Honour

>hm, it never occurred to me to describe cultures this way, but it makes perfect sense... tell me more.
It's an outdated and highly imprecise way to categorize cultures, invented by, if I'm not mistaken, Ruth Benedict in her Patterns of Culture (or Chrysantenium and Sword) around the WW2. It was basically to try and explain the difference between Japan and America, and in a nutshell it's basically saying that some cultures use individualistic models of motivation (guilt), while others, mostly Asian, use peer-pressure (shame). It's been a long time since I studied this, but I think her explanation is that in Western (guilt) ridden cultures, we were historically told that we ultimately answer to only two real authorities: ourselves, and God. Those are the (more-or-less) ones we will answer for our shortcomings. Hence we feel guilty for things we do wrong.

In Christian cultures, especially in Asian and especially especially Japan, however, people are constantly taught to believe they are primarily answering to their family and their social circle. If you do something wrong, it's somebody else - other people - who will judge you. Hence shame.

It's not a bad theory, it's just painfully schematic and shallow. Benedict was quite obsessed with finding "universal" patterns to various cultures, often making them painfully naive and way too infused with Nietzscheanism (look up the Dionysian vs. Apollonian cultures sometimes). It's fun if you don't take it too seriously.

(cont. in a second).

>Dodging is dishourable, you gotta take all blows.
>That's bullshit. Dodging is part of melee fighting as much as parrying.
but you still hear that one often enough

there is fantasy series about a guy was a superb fighter, but didn't really look like it. all wiry muscles like iron and perfect reflexes.

he one had to fight a much bigger and visibly muscled opponent in a trial by combat. the one to be knocked out of the circle would lose (to avoid unnecessary killing)
the good guy tripped the big one and sent him flying.
judges declared that cheating. and demanded a second fight.
good guy dodged a few wild swings and punched the big one so hard the big guy stumbled and crashed outside the circle.
nope, still cheating, 'cos he didn't take the blows.
turned funny when good guy obliged, forcing the big one to break his own arm upon good one's iron-hard muscles and then beating the tar out of him.

huh, i thought Christianity was guilt-driven one, that with being afraid of God all the time and stuff

Pretty much, honestly. There's a touch more to it than that.

I would break it down like this

Honour chivalry what have you kind of has the same idea as karma.

Basically "I'm not going to do this thing, because it would be shitty if that thing happened to me."

You don't stab someone in the back because you recognise how awful it would be to be walking down the road feeling fine and suddenly oh fuck my back hurts what's happening no wait

The same reason you don't cut someone down who's clearly unable to defend themselves- because you know how awful it feels to be helpless and you don't wish that upon someone else.

It's just an extension of empathy, which is a social trait. Some people have more or less than others.

I feel that ranged combat is only dishonourable if your opponent has no ranged weapon. Otherwise it´s fine and dandy

hm, I once heard an interesting theory about the Dishonored vidya.

a guy claimed it showed an interesting contrast between two honor models.

Corvo, being from southern islands and seeing honor in same light many southern and eastern cultures do, was restoring his honor by assassinating the wrongdoers. Honour is in revenge, no matter by what means.

In eyes of the others, he was actually dishonoring himself (further) in the process, as the capital city is an expy of London and people there follow north-western cultures. For them honor is in standing up boldly and openly, and revenge must be conquered in a duel or not at all.

As for Honor, that is actually pretty damn simple to explain. People here say that it's "relative", which is like when Socratese asked what is "righteousness" and people told me it could be thousand different things...

Honor is actually social credit that one builds by being reliable and predicatable. It's an INCREDIBLY important social resource in more traditional societies. Actually, historically speaking, it was almost universally more important than money, wealth, even life of an individual. Lost of honor - infamy - was often the worst punishement imaginable. This wasn't true only for japan and their famous honor-suicides: this worked for European societies just as much. And in Middle east, honor-murders are still one of the biggest problems clashing with more modern legal systems.

Honor means you and the group you represented could can be expected to behave in a way that is generally accepted as morally just. Now every culture will have a different idea of what is morally just: in Japan again, for an example, it's ENDLESS LOYALTY to your Lord above all.
In Middle East, it's honoring inter-familiar agreements (most importantly marriage agreements).
And so on.

By proving that and your social unit can be trusted to behave in accordance to the existing moral codes, you build "honor", that is degree of social credit allowing your to be regarded as upstanding member of the society.
And if you fuck up, you throw yourself, and often your entire social group, into question. You are no longer reliable. You can't be trusted. And that is a social suicide.

And that is why honor mattered and why it's such a big deal.
That is really all there is to it. Everything else is defined by the specific rules of conduct within the specific society and circles.

Sorry, that should have been "NON-Christian societies, such as Japan..." Yeah, west is the guilt-driven, East-Asia is the Shame driven.
But again, it's cute but all kinda bullshit.

Yeah what I said ignores the empathy and morality part. Probably would have gone over the text limit otherwise, but that is a big part of it.

