The total destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City yesterday is the most shocking disaster in most people's memory.

Words truly fail.

One thing is crucial, though: While even my thoughts (and I am a peaceful individual) turned to revenge (or at least to Justice, which often looks deceptively like revenge) when I learned about it, we need to keep our cool.

There are forces on this planet who would like nothing better than for martial law to rule, and for war to become prevalent. This is not a good idea. In other words, if people, especially politicians and other opinion leaders, lose their heads and start clamouring for violent actions on a big scale, speak against it. Even if they find the responsible parties with any kind of certainty (which is very unlikely), the real responsible people will be a smallish group of individuals, living amongst thousands of innocent people who had nothing to do with it.

Besides, whether we like it or not, nothing we can do, nothing at all, can make something like that right again.

Yours, Eolake

Eolake Stobblehouse is a contributing editor to the Mac Observer, specializing in cultural matters