Naming Your Shadow

I think people can behave better or worse depending on pressures they're under, the company they're keeping, points of view they've heard, information they've received, lies they've been told, and experiences they've had. Probably lots of other things too.

In The Once and Future King, T.H. White wrote Lancelot as a fallible but generally nice man, who makes the fatal mistake of thinking that to be good he should test himself by putting himself in the way of temptation. But White seems to believe, and so do I, that to be good you have to recognise your weaknesses and avoid situations in which you are likely to let yourself down, or hurt others.

One corollary of this idea is that if we are fallible and liable to mistakes, then others who make mistakes likely to do so as a result of this same fallibility, not inherent badness. If we seek to understand people's objectionable actions or beliefs in this way, doesn't it make it more likely that we'll avoid those same mistakes? Because we'll see how they came about? Whereas if we just say to ourselves "Those people are monsters, there is no point in trying to understand them" we miss the opportunity to identify the traps they fell into.

Sometimes good impulses can lead us dark places. It is good to be upset when we see harm being done. I'll take a concrete example: animal abuse. A lot of people react very viscerally when they see the result of cruelty or neglect on pets. They're upset for the animal - good. They're angry at the perpetrator - understandable and I think, pretty unavoidable. Some people take the action of donating to an animal charity, or asking for legislation that protects animals - mandatory chipping, pet care as a mandatory module in school, a change to licensing laws, free neutering. This is good and constructive. Some people want other legislation - heavier fines, jail for offenders. Whether this is good or not is more complicated - deterrence is questionable as a strategy, and it will face more opposition, so is it the best way to effect better animal welfare? What about if you circulate the person's photo on social media? Are you really doing this because it's the most effective way, or even an effective way, to help animals? Or are you perhaps doing it out of a sense of justice, or to put another word on it, punishment? How do you feel when you are carrying out this punishment? A little excited? Is this a good thing? Does it really come from a good impulse? Or did the original good impulse lead to something darker, and are you now indulging in a kind of cruelty of your own?

I doubt whether anyone is really entirely free of this urge. I've no doubt it had its uses, maybe it still does. But I'm pretty sure it's an urge that we need to recognise and avoid.

This is from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, because all the best philosophy comes from fantasy.

“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”