In today's world, honor is typically thought of in terms of integrity, which means doing the right thing when no one else is looking. But traditionally, honor meant having a reputation worthy of the respect of others. And if people think about this traditional type of honor these days, it s usually in a negative way associated with pistol duels, honor killings, and toxic shame. But my guest today argues that for a culture of honor to be robust and vital, a culture is absolutely necessary. His name is Tamler Summers, and he s a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, co-host of the podcast Very Bad Wizards, and the author of the new book Why Honor Matters.
00:00:00.000brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in today's world
00:00:19.100honor is typically thought of in terms of integrity it's doing the right thing when
00:00:22.960no one else is looking but traditionally honor meant having a reputation worthy of the respect
00:00:27.360of others and if people think about this traditional type of honor these days it's usually
00:00:31.380in a negative way associated with pistol duels honor killings and toxic shame but my guest today
00:00:36.280argues that for moral life to be robust and vital a culture of honor is absolutely necessary his name
00:00:41.580is tamler summers he's a professor of philosophy at the university of houston co-host of the podcast
00:00:45.420very bad wizards and the author of the new book why honor matters today on the show tamler and i
00:00:49.960discuss honor what it is why it disappeared from our moral ethos and vocabulary and why we should
00:00:54.560bring it back tamler makes the case that honor culture fosters community and encourages risk
00:00:58.460taking for the sake of excellence while our modern dignity culture atomizes us and encourages us to
00:01:03.160play it small he then makes a counterintuitive argument that the contained aggression and
00:01:07.020violence that honor promotes can have real benefits and shares one way honor is making a comeback in the
00:01:12.080form of the restorative justice movement we in our conversation discussing why stories of honor are so
00:01:16.340appealing to humans and whether it's really possible to revitalize honor in modern western society
00:01:21.100after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash why honor matters tamler joins me now
00:01:26.260via clearcast.io tamler summers welcome to the show thank you for having me so you just published a book
00:01:46.180i was telling you this before the show when i got the book review copy i was so excited to see it
00:01:52.580because you know we wrote a long in-depth series about this topic a long time ago and when i was
00:01:57.600writing it i was just there's nothing on this topic out there your book why honor matters let's define
00:02:04.900honor because i think it's one of those words that gets thrown around a lot but i don't think a lot of
00:02:11.600modern folks really know how to define or describe it or if they if you ask them like what is honor
00:02:17.960they'll usually give a definition that means like integrity right living according to your own
00:02:22.800personal values but that's that's not what honor is so walk us through what is honor and sort of what
00:02:29.360are the you know the founding fathers said when they swore upon their sacred honor or what achilles
00:02:34.640talked about when he talked about his honor well i think i'm one of those people who has a hard time
00:02:39.260defining honor and you know in spite of having written a book about it but part of the problem
00:02:46.220with it is it is a word that's kind of an umbrella term that applies to so many different things so
00:02:53.900many different kinds of you know it can be an adjective to honor somebody it can you you call judges
00:03:01.620your honor you know there's honor it can be a verb honor thy father and mother you know but i i think
00:03:08.820one of the helpful things if you look at some of the anthropology and some of the work that's
00:03:14.000written about it is this distinction which you talk about on your blog actually and i would point
00:03:19.100listeners who aren't familiar with that series that you did because you did it a while back right it was a
00:03:24.800few years ago yeah 2013 yeah so you talk about this distinction that frank stewart introduced between
00:03:32.280horizontal and vertical and vertical honor and that's i think a helpful way of sort of pinning down how
00:03:39.880what honor is and how it's essentially tied to being in a group so so let me just talk about that
00:03:49.160horizontal honor is it's it's it means if you have horizontal honor that you're entitled to a level of
00:04:00.580respect or respect or esteem just by virtue of belonging to an honor group and honor groups vary
00:04:09.640there's so many different kinds of honor groups but when you're in an honor group just belonging to it
00:04:16.380just being a member of it entitles you to a certain degree of respect or esteem so for example being a
00:04:24.160made man in the mafia you just just for being a made man you get a bunch of privileges within that
00:04:33.140structure the people in the community have to treat you with a kind of respect or diff or deference
00:04:40.120now i'm taking this from the movie donnie brasco but i guess you get called a friend of ours rather than a
00:04:46.860friend of mine and you definitely don't pay for drinks or dinners and you know importantly and this
00:04:53.620is this is in the research on the mafia once you're a made man other mafiosi can't steal from you they're
00:05:01.720not allowed to assault you they're not allowed to hit on your wives or girlfriends and that's just
00:05:07.220because it's not for anything that you've done it's just because you're a made man in the mafia
00:05:14.180so that's the kind of the defining feature of horizontal honor is that it is distributed equally
00:05:22.080to all group members just because they belong to a group it's not tied to a specific action
00:05:31.060or your actions or your achievements right so when we say your honor to judges we say that just because
00:05:39.880they're judges not because oh that was a that was a great decision that you handed down or that you
00:05:46.340wrote that was a great verdict it's just unless they get disbarred or they retire they're just
00:05:53.760entitled to this form of respect and and uniform military who some airlines allowed to board a plane
00:06:00.920early and will often say thank you for your service again we don't know what they've done
00:06:06.620to serve our country but just by virtue of belonging to the military we think they're entitled to that
00:06:13.140a degree of respect so that's horizontal honor the kind of honor you get from just from belonging to a
00:06:20.240group vertical honor is kind of the flip side of that vertical honor is the thing that you compete for
00:06:28.180once you're in the honor group and vertical honor unlike horizontal honor can't be distributed equally
00:06:37.240among the group members because that's how you move up and down in the hierarchy is based on how much
