Evil Personified

I have to tell you, I struggle with the glee and the dancing in the streets, because our military have managed to kill yet another human being. A high profile one, who was himself responsible for thousands of innocent civilian deaths, yet nonetheless a fellow human being.

It seems so barbaric. Are we no better than the people in the streets in the Middle East who danced and rejoiced after the tragedy on 9/11? Are we just as simple-minded? Are we just as caught up in a game of Old Testament justice (an eye for an eye). Or a Darwinian play of who is the strongest? Smartest? Mightiest?

And then I see the joy in the eyes of the students who their entire aware life have lived with Osama Bin Laden as the personification of Evil. And I realize that there is a deeply felt archetypal component to this. By killing Osama bin Laden, we killed the symbol of Evil. Just like when Hitler perished - it seemed like it was Evil personified that died.

So Osama has become a symbol. Just like Bush and now Obama have been and still are symbols of Evil to many in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the deaths to many civilians caused by the wars there.

Maybe the battle between Good and Evil rages on in our psyches independently of who we as societies project these qualities on. Maybe personifying Good and Evil is politically expedient and a powerful rallying tool.

Archetypal forces continue to be forceful fields of gravity. The more we close our eyes to our own shadows and our own "inner Hitlers", we will continue to project them out in the world as personified Evils. Someday, maybe politically expedient rallying tools will be constructive and responsive rather than destructive and reactive.

In the meantime, justice will continue to be played out in the interactions between us. I long for the day, where justice is as much an inner guiding principle as one that is projected out in the world, symbolized by other human beings.