Like no one wants chemical weapons to be used in warfare mostly because they are extremely horrific. Their effectiveness is not as important as that.

Though if a group of people had their back to the wall and it was the most effective option they might resort to using it anyway out of desperation. That tends to loosen morals.

they are not just horrific, they also have a good chance of turning against you. wind changes direction - you are screwed.

More then one kind, actually.
Lots of different societies have different definitions of it, though from a practical standpoint they often fluctuated in their cultural definitions of what was honourable behavior, often proclaiming whoever won as an honourable sort.

That's another good reason to not use them, but even in cases where that cannot happen most people will refuse to use them anyway.

I always figured the situation with chemical weapons was essentially the same we have with nuclear ones now.

>If you use chemical weapons on us, we'll use them on you.
Having enemy vomit their own lungs out is nice, having your own soldiers do the same - not so much.

Well, a lot of what you are talking about is confusing honor with chivalry, which aren't actually the same thing.
Quite different in many cases.

>Though if a group of people had their back to the wall and it was the most effective option they might resort to using it anyway out of desperation. That tends to loosen morals.

It's interesting that, even in the final days of WW2, Nazi Germany still refrained from deploying chemical weapons. And they had some fucking nasty shit they could have used too - stuff way worse than the mixtures employed in WW1. But even in the desperate grind of the Eastern Front, even when the enemy was on their doorstep, even when the dream of the Reich seemed poised to collapse, they refused to cross that line.

Very interesting.

interesting, both concepts translate with the same word in my language. said word shared root with adjective for "fair" (as in "fair fight")

probably because of
even when you're losing you don't want to give enemy carte blanche to gas your own civilians

That's pretty much what the Geneva Convention is. Some things are so horrible despite their effectiveness that using them is worse than not using them, so we agree to not do them to other people who agree to not do them to us.

No sane person wants to launch a nuke anywhere, because the loss of innocent life and long term damage would be catastrophic. And, no sane person wants to launch a nuke anywhere also because then you lose the right to not be nuked.

>interesting, both concepts translate with the same word in my language. said word shared root with adjective for "fair" (as in "fair fight")

Chivalry isn't so much about behavior as it is about medieval combat etiquette, especially during warfare and such.
Like, everyone knew that Knights and cavalry were expensive as fuck to train, so capturing and ransoming them was seen as chivalrous because you loose money but get the soldier back, and then you do the same for the other guy. Then there's stuff about not killing peasants and non-combatants if you can help it because the entire point of waging war is about capturing land and good territory, which kind of needs peasants and folks working on it to actually produce anything of value.
A lot of it was basically just "don't fuck things up in war and shit the bed for everyone involved" dressed up in pretty words and romanticized by authors centuries later.

As warfare started to really change over time in the 14th century a lot of the chivalry shit broke down because a lot of the reasons for it stopped mattering nearly as much as professional hired began to increasingly make up the backbones of hired troops, often who only got really paid through looting and raiding.
By the 30 Years War chivalry just didn't matter anymore and sort of gradually became associated with honorable conduct in general as a way of romanticizing the past.

>No sane person wants to launch a nuke anywhere
weeeell, let's not be so hasty

>So what IS honour?

Honor is tightly coupled to your reputation and social status. This how you can "honor" (verb) someone by praising them publicly, or give someone "honors" (noun) in the form of titles, awards, or other public signs of respect and esteem. Being honorable is thus doing things which are praiseworthy. This is why attacking a weaker opponent is not honorable (easy victories are not impressive) but giving an opponent a fighting chance is honorable; winning a fair (or fairer) fight is impressive.

Confusion comes from the fact that every culture has it's own sense of morality and therefore it's own sense of what's praiseworthy behavior and what behavior requires condemnation. This is why keeping your word is a matter of honor in some societies but not in others. Deception is dishonorable is some cultures which place a high moral value on truthfulness, but is honorable in cultures which value cunning more than integrity.

You are a mediocre fighter.
You attack a skilled monk (like a D&D monk: punch stone walls through, swing dozen times per second, kick gnomes into orbit, etc.).
Monk is unarmed, being a monk.

It is dishonorable to attack an unarmed opponent.
Is it dishonorable to attack the monk?

>Is it dishonorable to attack the monk?
Of course it is. Anyone who opts to play or become a D&D monk is either a total noob or a bit touched in the head. The honorable thing would be to inform him that it's not too late and he can always multiclass into Sacred Fist or Enlightened Fist.

Martial honour codes have a secondary purpose, too. They're great for preventing a lot of the destructive excess of war-- not killing non-combatants, all that stuff-- but that's at a societal level.

A the personal level, adherence to an honour code is a way to avoid survivor's guilt, personal dehumanization, and the other negative mental consequence of being a professional killer. You killed people, but you never killed innocents (whatever your code specifies that to mean), and the people you did kill knew the rules going into the fight. You did everything honour demanded you do to prevent things from getting out of hand, so when they did get out of hand, you know it wasn't your fault and there was nothing more you could have done.

It's like a suit of armour for the psyche.

What series is it?