00:06:46.640vertical honor you either have or lose within the group and you have it or lose it through your actions
00:06:54.560and through your achievements and sometimes you know these your your status either going up or going down
00:07:04.160sometimes that's formal like with rank in the military sometimes it's more informal you know being
00:07:13.340this is an example i use in the book being the comics comic like there's within the stand-up community
00:07:20.500there are comics that are known as it's just this kind of informal title you're the comics comic you make
00:07:29.220even the comics laugh right and that's kind of an honor that's an honorable position to hold not that you
00:07:37.680get any money for it not that you get any kind of official recognition that's just how you're known and how
00:07:44.520people will treat you in a certain way because for the moment at least you are the comics comic or like
00:07:52.800we both do podcasts right and unfortunately for me your podcast is ranked higher in the itunes rankings
00:08:02.980than our podcast so right now for the moment we're coming at you but right now you have more vertical
00:08:11.640honor as a podcaster than we do well maybe i don't maybe because like it's people outside the group of
00:08:18.500podcasters who are determining that that vertical so like maybe it's like it's not vertical honor right
00:08:25.200am i the podcaster's podcaster yeah no that's actually a good point in fact are you the podcaster's
00:08:30.740but we don't really know have podcaster's podcasters yeah you're right it's too diffuse a community
00:08:37.080really and it's so spread out and you know there are these famous podcasts that i've never heard of
00:08:43.360even though this is a thing that i do and i'm sure most people haven't heard of ours so i mean yeah i mean
00:08:49.960it's actually a a really good point that when things are too anonymous and there's no way of really kind
00:09:00.260of allocating this form of respect then the honor structure disintegrates and there really isn't one
00:09:09.160for podcasting no pod no honor amongst podcasters no honor right exactly i guess there are ceremonies
00:09:16.640and stuff right like awards but yeah it's sort of self-congratulatory but i guess that's what
00:09:22.800honor like vertical honor is it's self-congratulatory you're you're honoring what the values that you guys
00:09:28.640in that horizontal group honor yes exactly and it's not i mean to say that it's self-congratulatory
00:09:35.600it makes it almost sound a little petty but it certainly doesn't have to be if you're
00:09:40.480you know you're the captain of a of a hockey team or something like that that's really you know people
00:09:47.180really respect that and and and what you did to earn that title and you know it's not something that
00:09:57.320the person just tried to do so that that the player so that he could put on his resume or something like
00:10:04.440that you know it's something that means a lot it's just a part of their identity so just to recap so
00:10:11.020like honor is about group right that's important that's an important aspect because uh and we'll talk
00:10:16.220about why that's important here in a bit honors about group you really you're i mean in a way you
00:10:21.400own your honor but you don't right like it's dependent upon other people as well recognizing
00:10:26.440your yes your honor it's about respect and then you can have honor within a group and just by being
00:10:34.720a member of the group but then you can get more vertical honor by doing certain things let's talk
00:10:39.120about you talk about there's certain rights and privileges that come with being part of an honor
00:10:44.960group and having that honor but there's also responsibilities yeah what are some examples and what
00:10:50.180happens if you don't live up to those responsibilities yeah so once you're in an honor group you have
00:10:56.100a certain set of responsibilities you know maybe so if you're to go back to the mafia example
00:11:04.300if if you're a made man in the mafia now you have to you're bound by the omerta value you're not allowed
00:11:12.200to cooperate with the authorities and if you do that's one of the ways you can get kicked out of
00:11:19.280the honor group you are bound to pay certain amounts of money to people who are higher up than you
00:11:29.740in the mafia structure and if you don't do that you'll lose vertical honor and if you and and at a
00:11:38.220certain point you can get booted out of the the group if if you don't live up to your responsibilities
00:11:46.100and and i think this is one of the this is one of the sort of misconceptions people kind of think of
00:11:51.640it of belonging to an honor group as just these unearned privileges especially when they're talking
00:11:57.080about horizontal honor but they're not unearned in the sense that often it comes with certain burdens
00:12:05.080burdens of hospitality burdens of taking risks in defense of your group even being willing to sacrifice
00:12:12.840your life i mean think of the navy seals and the kind if you belong to the a unit in the navy seals
00:12:19.280you are bound never to leave one of your fellow officers in in in the field even if they're dead
00:12:28.940you're not allowed to leave them on the battlefield without bringing them back and that's an obligation
00:12:34.120that you get because you are bound by the code of that honor group and you need this kind of shared
00:12:44.600code this shared commitment the shared value system in order both to allocate vertical honor within the
00:12:54.360group and to know when someone haven't hasn't lived up to their minimal responsibilities to even have the
00:13:01.760horizontal honor and you also need it as a way to motivate people to to sacrifice in such a way that
00:13:10.620they're able to live up to their responsibilities and in some case exceed go above and beyond the call of
00:13:17.300duty and that's where the role of shame comes in that's one of the critiques people often give
00:13:21.600towards honor cultures that oh there's this toxic shame but you know shame can actually be a strong
00:13:28.200motivator to get you to do you know this hold up to your obligations that you have for being part of
00:13:33.340that group yeah and you know shame has can have its downsides but i think we're all learning right now
00:13:42.580what what happens when you have a culture of shamelessness i mean you know one of the almost
00:13:51.540funny things about trump is how little shame he has about just flagrantly lying or misleading
00:13:59.000the the public right i mean he he will this is this is a guy that is not burdened by that feeling of
00:14:10.480shame for better and for worse i mean in my view mostly for worse but or you know another example is in
00:14:17.000the book the banking crisis that was caused by a lot of people who afterwards just refused to take
00:14:24.680any responsibility for what they had done to the entire country and there was no structure really
