In the days seemingly passed for our culture, honor was tied to your gender. Honorable men were strong, honest, forthright, et cetera, while honorable women were chaste both in regards to their virginity and interpersonal courtesy. I find that the explicit usage of these concepts has been killed off over the past century by a trident.
- We've grown far more commercial and plutocratic. No one cares how honorable you are if you have money or goods they desire. The common thought assumes the viced are in prison.
- We hate having to answer for the consequences of our actions, especially the bad ones.
- The feminists did it. Feminists threw out both main tiers of female honor by being promiscuous loudmouths. Granted, neither has proven very successful.
The word was killed, but not the concept.
The practices of honor are still strong today, for women especially. Women who are direct and commanding are shunned and called 'bitches' (I've had plenty of managers this way) so women usually give commands through asking. I've always found the practice annoying, but it appears more tolerable to...other women. In another aspect, women who are promiscuous, augment their appearance in revealing ways, or mutilate themselves with cosmetic surgeries are known as 'sluts and whores.' There even seems to be an equivalence between these two terms when the previous was once a title more honorable than the latter. The dishonorable women become tools of others and rarely gain high respect and love. The consequence is similar for dishonorable men.
Those who do not distinguish themselves as direct and honest fail to get promotions and advancement into leadership positions at the same rate of those that do. Those who are confident and outspoken to the point of arrogance are hated primarily by those they defeat are insulted as a long list of words from jerks to asses. If they're admirably useful but without the trappings of honor, they are advanced to ever more useful, servile positions. It's this type of nigh-dehumanization I find worse punishment than social demotions, albeit easier to ignore in an environment that ignores the words. Indeed I do think the lack of explicit honor (dis)possession is starting to impact the practices that will eventually spin the institution apart.
If we're not specifically teaching children, they're only going to pick up practices through unknowing eyes. Honor will be greatly diminished for them and even more so for their grandchildren until the institution spins itself out. I've got two predictions as to where this leads, both assume cyclical history:
- THE END OF THE EMPIRE! My first thought was that we'll get more and more honorless until the vehicles of our civilization fail. One is the economy: without competitive men innovating and driving the material side forward, we'll lose wealth and influence until we lose power and sputter out. The second is motherhood and its derivative: community. If women stop 'preferring the mommy track' and instead go for economics in any broad way, we're done.
- THE END OF AN ERA! When I thought about it more, I figured this'll result in the coming of another 'republican motherhood'-style reorganization of honor and practice. This assumes a cyclical and similar tides of honor systems. Simply put, the first followed the formation of the country and awkwardly resulted in abolitionism and radical Republicanism. The second started at the end of the 19th century and resulted in women voting, centralization to the state, and Prohibition. The third started in the 60's and resulted, again awkwardly, in the end of the Soviet Union. Each of these seemed to upset the workings of society but in the end amounted to vehicles for policy changes that were coming anyway.
Check back tomorrow for the conclusion of this post.
