The Book:
Why Honor Matters
By Tamler Sommers
Basic Books
2018
The Talk:
In his 2018 book Why Honor Matters philosopher (and podcaster)
argues in defense of honor.Honor cultures are pervasive throughout history and even across today’s global population. What defines an honor culture is a commitment to group identity. Shame on one person is shame for the whole group. Members within a group must act to save face. If someone does not fight back or defend their honor, it’s a sign of weakness that could invite further aggression. Acts of violence, from hazing to brawls to revenge to feuds, function as internal and external policing actions, so to speak. What are acceptable/unacceptable actions and responses are decided by the group.
Honor cultures persist, Sommers says, because they provide many benefits to the people inside them: In dangerous situations or in times of scarce resources, honor codes form group protection. They help coordinate action and distribute resources. They also give people a sense of purpose and identity.
It is only in modern Western societies that honor cultures are seen as backward, irrational, even pathological. Duels to defend one’s honor seem silly to modern eyes. Shame, in a society in which we live with a lot of autonomy, seems like a kind of cognitive error—something a therapist can help extract out of our poor programming. You’re beating yourself up over the opinions of people that don’t even exist! In the modern world honor and shame simply make no sense.
Can honor be good?
While agreeing with some of these criticisms, Sommers says that by dismissing honor we are actually missing a powerful motivator for moral action. This I think was the strongest part of Sommers argument. My first reaction to the book was defensive. How could we possibly have too little honor culture in the US?
The proliferation of personal firearms and stand your ground laws
The ubiquity of team sports fandoms
The US military as the country’s largest employer
The endless parade of institutional sex scandals, covered up for decades by a “good old boys” code of loyalty, protecting buddies, and keeping the law out of it (a marker of honor cultures, according to Sommers)
Add to that, gang violence, misogyny, domestic abuse, all motivated by “wounded” male honor, etc.
We really have too little of this? Really?
But Sommers brings up several examples where honor has motivated people in other directions, too. He recounts the turning point in the life of Fredrick Douglass when he decided to fight back against his master. Douglass fights against “my cowardly tormentor” for two hours(!), eventually besting him. Sommers writes:
Douglass regarded his act of violent resistance as a watershed moment: “It rekindled in my breast the smoldering embers of liberty…and revived a sense of my own manhood.”
An appeal to honor was a part of the call to activism from W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was also motivation for women activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
Sommers doesn’t mention this in the book, but his description of honor cultures made me think of labor unions. Unions and strikes have many of the characteristics of honor codes, like when workers who break the line are called out as “scabs.” Although strikes aren’t violent today, they used to be.
It also made me think of pride parades. Pride festivals originated out of the 1969 Stonewall riots, when gay men in New York City fought back against the police. Much like the moment in the life of Frederick Douglass, it was a catalyst for action. Pride festivals aren’t violent, but because of the history of violence against queer people, they do function as a response to violence. They also contain many of the characteristics of honor culture, such as the wearing of group colors, performances of swagger and bravado, a spirit of solidarity and in-group egalitarianism, and public declarations of commitment to the group.
This seems to raise the question if using honor to defeat shame leads to a society where shame matters more rather than less, or at least persists. Much of the appeal of Trump has been that some Americans felt shamed and bristled at that feeling. He serves as a symbol for people who felt like they needed to restore their honor. Liberals mock those who seem motivated by a need to “own the libs” and those who stay loyal to Trump despite logical inconsistencies and direct harm to their own interests. Surely the dynamics of honor explain a lot that doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Is honor a man thing?
The conventional opinion is that honor cultures are about male aggression. And insofar as they involve women, women are victims of honor-based societies. This is the modern point of view. Sommers brings up the anthropological case, however, that in many societies wives often shame their husbands into acting honorably. Women often function as the rememberers of offenses and men are often seen as not sufficiently motivated by honor to take revenge.
Both women and men are capable of feeling pride and shame, as well as taking offense at insults, seeking revenge, or protecting their people. Both care a lot about their reputation.
Women in the military, government, sports, and business appear as likely as men to be aggressive, seek status, trash talk, self-sacrifice, or be loyal to their team. Women talk with each other a lot about shame—how they internalize it, how it shapes their thinking and behavior, and how to overcome it.
This seems to be simply a way of saying that modern women care a lot about honor—what it feels like, where to find it, how to get more of it. And this caring about honor is a motivator behind demands for justice at the individual and societal level.
Making honor work
Sommer’s argument is a modest one, and for this reason, he won me over. Honor and shame are with us. To ignore honor and shame is to have a major blind spot when it comes to understanding human behavior, even in a modern industrialized society where people spend a lot of their time alone. Furthermore, it may provide some helpful tools in the tool box for reforming and improving society.
That said, honor surely must be growing weaker. Honor cultures and honor codes function best in small, localized communities. Those are becoming more infrequent as the years go by. Sommer thinks that honor could help repair these weakening bonds, though I wonder if the causation can really go that way. Honor probably emerges from community. I’m not sure community emerges from honor.
Of course, there are small communities—online. Honor and shame are clearly part of what makes social media run. What is interesting, however, is the way the internet allows people to cash in shame and turn it into honor. Being shamed by one group can give you a “badge of honor" in another.