00:14:31.500in place to to shame them into not into you know or or or punish them or lower the amount of respect
00:14:44.260that they were getting within their own communities and and and and so it has a real downside when
00:14:51.140there's no there's no set of principles that when you fail to live up to them you will feel shame and
00:14:59.160you will be shamed by others well let's talk about you know why this sort of you know you can be shameless
00:15:06.320today you know for you know from a lot of for many centuries honor was sort of the guiding moral paradigm
00:15:12.480for people living in the west but now it's not anymore why is that what changed well as we were
00:15:19.460saying before honor needs a group honor as a value system needs a group to function it is essentially
00:15:28.160social and it cannot exist for individuals in isolation so for the whole motivational and ethical
00:15:38.340structure to work you need a collection of people that know each other and that are bound by a shared
00:15:46.980set of principles and values again you need this shared set of values because that's how honor is allocated
00:15:55.280within the group but you know in the last few hundred years in the modern world and especially in the west
00:16:04.100these communities these societies were growing much bigger and crucially much more anonymous and so
00:16:13.260the currency of honor whether you're you receive honor or dishonor that gets devalued because nobody really
00:16:21.820knows who you are to begin with right i mean i i was thinking about this just the other day how rare it is
00:16:33.460that i interact with somebody that knows who i am that has the slightest clue who i am what i've done
00:16:41.300the good things that i've done the bad things that i've done i mean in 90 of my day-to-day interactions
00:16:48.340that doesn't happen you know at least when i'm out when i'm out at work when i'm out shopping when i'm out
00:16:55.800just you know when i'm not at home and honor needs people who care about their reputation and their
00:17:05.240status within a community but if you don't have that community and nobody knows what your reputation
00:17:10.600is well then the whole motivational engine that drives behavior in honor cultures is stripped away
00:17:19.000so that's one side of it is just society is getting bigger and more anonymous the other side of it is
00:17:27.960is ethical and one of the downsides it's undeniable that one of the downsides of some honor cultures
00:17:36.520is that there is a kind of oppressive structure that imposes restrictions not just on a person's
00:17:49.000a person's role and behavior but on what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do
00:17:55.320so like in some cultures girls are prohibited from getting an education right because that's not deemed
00:18:03.800a proper role and to sort of find out who you are and what your values are you need to to be able to get
00:18:12.680an education people do want people have a desire to shape their own identity and they have a resistance
00:18:22.520to being assigned a certain kind of role in life and i think the morality of dignity which is a morality
00:18:32.920that is centrally focused on protecting individual rights and expanding individual freedom
00:18:42.280autonomy that reflects that sort of aversion to honor culture is kind of telling me who i am what i can do
00:18:56.120what i can't do and you know i mean it's so complicated but that in conjunction with free market capitalism
00:19:05.160and it all sort of led to honor being downplayed both as a kind of an ethical set of an ethical value system
00:19:15.880and also as something that can even function to motivate behavior and to shape people's attitudes
00:19:26.440well let's talk about the ethics of you know contrasting honor and dignity culture so dignity it's all about
00:19:33.880the the the individual the worth of the individual you have value worth because you're a human being you
00:19:39.400exist so how does dignity culture motivate individuals to do the right thing or how do they even determine
00:19:46.680what's the right thing like with honor like each group had its little code and the way they enforced
00:19:52.120that was through shame and also giving you know vertical honor you know to to be excellent at the code
00:19:58.600what is what's dignity culture how does dignity culture figure out what's right and wrong and then how do they
00:20:04.720either enforce or motivate the those ethical behaviors yeah i mean so this is one of the problems of dignity cultures and
00:20:11.860it's a big one that because it focuses on individual rights and autonomy and respecting people's autonomy respecting their
00:20:23.600personhood it's mostly if not exclusively just telling us what not to do don't violate their rights don't
00:20:33.520infringe their autonomy but it but both at a again at a theoretical and i think even more importantly in a
00:20:40.080motivational level it doesn't really have anything in place to get people to perform acts of positive virtue
00:20:48.960you know when you say do the right thing dignity is much more focused on getting people not to do the
00:20:55.200wrong thing not on doing the right thing so um there's there's nothing you know
00:21:05.040something like acts of courage acts of risk taking dignity just doesn't have much to say about that
00:21:11.920because to not take risks or to not to not be brave doesn't off most of the time doesn't violate
00:21:19.920anybody's rights it doesn't infringe on anybody's autonomy now we're honor cultures and the norms of
00:21:28.800honor cultures one of the one of the guiding sort of principles that seems that most of them have in
00:21:36.160common is that they attach great positive value to acts of courage that benefit the group and that
00:21:43.360and they have a whole set of norms that encourage bravery and strongly discourage being a coward i mean
00:21:52.800if you're a coward in an honor culture your status goes down but dignity has nothing like that and even
00:21:58.160at the level of the morality of it there's nothing really wrong with being a coward that the ethics of
00:22:04.560dignity doesn't really have any attach any negative value to that and i think that's led to one of the
00:22:13.520most frustrating things for me about modern life is how risk averse we are as a culture and we don't have
00:22:21.600a moral language to try to change that and i give a bunch of examples of this in the book and like what i
00:22:28.640call my cranky chapter the chapter where i start about all the things that are wrong when we have
00:22:36.400rejected honor to such a degree right like making bike helmets you have to wear a bike helmet now when
00:22:42.880you ride a bike because you're gonna fall off and crack your skull open i know that's yeah that's a
00:22:49.680huge pet peeve of mine i have to say though i i feel like i'm winning that at least here in houston it
00:22:56.560does seem like the tide is turning against bicycle helmets well yeah and i think i mean it actually
00:23:02.240i think it doesn't say something like bike helmets actually make you less safe right like because
00:23:07.280drivers see you're wearing a bike helmet so they drive closer to you and then because you're wearing
00:23:11.760a bike helmet you you think you're safe so you're able you do dumb things but when you're not wearing
00:23:16.720a bike helmet right you have to be more careful pay more attention and the drivers treat you like
00:23:23.680they they stay further away yeah i mean there are some studies i mean that's the ultimate irony of
00:23:29.040this and and of many of these cases is that the actual risk is so minuscule or maybe in this case
00:23:35.840non-existent that but but i don't even rely i i try not to rely on those kinds of studies because that
00:23:43.360just plays their game exactly you know what i mean uh right i don't i don't even like i it's fine if
00:23:50.160it adds a little risk to your life so let's talk some more about honor because you have this whole
00:23:55.920chapter one one aspect that's often attributed to honor or people think go hand in hand is
00:24:01.360aggression and violence you make a kind of an interesting case you know sort of dignity cultures
00:24:07.520say oh aggression and violence is bad because that violates the rights of others so you avoid it
00:24:14.080but you make the case that actually no aggression and sometimes violence can actually be good and
00:24:19.760virtuous and bring communities close together so walk us through that uh counterintuitive argument
00:24:25.920yeah i mean so under in certain conditions and i and the condition that i focus on in the book is when
00:24:36.720the violence is contained when the threat of escalation is contained then violence
00:24:47.280can well there's a couple of things it can be a safe way to release pent-up aggression that has been
00:24:58.480building up that kind of resentment and bad feeling and then it's a way it's a kind of release for
00:25:05.600that it can also be a way to prove your courage right prove that they and prove the fact that you'll
00:25:13.200stand up for yourself prove uh show demonstrate the self-respect that you have it can be it can show your
00:25:22.160loyalty like to your friends so one of the examples i use is this bar fight culture in lafayette louisiana
00:25:31.200and you know that that there's an honor code that guy that these people if they get insulted they
00:25:38.160get into fights outside the bar and the the basic core principles are just honor principles stand up for
00:25:47.280yourself stand up for your friends and um and they have in that case informally certain sets of constraints and
00:25:57.360boundaries to keep the violence for from getting out of hand they you know once the fight is over once
00:26:02.800the person can no longer defend themselves if you still go at the person at that point it becomes
00:26:08.800dishonorable so that's now like once you win it's over it's also dishonorable to fight somebody who you
00:26:16.400know you can beat right this is a thing that saved my ass number of times because i was a talker in the
00:26:23.520bars when i was younger but i couldn't i can't fight you know like i anybody who would almost
00:26:30.720certainly have kicked my ass but like sometimes because especially when i was younger and i looked
00:26:36.640even younger i off like up till i was 25 i looked like i was still in high school people would just be
00:26:42.240people would just say you know all right because it just it wouldn't have been honorable to to fight me
00:26:49.440so so they have all these built-in kinds of constraints fair fight equal numbers and it is
00:26:56.480a way to prove their self-respect and loyalty to their friends and to kind of enforce and clarify
00:27:05.040certain boundaries i talk a lot about this book by elijah anderson about the inner city neighborhoods
00:27:12.400in philadelphia and how fighting there even among friends can be ways to kind of prove your worth
00:27:19.120and also again to establish norms and boundaries within a friendship what you're allowed to say
00:27:26.560what you're not allowed to say and then you know maybe the best example is or the one i go into the
00:27:33.440most detail is the nhl in hockey where fights are again a way of bringing the team together building
00:27:42.640solidarity within the team but also a way to keep people from engaging in really because it's such an
00:27:52.480inherently violent game so taking cheap shots that could either take out your star scorer for for a series
00:28:01.760or for the season or for their career there's this sort of established informal code in place that allows
00:28:09.840people to stand up for their teammates when someone takes a cheap shot at them or to you know if if
00:28:19.440the team is frustrated because they're getting destroyed to allow them to take out some of that
00:28:27.280frustration in a relatively safe way and again there there's this built-in form of containment there's
00:28:34.000the hockey officials who are these master psychologists kind of trying to figure out exactly when a fight
00:28:40.800should happen shouldn't happen when to stop it when to let it go and you know at a at a larger level
00:28:48.080the league office so that if brawls get completely out of control then they can step in and and prevent
00:28:55.520them right so i mean it's something without that honor culture the culture of honor violence sounds like it
00:29:01.040could escalate like people just go right to i'm just going to kill you and annihilate you because i mean
00:29:06.720like you know if the individual is the highest thing and you know a dignity culture the worst thing
00:29:11.440you do to somebody is just kill them right like just take away their identity is that is that you think
00:29:17.120that's what's happening now or am i reading too much into that so it's funny because this is something i'm
00:29:24.880working on hopefully with in in the new york times but that was the thing that that they are that they
00:29:32.080were trying to press me is does low-level violence actually prevent lethal violence or greater violence
00:29:39.520and i and i was thinking about that and trying to think if i could honestly say that low-level violence
00:29:44.800actively prevents more lethal violence and i'm not sure that i can say that well certainly sometimes
00:29:53.840low-level violence does escalate into into lethal violence and so right there's definitely going to
00:30:01.600be a lot of cases where so so i think what the the claim that i that i will that i feel confident about
00:30:11.520is that low-level violence when constrained by the right kind of honor codes or by something else
00:30:19.200can definitely be a safe way of releasing aggression and preventing further harm but sometimes you do need
00:30:28.560forms of containment in place that don't come from the specific honor culture so one example that i talk
00:30:37.120about in the book is gangs in urban america they used to settle their disagreements with fists they had a lot of
00:30:48.880beefs but the beefs would end in fist fights rather than gun fights but then all of a sudden guns came
00:30:55.600into the picture and so a lot of those beefs would escalate into in into gun fights and you had uh you
00:31:03.680know skyrocketing murder rates and the best programs the best policing programs of a way of containing it it
00:31:12.240does come from outside so it's not part of the honor code but what it does is it just takes the guns out
00:31:20.960of the picture it doesn't stop them from engaging in their in their activities it just means that when
00:31:28.480violence occurs guns can't be involved so if you take that out of the picture then some of the the good
00:31:36.960stuff that comes from violence the way of proving respect the way of earning respect even often from
00:31:44.240your opponent right like if i ever did get into a fight and i would lose it even as a loser you get
00:31:52.080respect just because you showed a little heart right and so some of the good stuff can come without where
00:31:58.880it and when when the threat of actually dying or getting seriously hurt is taken out of the picture
00:32:07.040and you know this guy david kennedy who who who who instituted this program in boston and has been
00:32:14.320trying the group violence intervention it's been trying to institute it all over the country and has
00:32:19.120had great success when it's allowed to be implemented properly he tells this story in his book don't shoot
00:32:26.720about in boston where they cut homicides by more than half in one year through this program the the
00:32:36.320marker of success was when one of the cops came in and he was like singing practically he was so happy
00:32:43.440he said i just saw a fist fight i haven't seen a fist fight in years that was the sign that the strategy
00:32:50.480was a success well another point you make about dignity culture when it comes to violence is that
00:32:55.680dignity cultures don't have a good response to when violence is being done to you or you're oppressed
00:33:03.200but honor culture does yeah so honor culture encourages i mean like i would say the core as i understand it
00:33:12.960the core principle in an honor culture both at the level of the individual and your group is stand up for
00:33:20.080yourself stand up for your group handle your business and so dignity cultures don't have that now obviously
00:33:31.600if somebody is assaulted or threatened their rights have been violated so what a dignity culture does is
00:33:37.280they find ways to punish you or lock you up or put you away whereas honor cultures encourage the people
00:33:44.640involved to sort out their own conflicts and they this isn't just through acts of violence and acts of
00:33:54.560revenge they have structures in place to mediate conflicts and because you know especially if you're talking
00:34:03.200about within group disagreements a real feud will disrupt the harmony of the group and even a feud with other
00:34:12.800other groups could lead to you know uh a long-running multi-generational blood feud everybody has an interest in avoiding that but they have this strict
00:34:24.800kind of code of we don't like when third parties um a deal with our own conflicts that's something that it's our responsibility to deal with so they have all these structures in place where people
00:34:38.800face to face to face sort out their differences and find ways to resolve their conflicts and if somebody was wronged then someone has to uh make up for it in some way
00:34:50.800and these often have the special benefit of bringing communities closer together just because conflicts are exciting and people and and
00:35:00.800and people have opinions about it and this is how norms get shaped and and further clarified
00:35:07.840is through these uh sessions these kind of media this mediation process
00:35:14.800of conflicts and that's that's exactly what we've lost in our culture i mean if you look at our legal system
00:35:22.560and then you look at some you know how conflicts get sorted out in in uh smaller honor cultures
00:35:32.480it couldn't be more different one is completely bureaucratic alienating to both the victim and the offender
00:35:41.040and it just keeps them it keeps them entirely sort of separate from each other and the other actually allows
00:35:48.480them to learn about each other to learn what they did and how it feels and what they can do to take
00:35:57.360responsibility and make it up to them yeah i mean i thought that your your chapters you kind of talk
00:36:02.480about how honor you injecting honor back into our jurisprudence might have a lot of benefits because
00:36:10.400the dignity culture like as you said like the when you're a victim when the state brings a case against
00:36:16.080the perpetrator it's they're not bringing it on behalf of you right it's on behalf of the state
00:36:21.200the people i mean why do you think that idea of you know a third party enforcing the law
00:36:30.080has you say you know it's maybe it's contributed you know the united states have one of the largest
00:36:34.480prisoner populations in the world how has dignity culture the jurisprudence that's come out of dignity
00:36:39.600culture contributed to that you think yeah i mean this is the chapter it's a like this is
00:36:44.800chapter six in the book it's probably the thing that i'm most proud of most excited to pursue in
00:36:51.280further research and and it's related to a lot of my early work on responsibility and free will i think
00:37:01.360that and there and there's so many elements to how rejection of honor and honor values has led to what
00:37:10.640what i think is maybe the greatest moral ill of our society mass incarceration and so there's at the
00:37:20.400practical level there's again this resistance to violence of all kinds like any act of violence is
00:37:27.600considered a a violation of rights and so it has to be punished and so this is how you have like
00:37:35.680zero tolerance policies for fighting in schools you you fight you get expelled or you get suspended
00:37:42.400and that's led to the school to prison pipeline and then you had all these you know violence shoots
00:37:48.720up starting in the mid 60s you know through the 90s and all of a sudden there's harsher sentences and
00:37:55.120three strikes and you're out and a ballooning prison population as a result of this attitude towards
00:38:01.680sentencing for violent crimes so at the practical level just when you become so scared of violence and
00:38:10.080so concerned for the safety of individuals who aren't violating other people's rights then the only way to
00:38:17.680handle the fact the inevitable violent conflict is by diverting the violence into prisons rather than
00:38:25.600you know letting mostly affluent citizens have to take a little risk that they might be a victim to
00:38:33.600it and then at a theoretical level this is where i think it's the biggest fraud that the morality of
00:38:42.480dignity has kind of perpetuated so you know punishment itself is a violation of someone's rights you're
00:38:51.600you're kidnapping them you're putting them in in a prison in some cases even killing them and so they
00:38:58.080have to figure out like why that's okay that they do it and so they come up with this framework the this
00:39:05.440ideal of blind and impartial justice that punishes people criminals according to their culpability
00:39:16.160right according to the severity of their crime and the level of the degree of blame worthiness that
00:39:24.080they had for committing it you see this in all these supreme court rulings that is the guiding principle
00:39:31.360criminals once you're talking about uh once you're in not a civil case but a criminal case
00:39:38.400they have to be punished according to their culpability and people of equal culpability
00:39:43.520have to get the same punishment and that whole system that whole uh framework is just built on both
00:39:54.800empirically false and incoherent ideas about autonomy and responsibility and it by definition excludes the
00:40:07.680victim the victim the victim just becomes a vessel to determine how severe the wrongdoing was but their
00:40:16.080interests their desires their needs all of that is considered completely irrelevant to the criminal's
00:40:23.680culpability because most of the time criminals don't know their victims and so they don't know how much harm
00:40:30.640the victim will experience through their crime or how much you know what the victim wants afterwards
00:40:38.160all that stuff doesn't play into assaulting them or mugging them or robbing their house or whatever it is
00:40:45.120and so the victim is now removed for the from the equation and and and very often doesn't want to be
00:40:52.800removed for the equation and then for some reason once you cross that civil that line from civil
00:41:00.320case to criminal case now it becomes the people or the state versus the criminal rather than the
00:41:07.280victim but there's no justification for that it's a totally arbitrary line to draw and there's no
00:41:14.160justification for matching punishments to degrees of culpability the whole thing is is based on an
00:41:22.720on an illusion at both a practical level and especially a theoretical level and the tragedy of it is that
00:41:30.000it's had massive practical uh it's caused so much suffering and so much injustice and you know the in the in
00:41:41.520that chapter there's this movement called restorative justice which i think is one of the most exciting new
00:41:47.920movements in criminal justice reform and i and it really is the it's not i don't know how explicitly it
00:41:57.680embraces this but it's modeled on the way honor cultures handle conflict they bring the parties the
00:42:06.480people who were uh the people who were affected by the crime the people who were involved in it it brings them
00:42:14.400together and it just says how can we make this right how can so this somebody was wronged let's try
00:42:23.200to come up with a solution and that solution may involve punishment it may involve prison time um or it may
00:42:29.360involve some kind of restitution um but it allows them to meet face to face and hash out what happened
00:42:38.080the harm that was committed and how the offender can take responsibility and try to and try to do
00:42:46.560something to to make it to make it better to make up for it to atone for it and it's it's fine people
00:42:56.640think of restorative justice as this kind of hippy dippy hug it out approach to justice but i think it has at
00:43:05.600its core these really strong honor principles honor related virtues of i handle my i'm looking my
00:43:15.840offender in the face and i'm telling them what they did and i'm telling them what i want them to do
00:43:21.120and as the offender you actually have to like really face at an emotional level what it was what harm it was
00:43:28.880that you called you caused and when you look at these when you just witness them the these sessions
00:43:36.480you really see people from completely different walks of life learning to understand each other and
00:43:42.240learning to understand their own attitudes and behaviors at such a deep level and so it's such a win-win
00:43:50.560and uh and yet the it violates so much of this illusory framework that we've set up especially
00:44:00.960at the criminal in the criminal at the criminal level at the adult criminal level that there's so
00:44:06.720many obstacles to implementing it and it's just sad that as i try to show and i will continue to try to
00:44:13.600show the obstacles aren't based on anything real they're just based on what we this this blind
00:44:20.400impartial justice ideal that can't be defended uh and at um both either theoretically or practically
00:44:28.480so so yeah that's a long-winded way you you could get me talking about this for hours because this is
00:44:34.560the thing like buy stock and restorative justice it's already spreading through the schools and that's
00:44:39.760great and it's had a really huge positive impact reducing suspensions people are starting to use
00:44:45.360it in juvenile courts and the but the real barrier is once you get to adult criminal courts this
00:44:52.880restorative justice movement like how do you you know we talked about honor he sort of borrows from
00:44:58.320honor in a way but like how do you develop like that shared group honor code like do people just kind
00:45:04.960of you know step up to the plate like they they intuitively have that honor code of like
00:45:09.600what it means to be a member a good member of the community and like when they're confronted with
00:45:13.920it they they own up to it well i mean the the way these things work both in honor cultures and
00:45:19.680restorative justice is you have to have a skilled kind of mediator but one that is known to not
00:45:27.280somebody who's anonymous not somebody who's completely impartial but someone who's part of the community
00:45:32.720that guides the discussion right and so like if you look at it in schools for example there are people
00:45:42.800um either one person depending on how big it is or a group of people that that run the sessions and
00:45:50.400you know with school is a small enough community where you know these these are the values of our school
00:45:56.320this is how you violate them how can we make this right but there's no single punishment there it
00:46:04.080will always depend on the particularities of that conflict so it's so flexible you know like every conflict
00:46:11.440is different and so these kinds of sessions allow the participants in the conflict the people involved
00:46:20.400to to to get at and to address every particularity of what it was they experienced and and none of that
00:46:29.760could be specified in advance some of it is even even a known but you do have that person that mediator who
00:46:38.640is guiding the discussion and is you know in this case a kind of form of containment where you know if
00:46:45.680it starts to go bad they'll stop the session and then they'll go to more you know traditional
00:46:52.240disciplinary approaches but you know also there's the kind of informal that there are other people
00:47:00.960that attend these sessions and they get to see how this has worked out and so just knowing that other
00:47:08.080people are actually watching you and judging you to some degree by how you handle yourself that that has
00:47:15.200that can have a huge positive effect and it can be a strong kind of communal feeling because everybody's
00:47:21.040there to support each other so yeah that was another point i loved about that you made in the
00:47:25.600book was that compared to dignity culture honor culture actually allows a lot of flexibility in
00:47:32.480either morality or jurisprudence and by flexibility i mean that in like in a positive way it allows it
00:47:37.280can adapt to different circumstances yeah i mean i think that honor is based in fact it's not based on
00:47:46.720some sort of idealized version of what you want society to be if you look at those sort of philosophical
00:47:53.760kind of the political theories that have dominated in the 20th century and still dominate today they're
00:48:00.400they're idealized i mean this goes all the way back to lock and hobbes right you're not talking about
00:48:05.920real people in real situations you're talking about how people would be if they were rational you know
00:48:11.840if your role is behind a veil of ignorance what would their desires be what principles would they
00:48:18.480choose to adopt and honor just doesn't doesn't do any of that right it is about the facts on the ground
00:48:28.080and it can adapt honor honor norms honor values are continually evolving to meet the challenges of
00:48:38.000the whatever environment they're facing and they don't have some kind of ideal that that is again kind of
00:48:47.280impossible to live up to and also not even necessarily coherent that stands in the way of
00:48:54.720the the real challenges and the very diverse challenges that any community will face so they're not
00:49:05.760burdened by this kind of philosophical baggage that idealized systems of morality will impose on people
00:49:16.320so you know there are as you mentioned throughout the book and through our conversation there are
00:49:20.160downsides to honor if it goes if it runs amok yes right sure violence revenge like you know shaming
00:49:28.640that's just you know goes beyond what's necessary so how do you bring back honor i think you've kind
00:49:34.720of talked about with restorative justice movement but how do you bring back honor but contain it
00:49:38.880so it doesn't so we can get the benefits without as many of the downsides because again you can't
00:49:43.120eliminate all the downsides because then you wouldn't have honor because that's what a dignity culture
00:49:46.320would try to do let's make let's make honor safe yeah but but like so safe that it ends up
00:49:54.800disintegrating um because you won't tolerate just a single exception to whatever yeah no so i i but but i i
00:50:04.240want to because i've really just been singing honors praises in this i want to acknowledge the downside of
00:50:11.920it and i in the last chapter of the book i separated into two kinds of categories these this is the two
00:50:20.320problems with honor that are just inherent with in the value system the first is the threat of escalation
00:50:31.040so when you have these conflicts and because there's this guiding code to always stand up for yourself and to
00:50:38.320always respond to challenges this can lead to escalating feuds long-running cycles of violence
00:50:47.280and it's not that it can do it it has done it and it's and there's so many examples of it you know
00:50:53.920hatfields and mccoys the palestinians and the israelis gang wars this is catholics protestants yes
00:51:01.920exactly right so so so so that's something that needs to be contained and then at even maybe a deeper
00:51:10.800level i think honor doesn't really place any restrictions on the content of the norms for
00:51:20.880allocating honor so there's nothing within honor that will prevent really abhorrent values
00:51:31.920from governing who gets honor and who gets dishonored and this is how something like honor killings happen
00:51:39.600right so if you have a value system that thinks that any woman who has had extramarital sex
00:51:50.560deserves to die and that if she doesn't the family will be shamed within the community
00:51:58.240then there's nothing built in to honor to prevent that from being the guiding norm right so i do think for
00:52:07.920all the shit talking i'm doing about rights-based moralities that enforcing a kind of minimal set of
00:52:15.840rights is crucial for allowing honor to work its magic without without having some of the downsides that
00:52:25.440that honor can bring so i do think that whatever sort of system in place there has to be if the honor
00:52:33.840group goes outside just respecting basic human rights then at that point i think it needs to be
00:52:41.440be controlled or contained maybe even by an outside party hopefully it could be controlled or contained
00:52:50.000by structures that are already within the honor group because honor groups have such a resistance to
00:52:55.600outside interference but if not then i think it does then you do need some sort of minimal enforcement of
00:53:04.080basic human rights and some way of trying to encourage honor groups to embrace better norms
00:53:13.360for allocating honor and shame and and dishonor and so forth and then you know i think an easier
00:53:21.680problem although it's practically can be thorny as hell is containing the threat of escalation but i think
00:53:29.600that david kennedy program that i talked about where you know they allow the the gangs to to do their
00:53:39.200business for the most part but whenever gun violence happens then they crack down like crazy on on the whole
00:53:48.000community right so so all they're saying is no guns just do your do your what do what you're going to do
00:53:56.880but anytime if if you bring guns into the picture then we're coming down hard we're punishing every
00:54:02.240marijuana sale we're punishing every any any bit of violence any once you sort of cross that line
00:54:09.200then your whole community suffers and that encourages like it a i think helps to shape the norms now all of
00:54:16.960a sudden it's not going to be honorable to gun down some guy you're beefing with and because now you're
00:54:24.560hurting the whole community by doing that and it also allows people to i think do it prevents the kind
00:54:32.480of arms race that can sometimes happen with in honor groups where now you're carrying guns and you're
00:54:39.760and you're shooting people just to show just to prove that you can't be messed with all of that gets taken
00:54:47.920care of but it requires this kind of outside form of containment on what level of violence is going
00:54:58.640to be tolerated i mean there are other really good policing or community organizations that deal with
00:55:05.760gang violence in a different way and really encourage strong forms of mediation bringing in former gang
00:55:12.240leaders i talk about those two but i i i think as a better example of containment of the threat of escalation
