[Deep Thoughts] Honorable Discharge

[Kyle]

What does honor mean to you? How important is it to you? Does your culture value honor? What exemplifies honor in your culture?

[Phoebe]

To me it's some sort of acknowledgement of deep value or special achievement. Honor isn't necessarily as important to the person receiving it, but it's important for those giving it to give it, and for those receiving it to receive it gracefully. This applies across many contexts likes showing deference and respect for one's parents, following rules or a process that ought to be respected, praising people for accomplishments that in doing so you deem particularly worthy, and so on. It's a way of expressing relationships of valuing.

[Mike]

I was thinking more of honor in the sense of adherence to a moral code. I think of Worf or the stereotypical movie Samurai. And in thinking of that, the movie/media version is a sense of personal honor and always doing what it right, but in real life, it also includes the public perception that you are a moral and upright person. It is important that people SEE that you are upholding whatever particular code. I don't have a fully formed opinion of it. I certainly value the concept of having a sense of right and wrong and always trying to do the "right" thing, but I also have a gut reaction that it shouldn't matter what other people think. You should be doing good because it is good and not because you will be recognized for doing good. And that recognition doesn't necessarily have to be part of honor, but it feels to me like it often is.

[bralbovsky]

[Phoebe]

All of the above is interesting because it fits with a general view of honor as a relation of some sort rather than a virtue. In maintaining honor like a Klingon, you might have to manifest various Klingon virtues, but the honor itself flows from that without being one of those virtues. It's a recognition between yourself and others who value the same behavioral code, or between yourself and the code, even. You could privately feel you had done something dishonorable even if nobody ever finds out. It's not merely that you've done something wrong, but that you did something worthy of blame, something that damaged your honor or would bring dishonor upon you among those who share your values. Sometimes we do a wrong that isn't blameworthy, or maybe we do something correct according to a moral code that is nevertheless blameworthy or would be considered dishonorable.

Back to Benedict Arnold - this description of his motives and story sounds like a breakdown of relationship between himself and the others who shared his station in life and adhered to the same values. Perceiving himself to suffer the loss of what to him would have been the appropriate relationship, he then felt disconnected enough from the shared values to violate them knowingly.