I’ve been a little snowed under technically of late, but now I’ve got Debian Testing installed and rocking, I’m back and I’d like to muse on a post that Lewis made over on A Barefootman about Shadow.

It’s important to see the parts of ourselves we keep in the shadows, the problem is we can sometimes fall into the trap of over emphasising these parts. To use Lewis’s examples, the hedonist. I don’t generally do clubs, but I’ve let that part of myself out of the shadows a few times. Usually I woke up poorer and nursing a bad head and stomach. It can actually ruin a weekend, and they call this “having fun”?

I feel that it’s important to allow these things to settle into a balance, by all means let the intellectual out, but in the proper forum. Let the hedonist play, but don’t get silly.

My own focus on the shadows has pointed at far darker aspects of ourselves, anger, violence, jealousy and others. I feel it is a great loss to a person to deny that these things exist in each and every one of us. These aspects of ourselves can serve to remind us to be mindful, to cleave to the middle path, almost like a form of mental Judo, though of course you have to catch yourself in time.

As part of my ongoing wandering on the Buddhist path, I’ve been considering things and trying to see through the hype. I’m going to go out on a limb here. Recently I wrote about my complete opposition to Capital Punishment, I’d like to return to a quote from that article.

I’ve been reading some of the letters written to newspapers calling for Capital Punishment to be reintroduced, the language is normally very much aimed at the readers emotions, the murderers are always “heinous” and “inhuman” or “monstrous”, I’ll leave my views on the “inhuman” part till another day.

I feel that this is the right time to clarify that quote. Let’s think about animals. Every day in the animal kingdom, there are examples of killing and other acts that would quite rightly arouse the wrath of the law in Human society. The major difference between Humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom (note the words “rest of”, it’s a very important point) is our capacity.

We are possessed of a greater capacity than other animals, we can reach so much higher. In fact our abilities have grown to the point that Humanity could be reasonably be considered a force of nature, which is why I feel we need to pay more attention to spirituality in the moment in a practical sense. My focus here is going to be more on an individual level, our intelligence gives us the capability for reaching much higher altruism, compassion and spirituality are three examples. But capacity goes both ways, we can also sink lower.

So when someone says a particular murderer (for example) is “inhuman”, my response to that is the thought “I really can’t think of any other animal that would commit that act for that reason”. We have acts of murder, cannibalism and infanticide every day in the natural world, but that comes from evolutionary pressure. For example, a lion that takes over a pride generally kills any young he can find, this is to better secure his genetic legacy, not for kicks.

A Human will however, that’s the difference, we can be the best of animals, but also the worst. I feel that for those of us who aspire to the middle path it’s imperative we acknowledge that honestly.