second tower nearly a decade ago, as the buildings collapsed. As people jumped to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, the uncertain death that their workplaces had turned into. As the death tolls climbed and the pieces of human wreckage were pulled from the rubble. I make no apologies for those who planned this nightmare, saw to its execution, and celebrated the fear, suffering and trauma that was its aftermath.

The world sat largely silent as the US launched first strikes against Kabul, bringing shock and awe into our living rooms and the horror of industrial warfare into the lives of Afghani citizens too poor to flee. There seemed to be a sense that such a response was necessary, because how do you wage a war against dead hijackers? How do you wage a war against a force which has no state? How do you feel safe as a citizen of this world, and how do you protect your own state? There was a sense in which even though the links between 9-11 and Afghanistan were tenuous*, the world recognised that America needed to do something other than lick her wounds and worry about what happens next.

I was disgusted at the parties in the West Bank, the comments that the US somehow deserved September 11. The sense that there was anything righteous, anything to be celebrated in the death, destruction and grief of that day left me cold. Commentators rightly came out to condemn these displays.

Where were those commentators when the mobs gathered to chant "U-S-A!" and pump their fists in the air? Where were they when an ex-judicial slaughter was described with gravitas by the President of the United States as 'justice' having been done, as though justice and vengeance are synonymous? I am not sad that Bin Laden is dead, but I am sad that this event reflects that humanity hasn't progressed much ethically beyond heads on spikes, saber-rattling, primitive, barbaric. A grave recognition that a violent act may be necessary is not the same as cheering for an execution.

Martin Luther King did say:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

There is something unevolved about an eye for an eye, something dark, primitive and regressive that reflects the very worst motivations in human behaviour, that makes us all less safe. Our world is littered with political speeches claiming moral high ground against an opponent, but it is our conduct which defines who we are. If we are attempting to celebrate the ending of a life from the moral high ground, it may be time to cede our claim to it.







* You may recall that the grounds were that the Taliban, repressive and evil but not fantastically well-resourced, did not hand Bin Laden over to the United States when asked to do so. This would be the very same Bin Laden it has taken one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced military powers of the world nearly ten years to locate.

The Surly Valentine

When did this become a thing, this wide-eyed tacky embrace of all things coupledom for St. Valentines' day in Australia? Like Easter and Christmas, it seems to come on earlier and stronger every year. Even my beloved Aldi, the cheap eurotrashy supermarket that keeps me in mushrooms, broccoli and gluhwein while letting me keep my labour in the lower paid community sector, is, two weeks out from the supposed big day, offering chocolate roses. It begins to look as though a total boycott of the festival of mush is entirely impossible. Is there nowhere outside the curmudgeonly cave that is safe from kitsch heartshapes, pinks and reds and cliched sentiment?

It is beyond unlikely that I will be spending February 14th entwined with some other soul, making mushy faces in some overcrowded restaurant, gushing over something Hallmark finds a romantic sentiment, and pretending that every cliched motif of romanticism is somehow a sweet and unique expression of something genuine, as opposed to a crassly commercial, over-packaged and manufactured emotion. Of course, your Curmudgeon would say that. My history around these situations is somewhat fraught.

Growing up in Australia in the 1990s, Valentines Day was a concept as foreign as Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Halloween. There were always going to be a couple of people who embraced the concept, but we never exchanged cards at school or really focussed on the day as a calendar event. When I was fourteen, I contemplated organising a Valentines' day gift in a fit of tacky adolescence, but decided instead to dispense chocolate frogs to other girls at my single sex school who did not have single stems of roses to carry from class to class all day (P.S girls who did have roses, please note they *will* fit into a locker, stop with the conspicuous smuggery). That became a fun tradition as, adolescents being adolescents, there was always someone in need of chocolate and cheering up on this day designed to remind us all that, OMG, the perfect state of being is to be permanently attached to someone else.

As we got older, it became the Anti-Valentines outdoor cinema night, or the Lonely Hearts (fuck you, Valentines Day) bar crawl. It was a paean and ode to our youth, our freedom, and the city we found ourselves in. Healthy sense of irony engaged - no one was particularly bitter about being single, but nor were we in a hurry to hide at home from the smug couple hordes. We believed this night should belong to us as well.

I haven't always been as single on Valentines day as I will be this year. I too have had the gushy Valentines Day experience of the cringeworthily cutesy young love variety. I forget what we did, but I recall he wrote me a poem and we had what could somewhat unoriginally be described as a magical evening. Melbourne in February puts on decent weather, and it felt like we had all the time in the world. It was coffee, sunshine, our own little world - but then, when you're a little bit in love with someone every day is like that. The crowds and the conspicuous coupledom of the holiday of lurve neither adds nor detracts, because that would involve peeking outside the adolescent-hormone bubble of each other and noticing that the rest of the world continues to turn.

The relationship was pretty seriously on the rocks when we shared a Valentines Day which involved a teddy bear holding a heart, a single rose, and some chocolate, the scatterbomb approach to human engagement if I've ever seen it. I was never sure if he covered all of the traditional bases because we had just gotten back together after a break-up, if everything was half-price (since we'd missed the actual day out of a combination of busyness and apathy), or if he genuinely didn't realise that the poem he'd written me a year before, the notes he used to leave scattered around my room, actually meant something, whereas a bear saying "I wuv you" means someone's suffered a frontal lobotomy. We had stopped putting anything of ourselves into what we were doing, and we were ready to settle for tokenistic and expected.

The curmudgeon comes out here - these things were somewhat meaningless because they had nothing to do with who either of us were as people. They involved a transaction in which no thought was required, to purchase a message that was made trite and somewhat meaningless by mass-production. This is not an aesthetic or consumeristic point - I would not have liked the idea of these gifts any more if they were expensive, quite the contrary - the only reason I had any time for them at all was because, despite everything, I cared for the person proffering them. It was the fact that thoughtfulness ceased to become a part of the situation. A plush heart to say "I love you" is about as meaningful as a fill-in-the-blanks eulogy from a cereal packet.

Since then I've largely avoided VD in all its forms. If I like someone, I don't need the excuse to show my affection. I do hereby pledge, however, that I will never buy someone a plush animal wielding a heart in cold blood. Maybe this year I'll distribute chocolate frogs to my friends or leave a thoughtful note somewhere to be found, or I'll go back to my favourite haunts and let my city be my Valentine for one more year. Being a complete and solitary human being on Valentines Day, despite the social pressures of monogamy etcetera, is something of a relief. This year I'm curling up with a volume of Charlie Brooker's articles, listening to Van Halen and not giving a fuck what anyone thinks. I recommend it.