Honor Is Dead

Off Topic
21

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Veratyr wrote:
Honor is Dead

…

Honor is not dead. Honor is an individual thing. The world has always been filled with dishonorable men.

It is funny that you use Robert E. Lee as an example when he was a traitor that fought to protect the institution of slavery. I fail to see the honor in these actions.

The reason moder society seems so messed up is that there are so many of us and we have information overload. Every injustice is blared on the news 24 hours a day and discussed on the internet.

Lee was honorable in the same way that the 9/11 hijackers were brave.

They may have been after a sleazy goal, but it took nuts to hijack a plain and intentionally crash it.

Lee was honorably gaurding his beliefs regarding slavery, gov’t design and his home even if his beliefs about slavery are generally recognized as sleazy today.

I believe Lee took an oath to defend the Constitution of the US. He was a traitor. And I still rank him as a far better human being than the 9/11 evil hijackers.

[/quote]
I would agree he was a better human than the hijackers, but the guy did take an oath to a country that wound up changing greatly in many ways, including slavery and an increasingly stronger growing federal gov’t.

The US today is not the US it was 60 years ago for better or worse and with that in mind, Lee’s oath could be considered void considering that the country he broke away from was only the same in name to the one he swore to protect.

You can cut down a tree to build a table and even call the table a tree if you want too but the tree it was made from is definately not the same object it was.

Not that they would, but should laws change to make caucasion males second class citizens or to make the US a part of an american union resembling the EU, I would have no problem pissing on a flag I currently love.

Again, I’m not defending Lee’s beliefs on slavery but only playing devils advocate.

22

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:

It is one thing to fly off the handle for every little nuance, but there are definately times when a quick punch to the jaw is called for. [/quote]

Tell me about it. I’m going through monitors like you would not believe.

23

[quote]Veratyr wrote:
Excellent posts Aragorn, from one Scotch/Nordic mongrel to another. When I find the time I will reply, though I believe our points of contention are mostly semantics.

KombatAthelete said:

“It belongs in the junk pile of history along with philosophers attempting to prove ideas by invoking a primordial state of existence to demonstrate concepts they apply to modern society.”

I’m not sure what to make of this. Are you suggesting that human beings are infinitly malleable by the society in which they currently live? Do you then believe, like Chairman Mao, that there is no such thing as human nature?

As for the experiment, it is not illegal to deceive subjects, at least not in the field of psychology (I do know that experimental economists are not allowed to deceive their test subjects - that may be the source of your confusion). Take a look for yourself:

(warning - pdf file)

[/quote]

I do not know if I definitely believe or do not believe in a human nature. One thing I think I do know for sure is that it can’t be conveniently packaged as “good” or “bad”, if it does in fact exist.

What I meant by that statement is that the state of primordial man is nothing to be nostalgic for. We lived as hunter-gatherers or slash-and-burn agriculturalists in small tribes and had about half the life expectancy we do now. Complex civilizations arose around river valleys, according to one theory, to effectively deal with their environment and the challenges it presented as they struggled to survive. Life was simpler, shorter, and decided by violence.

If life then is considered honorable today, it is by happenstance, not intention. I don’t see any honor in that in the same way that I don’t see the honor of violent assault in response to verbal battery. If that is the definition of honor, it is still alive on playgrounds across the country and street gangs epitomize it.

I thought that Informed Consent procedures required the subject to be informed of the purposes and nature of the experiment. I guess not. From reading the research paper, it seems they use the word “honor” where the word “face” might be more specific to what they described.

Perhaps we can agree to disagree.

24

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:

Defending your reputation, even if physically, is honorable to many. You control your own actions even if they are the result of anothers words. Ignoring a comment is also an action brought on by another. Using your logic, you are controlled either way.
[/quote]

You aren’t controlled if they have no impact on what you do.

25

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
I agree with fireplug. Dueling only ever existed in the upper classes, or the top 5% of any society, and even then I am sure that the most common response to an insult would be another insult, or perhaps a punch in the face.

Having your temper and actions controlled by the words of another is not honor but weakness.

If you prescribe to far east thoughts on honor I suppose.

Defending your reputation, even if physically, is honorable to many. You control your own actions even if they are the result of anothers words. Ignoring a comment is also an action brought on by another. Using your logic, you are controlled either way.

It is one thing to fly off the handle for every little nuance, but there are definately times when a quick punch to the jaw is called for. [/quote]

Yes, there are definately times when a punch in the jaw is called for. But you’re talking about respect. There are also times to turn the other cheek, or laugh in someone’s face. That’s hardly the same thing as ignoring it.

But I believe the OP was fondly reminising about the “good old days” when an assault on honor could only be answered with violence, murder or suicide. Such extreme measures may have been necessary for the ruling class, but for the other 99% of humanity such behaivior would be ridiculous and stupid, even unmanly. For example, 300 years ago, if a small independant farmer got himself killed or crippled because some drunk insinuated that his wife wasn’t a virgin when they married, his family would starve. I wouldn’t call the farmer, who put his injured pride before the well being of his family much of a man.

On the other hand, the death of the patriarch would be no great set-back for the nobleman’s family, because they would still have their wealth, their land and the peasants to work it. In fact, it would be far better for the family for the patriarch to die rather than have the family lose their status and possibly their lands and titles.

As to why it’s become nearly impossible to give the occaisional much needed punch in the face, I think Aragorn blamed the hippies, and litigiousness of American society. In my opinion, things would have ended up pretty much as they are now even without hippies and Vietnam. Authority always seeks to eliminate self-reliance, and create feelings of dependency and helplessness. It’s the nature of the beast. Those feelings of helplessness push people to the lawyers, because everyone is a victim, and most don’t even think about taking care of business themselves or just “letting it go.”

26

Some of you believe that I’m idealizing the past like a Romantic poet yearning for a more rustic England. I can only direct your attention to the concluding paragraph, where I explicitly state that I believe the suppression of honor is necessary, and that I have no desire to live within an honor culture.

However, I do believe honor’s absence has left void within us that is sometimes filled with something less than desirable.

Aragorn believes honor mutated over time into standing up for what is right, which I think is a good replacement, and then disappeared with the revival relativism (the Greeks were the first to be inundated with this wave of bullshit; it’s from where the word “sophistry” is derived).

As a superhumanist, it pains me to say that I think he’s right, although I think it’s unfair to accuse all opponents of the Vietnam War of relativism. The relativists, from Franz Boas of the Frankfurt school since, have sacrificed everything upon the altar of tolerance and equality, including the intellect.

Relativism has absorbed some of our most ardent, which has been a great waste to say the very least.

27

[quote]KombatAthlete wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:

Defending your reputation, even if physically, is honorable to many. You control your own actions even if they are the result of anothers words. Ignoring a comment is also an action brought on by another. Using your logic, you are controlled either way.

You aren’t controlled if they have no impact on what you do.
[/quote]

Right but every situation calls for a reaction in one way or another. Whether your reaction is to lash out or ignore, you have technically been controlled by the same reasoning.

28

[quote]Veratyr wrote:
Some of you believe that I’m idealizing the past like a Romantic poet yearning for a more rustic England. I can only direct your attention to the concluding paragraph, where I explicitly state that I believe the suppression of honor is necessary, and that I have no desire to live within an honor culture. However, I do believe honor’s absence has left void within us that is sometimes filled with something less than desirable.

Aragorn believes honor mutated over time into standing up for what is right, which I think is a good replacement, and then disappeared with the revival relativism (the Greeks were the first to be inundated with this wave of bullshit; it’s from where we get the word “sophistry”).

As a superhumanist, it pains me to say that I think he’s right, although I think it’s unfair to accuse all opponents of the Vietnam War of relativism. The relativists, from Franz Boas of the Frankfurt school since, have sacrificed everything upon the altar of tolerance and equality, including the intellect. Relativism has absorbed some of our most ardent, which has been a great waste to say the very least.[/quote]

Why is relativism bullshit?

29

[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:

As to why it’s become nearly impossible to give the occaisional much needed punch in the face, I think Aragorn blamed the hippies, and litigiousness of American society. In my opinion, things would have ended up pretty much as they are now even without hippies and Vietnam. Authority always seeks to eliminate self-reliance, and create feelings of dependency and helplessness. It’s the nature of the beast. [/quote]

Well, I partially agree with you in regards to authority, but I think that public policy, litigiousnessm, and authority are both in some sense dependent on the ideas that go before them in the culture at large.

The people who grew up in the hippie and anti-war countercultures spent the 70s growing up and getting themselves into politics, and they carried their ideologies and philosophies with them. This had, and is having, a profound effect on the nation as I mentioned. This is particularly apparent in academia, where one can reside as long as one wishes and propound ideas and philosophy.

In essence, you may be correct that things would end up as they are now. However, I believe that the elements I mentioned previously grossly accelerated the process and that without them the evolution would have been much slower–perhaps even completely different than we ended up.

[quote] Veratyr wrote:

Aragorn believes honor mutated over time into standing up for what is right, which I think is a good replacement, and then disappeared with the revival relativism (the Greeks were the first to be inundated with this wave of bullshit; it’s from where the word “sophistry” is derived).

As a superhumanist, it pains me to say that I think he’s right, although I think it’s unfair to accuse all opponents of the Vietnam War of relativism. The relativists, from Franz Boas of the Frankfurt school since, have sacrificed everything upon the altar of tolerance and equality, including the intellect. [/quote]

I believe actually that while the outward expressions of honor changed according to society and nationality, the goal of standing up for what is right has always been the ideal that it strives for.

I think honor’s outward expression was mostly right during the Greatest Generation’s dominance, civil rights aside (I have absolutely no wish to get into that), because we had a proper respect for human life (no dueling), but also a proper regard for doing what needed to be done.

I’m nitpicking, I know I know. You were essentially right about what I believed anyway :).

Just for the record, I would never think of accusing all the war protestors of relativism. It was by no means universal in the counterculture, and some of the more erudite protestors raised some interesting points on the war itself. That is an unguarded and invalid generalization.

I was only attempting to say that these ideas were widely held and popularized by the hippie/anti-war counterculture, and carried into power later when that generation established itself in academia and government.

[quote]
Relativism has absorbed some of our most ardent, which has been a great waste to say the very least.[/quote]

Yes, absolutely. I’m not a humanist, but you’re absolutely right, it was a great waste.