tronvillain

Your friends and family are dishonourable and without integrity? I would like to know exactly that criteria you are using to judge people.

snatchbalance

Laurentius,

My thoughts on the subject are running something like this:

1. It seems to me that such traits as honor and integrity have traditionaly been considered to be masculine traits. Not that women are any more or less capable of honorable actions than men, IMO.

2. I think this tendency arises from our prehistory. Groups of hunter gatheror males depended on each other for thier lives on a regular basis. Certain actions within this contex came to be called "honorable".

3. I don't think people, as a whole, are any more or less "honorable" than they were in the past. As there is much less need for honorable actions on a day to day basis, talk of honor is certainly less fashonable at this time.

4. Men, in combat, and other similar situations, know honor when they see it. It is something that can be pointed at, but often defies description.

SB

abe smith

umm. "Honor", as one of those unreal manmade concepts, is about what *Other People* think, innit? ... I was about to observe that caring what *Other People* think is a pretty-petty criterion for deciding how [personally] to choose to behave [as a human being]. But, ummm....I guess I admit / KNOW, that "the soul [sic] selects her [sic] own society"; and that in fact, altho I used to deny that I gave a shit about what *Other People* think, probably nowadays I'm willing to admit the existence of my [interior] "Board", made-up of a dozen or so individuals {as the Army refers to people} whom I have chosen as role-models and arbiters/judges; [Most of them indeed are dead; and perhaps, as I never knew most of those personally, they may be private fictions of my own.] and to whom, [the "Board"] I refer & consult, even not-too-consciously, about matters that matter to me.... Anyone else here at INFIDELS have a similar interiorized um, values-setting group/Board? Abe

Laurentius

AVE

Thanks everyone for expressing your opinions.



I use the same criteria I employ to judge myself.

I wouldn't discuss my family and friends, but the people I come across in general, and I can assert that they generally indulge in inconsistentcies that I don't find honorable. This may sound a bit too harsh. However, I'm sure that you yourself can find innumerable such examples around you too, so many that you've probably got used to them to such an extent that you may have overlooked them, thinking them just the normal state of affairs.

AVE

snatchbalance

laurentius,

Maybe you could provide an example or two? I'd like to get a better idea of what you're talking about.

SB

Jamie_L

I'd like to echo the sentiment that I don't think people have changed all that much over the past few thousand years.

Now we just live closer together with more different kinds of people, in more ordered societies, with more information and (often distorted) media coverage.

We may have an impression that we're more or less honorable/moral/ethical/whatever, but I think we're basically about the same as we always were.

Jamie

emphryio

I agree with Tronvillain that in larger communities people don't see the need for honor. Also possibly it was easier to get away with crime in the middle ages? Maybe not. But if so, it would mean more to have honor back then.

Also Laurentuis, you live in a big city don't you? You may be more likely to see these people without much "honor". A splendid reason to not live in a big city.

Actually I would argue that an "intellectual" is more likely to be happy in a rural area. They can stimulate their own mind without as much need for all the products available in a big city. Also they wouldn't need be distracted by all the "men without honor" they would encounter in a "big" city.

On the other hand, many intelligent persons are forced to live in a big city in order to find a job in whatever high tech industry they are in. This is a problem I face.

emphryio

To Abe Smith,

Your question is an interesting one, but to answer it here would divert from the subject of this thread I think.

MadMordigan

Keep in mind that social information pre-industrial revolution is notoriously elitist. Concepts such as honour and the proper social mores were only written by and for the privilidged classes.

Today we have legions of people who's job it is to report and chronical petty crime. Its pretty much impossible to compare the daily life of our modern cities with the idealized images suggested by a lack of information from earlier societies.

Add to this that many of the formalized 'codes of honour' from antiquity were designed and applied solely to the military castes. When you are dealing with a group of people armed to the teeth and trained/habitualized to respond to violent situations, a codified and structured system of mores is much more important than for a bunch of dairy farmers and fish mongers.

This is not to say that all of the concepts typically understood as 'honourable' are anachronistic. As described above, integrity and courtesy are very useful character traits to cultivate. But the idea that civilians should buy into a 100 to 2500 year old set of ethics, lock stock and barrel, is simply not reasonable.

echidna

Laurentius, I was struggling with a reply to you, but then a comical conflict at work yesterday reminded me of Kipling.

His final line is a little dated today, but the wisdom is timeless.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling