Earlier today, we had a discussion about the appropriate way to honor our fallen servicemen—specifically, whether or not it was appropriate to post pictures of their coffins.  Opinions were divided: me vs everyone else, but that rarely deters me.  Those on both sides believe that the side they favor was the more honorable.

This leads us to the question: what exactly is honor?  It seems to depend on the time, place, and circumstances.  Let me set the mood:

Whitney and Charles acknowledged each other with nods; Whitney’s was a nod of dismissal, Orry thought.  Up close, eruptions on Whitney’s skin were quite noticeable.  Charles, five years younger, looked far more mature and poised.  Whitney’s hand trembled as he brought his gun in front of his face.  A good sign—unless Whitney was one of those rare duelists whose aim was actually improved by a bad case of nerves.

Dawkins cleared his throat and addressed the opponents standing back to back wih pistols raised.  “I shall first pronounce the word begin  This is your signal to start pacing off the distance in time to my count.  When you have completed the tenth and final pace, you are at liberty to turn and fire at will.  Ready?  Begin.”

...

“Ten.”

Whitney’s knees buckled, but he stayed upright and managed to pivot.  He flung his pistol out in front of him with all the violence Orry had criticized in Charles that first time in the field.  The roar startled Charles.  He blinked so hard Orry thought he was hit.  Then, from a tree about four feet behind Charles, a branch came tumbling down.

A damp stain appeared on the front of Whitney’s trousers.  he executed a clumsy half turn and started to take a step.  There were gasps from the spectators and an angry, hissing whisper from Dawkins.

“You must stand, Whitney.  Stand!”

He did, but not without a struggle.  The humiliating stain widened.  He shook so badly the pistol bobbed up and down.  Charles slowly extended his arm, took aim, and, with a cool look down the octagonal barrel, fired.

Whitney shrieked like a girl.  He twisted to the left and fell, clutching his sleeve.  Red showed between his fingers, but Charles had only pinked him.  What’s more, he had hit the spot at which he had aimed.  Orry ran forward, jubilant.

Whitney passed out with Dawkins kneeling at his side.  The spectators broke into wild applause.  Drained of tension, Charles was wandering toward the riverbank in an erratic way.  Orry caught him.

“You’ve got to acknowledge that applause.  It’s for you.”

The young man stared at Orry, thunderstruck.  Then he looked at the Smith relatives.  It was true.  They were applauding his marksmanship, his courage, and his generosity in wounding Whitney when he could have killed him.  All the characteristics of a true Carolina gentleman, Orry thought, almost dizzy with happiness.

...

(Charles asked Orry,) “Whenever I got into a fight before, people disapproved.  You included.  Why was it different this morning?  We were doing a hell of a lot more than punching each other.  Why didn’‘t anyone object?”

...

“I think I can answer you best back at Mont Royal.”

...

Only then did Orry draw his cousin into the dim library and point to the clothes-stand bearing his uniform, coat, and sword.

“There’s your answer.”

Charles looked baffled.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Consider men who go to war.  What do they do?”

“Fight.”

“Yes, but more than that, they do so in a manner understood and agreed upon beforehand.  Fierce as it may be, there is a code of conduct among honorable men who fight.  Those Smiths applauded you not simply because you won but because you observed the rules.  Whitney didn’t.  He tried to step away from your bullet.  You saw the reaction.  Before this, you never fought by the rules.  That’s the difference.”

Orry lifted the left sleeve of the coat.  “The world doesn’t necessarily condemn the man who loves a battle.  It encourages and rewards some of them.  Even a gallant loser may get a share of the glory whn the history books are written.  I’m not sure it’s altogether right to encourage and reward fighting and killing, but that’s the way things are.  Have I answered you?”

Charles nodded slowly, gazing at the scabbard, the brass buttons, the dark blue coat as if they were imbued with a religious significance.  What Orry had just said came as a revelation.

—North and South by John Jakes, Chapter 21

I don’t want to be too quick to praise the values of 1850’s South Carolina.  Yes, the upper-class practiced all of these noble traditions, but keep in mind that the South was—and still is—very violent; where the upper-class pretty much shit on everyone else and there was that whole brutal slavery thing.  Nevertheless, there was honor.  There was this notion that a man, a gentleman, was a part of society with its history, obligations, and rules that were bigger than himself.  If his honor were insulted, honor demanded that he put his life on the line or he would be degraded by that society.  The gentleman’s feelings didn’t matter.  The mindset of “all about me” wasn’t the way of life as it is now and has been for most of our lives.

We see a concept of honor in many places and at different times in civilization.  Hell, the Southerners got all of their ideas from reading Ivanhoe.  Still, you could see some ideal form of honor in the Japanese samurai, the Moors, the Vikings, and any other number of countries all over the world where men did these seemingly insane things in order to impress women and in so doing, showed a commitment to their respective societies while putting their own wants second.

This doesn’t just apply to warrior cultures, but to everyone who had deep-rooted customs that emphasized protection of those too weak to defend themselves, hospitality to strangers, and keeping one’s word.  Consider all of the men, many of them very rich, who went to the bottom of the Atlantic on the Titanic so that another woman would have a spot on a lifeboat.  Would it go that way now?  Keep in mind that those men knew that many in their society would be suspicious of them for surviving when so many died if they came back.  Do our men have to worry about that now?  Probably not.

So I have to ask:

1. Does modern Western society still believe in honor or have we abandoned the notion in order to place the individual’s wants first (me first)?

2. If honor still exists in our society, where is it still emphasized and is it good or bad?

3.  If it doesn’t exist, do you miss it or would you prefer that today’s little punks learn the meaning of honor?

4. Do you consider yourself to be honorable?  What the hell does that mean?

5. Does a culture based on personal honor just really always need an elite group and a downtrodden underclass to function? 

6. Would you favor that, assuming you got to be in the upper class, with both its privileges and obligations which may involve enormous sacrifices on your part for reasons that seem dumb?

7. We come back to reasons to die, as seen on another Discourses post.  Does your code of honor involve anything that you know you would have to lay down your life for?  I don’t mean hard-wired natural survival stuff like saving your kid, but Titanic-type stuff like giving your seat on a lifeboat to a woman you don’t know, perfectly aware that you are going to drown?

8. To a great degree, wouldn’t scorn from peers and the community be more effective for dealing with people who commit dishonor or violate other norms than stupid laws?  Can we tolerate that in this time of moral equivalency?

Discourses rules apply.  No right or wrong answers and you don’t have to answer any or all of the above questions as long as you jump into the conversation on topic.