• Urist
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    1 year ago

    In modern context, sure. In a wider anthropological historic context, no. My understanding of honor as a social concept, though I do not have proper academic sources to back this, is that it works in lieu of a central force of government enforcing laws and common rule. I.e. non centralized governance such as that of say the Norse people of old, had very strong etiquette of honor, the lack of which implied social status that would be worse to the one living than them dying. That meant weird things like a story of a man who robbed a house, realized they were doing something dishonorable (read illegal), went back and challenged the man who owned the house, killed them in combat and then stole their stuff. Just like laws it imposes rules on people, in this weird case murder in combat is better than theft, but still a rule. I would argue this notion of honor has existed across different societies for a long time, due to general absence of centralized governance, and has in modern times, relatively speaking on an anthropological timeline, been adopted and exploited by centralized powers to further control the populace, in the very real way you talk about.