People are also redefining honor in new ways, using terms like self-esteem, self-care, self-confidence—which are perhaps just ways of saying “honor” in a world where people are, more often than not, a brotherhood or sisterhood of one.
All that said, by the end of Sommer’s book I was optimistic. My takeaways are:
Honor is a partly internal, partly external way of policing group commitment. The question is “Are you going to do the right thing under external pressure?” Are you going to play harder when the opponent is in the lead? Are you going to shoot your gun under fire? Are you going to stay faithful around other potential lovers? We internalize these things, but they are also highly dependent on our social environment. It’s not a universal metaphysical thing or a moral absolute. Honor is about social trust.
Honor cultures are easily created, easily dissolved. Honor codes are surprisingly easy to construct out of essentially nothing. Under easily repeatable “hothouse” conditions—being on a sports team, living in a fraternity, or serving in the military—these bonds can form. They even form naturally by living in a family or living in a city. But these honor cultures (because they are so externally dependent) are also easily dissolved. Sommers describes the identity crisis that soldiers and athletes go through when they retire. When the group is no longer around, honor is weakened, if not gone entirely.
Honor is negotiable. There are social realities around honor, but there are no rules. If someone insults you, there may be a variety of acceptable responses that are highly context-specific. Revenge can be executed any number of ways. There are different levels of violence. The honor/shame response can be channeled, directed. One might imagine, after letting the group down, committing to penance for a period of time until the group recognizes you’re still fully committed. Solutions to addressing honor/shame can be creative.
Honor can be used to motivate action toward any end. Honor and shame are moral in the sense that they deal with sussing out the truth about people. Do you mean what you say? Are you really with us or not? Are you as powerful as you say (or think) you are? Are you a real man/woman/American/Cubs Fan/firm partner?
That motivational juice, though, can be used to support good or evil ends. I think when I don’t like honor cultures, I don’t like the ends they point to. And, in fact, I often wish there was more honor around causes I believe in and more shame around things I don’t like.
The problem with honor cultures is the threat of violence. Sommers argues in the book that our society’s zero-tolerance policy for violence has led to injustice, primarily by creating a massive prison system for violent offenders. He thinks (I think) that certain low levels of violence (like Fight Club violence) should be allowable and that some violent crimes could be resolved through victim restitution rather than imprisonment. It’s a hard sell. I found it interesting, but it’s real hard to pull the lever for increased violence. Then again, I haven’t been affected by the issue, so it’s easy to think of it as a mere abstraction.
That said, because of the nature of honor described above, violence may not have to be part of its future. Nonviolent protest (such as union picket lines and pride parades) is one obvious example. But channeling honor into sports shows how easy, even fun, it is to direct humanity’s penchant for honor around. The creative solutions that restore honor to people without resorting to violence are perhaps endless. Sommers gives examples near the end of the book of promising community-based interventions to address gang violence, without law enforcement involvement, that deter revenge while allowing the person to save face.
The other problem with honor cultures is that they become self-reinforcing and outlast the cause for which they were created. Honor cultures typically form in situations of scarcity and insecurity. People band together to protect themselves. It’s safer in a group. This requires each person to make a commitment to behaving certain ways. It also breeds egalitarianism within the group. But once those tight-knit groups become powerful, they easily become gatekeepers—protecting insiders from outsiders in ways that can be destructive. In institutional scandals involving churches, corporations, or schools, it seems often the case that the circle of trust (and thus protection and equality) was drawn to include certain members and leave others outside. Leaders should be mindful of the way honor groups map incongruously onto formal institutions. These are the hidden fault lines.
Even in honor cultures, people who go looking for trouble are looked down on. There is a sense throughout Sommer’s book that honor and honor cultures are meant to be contained. Even in societies with strong honor cultures, there’s a sense that it needs to be limited and controlled. Feuds have a way of spiraling out of control, and so escalation must be firmly checked1.
Honor comes out strongest under extreme conditions. When conditions don’t warrant, people who obsess over honor and shame are looked down upon by people within the honor culture itself. If someone attacks your reputation, you must respond; but someone who blows up at every perceived slight is considered weak.
In other words, honor matters, but it becomes more or less salient depending on context. At times, it can matter more than life itself. At other times, it shouldn’t matter at all. Honor is powerful, but honor isn’t everything nor is it fixed. In that lies opportunity.
Related:
Is stoicism bad for democracy?
How subjective things become objective
‘Flight shame is dead’: concern grows over climate impact of tourism boom (Guardian, 9/6/24)2
There’s an interesting parallel in bison behavior. When two male bison confront each other, there’s an extended performance of escalating domination behaviors. Because violence is so risky to both buffalo, the dance of performative aggression provides many “off-ramps.” You can think of bison fights as surrounded by many warning alerts: Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? (For a fascinating and lucid breakdown of bison behavior, see American Bison: A Natural History by Dale Lott)
“In 2018, a 15-year-old climate activist from Sweden tweeted a selfie from an electric vehicle charging station with the hashtag #jagstannarpåmarken – ‘I stay on the ground’. Though Greta Thunberg did not invent the concept of flygskam (flight shame), she has done more than most to normalise other modes of travel.”