00:55:22.160that you know the ceasefire project are now called group violence intervention is a great example of that
00:55:28.960okay this is great so i mean are you are you uh positive are you bullish on honor making a comeback
00:55:35.280or do you think it's going to be an uphill battle i think it's definitely going to be an uphill battle
00:55:41.680i'm bullish on restorative justice i think i've made that clear i i buy you know put all your money in that
00:55:49.680but i the challenges that honor faces especially at you know in in a society like ours which is
00:56:01.280so big and now so polarized and there's so many diverse ways that we get our our news and just
00:56:11.600are you know like we're told from so many different sources what to think there seems like there's less
00:56:18.160and less common ground in terms of the values to accept than there ever was now i don't know maybe
00:56:24.240that's not true maybe in the 60s and 70s there was just as little you know and i wasn't around then
00:56:31.280but but yeah so i mean i i think just the hugeness of american society and and modern society in general
00:56:40.400and the anonymity makes it it makes it a struggle or a challenge at at least a kind of national level
00:56:48.960but i think you know when you narrow the community then i think the honor sort of naturally emerges
00:56:57.920when you narrow the focus what kind of groups are we talking about are we talking about sports teams
00:57:03.040are we talking about a university or college talking about a school then some of these honor values i think
00:57:09.920can make a comeback and we don't even have to do that much because you know honor once you're in
00:57:18.720a this kind of small group where you do have shared values i think these honor related attitudes tend to
00:57:26.640emerge without doing much i mean you see this in sports all the time and sometimes it's the coach
00:57:34.160trying to instill this set of honor values but often it's just these things organically emerging
00:57:40.560as a way of adapting to the specific context or the specific environment that people are in so at that
00:57:48.720level i am more bullish about honor making a comeback it's it's it's almost like it's it's not
00:57:55.760even necessarily a comeback because it's kind of already there in a lot of these smaller communities
00:58:00.960right but i think you do see dignity culture trying to even get a toe in on those little
00:58:06.720smaller communities that's right sort of these outside forces saying here are these rules these
00:58:11.440regulations you don't do this don't do that and then yes it's always it's always a battle between
00:58:17.440right and you see this with sports you know like you have the classic dignity culture there's this
00:58:23.120guy ryan brown who's there's one of the guys who wrote against honor do you know this guy because
00:58:28.880he's also from oklahoma no i don't so he wrote a book he's a psychologist i think at university of
00:58:35.120oklahoma who wrote a book very critical of honor and he tells the story of going to a doctor in
00:58:44.160alabama and the way the alabama doctor was talking about the football team the university and how much
00:58:51.280he identified with that and how completely irrational it was for this doctor in alabama to identify
00:58:58.560with the college football team and how we have to shed ourselves of these kinds of attitudes
00:59:05.840where we care so much about a team that we don't play for and we're not involved in it's just it's so
00:59:13.920so so you have this constant kind of in threat or encroachment and often it's in the language of
00:59:21.440it's so irrational it's so irrational to care more about you know the members of your community or
00:59:27.440your group than the whole human race right dignity is just like you you have one community and it's
00:59:35.440the human race the other rational agents persons and anytime you start conforming your behavior to
00:59:46.560a smaller community or smaller group and maybe favoring their interests over others you're
00:59:52.320considered irrational or immoral or identifying with something that doesn't make sense to identify
00:59:58.320with and so but i don't know that kind of seems like these things ring hollow i think it does say we
01:00:07.840when you're talking about the red socks but you're not on the red socks like that doesn't make any sense
01:00:12.480it's and it's and it's it's that it's it's like well but nobody has ever been convinced by that kind
01:00:21.360of reasoning i if if you understand it then you are not going to be talked out of it by somebody who
01:00:30.960is yeah it's kind of in this kind of rational robotic way trying to explain to you as if you didn't know
01:00:40.240why that you're not a member of the team you know as if this doctor didn't know that he's not a member
01:00:47.120of the prince and died it's just so it's so ridiculous that you know but yeah so i i think
01:00:54.080those things do ring hollow and i think you're right yeah but then you know even at the level of
01:00:59.040within our own culture i think all of us have some honor even whether it's dormant or not we have some
01:01:05.440sort of honor uh related virtues and attitudes that are just waiting for the right environment to grow and
01:01:12.640to flourish and to be born or reborn right i think you're right and that's why you know movies that
01:01:20.960stir you like lord of the rings or you know braveheart like like it yeah like or even like the godfather
01:01:28.960use the example of the godfather right uh like you're like yeah it's kind of bad what he's doing but i
01:01:34.720get that and i i kind of like that you respect that they're living according to their code and they're
01:01:40.480willing to take risks and they're willing to risk their life for the family for their for their
01:01:44.720community and although you don't necessarily embrace the codes uh or or exactly what it is that they're
01:01:53.760fighting for just the loyalty that they're showing and the courage is yeah we feel really nostalgic
01:02:02.000for because it's exactly the thing that's missing in our own lives is the ability to to take risks
01:02:08.560and show loyalty to a community demonstrate that kind of loyalty i mean you you have if you're in
01:02:15.600the military or at a much less kind of serious level if you're if you play sports that's one way of
01:02:22.880doing it but most people aren't either of those things they're not in the military they're not on a team
01:02:30.000they're just doing you know they're just living their lives and they don't have that kind of
01:02:37.200community or shared value structure to to but but we still you you see it just like with these movies
01:02:44.320the fact that the odyssey and the iliad that we still read them and and we still love them and the
01:02:51.520you know all the greek tragedies shakespeare plays i mean these are all just it's like our honor
01:02:57.600receptors get triggered by these things and then we go back to our regular lives not in that context
01:03:05.840anymore and it and you know it gets tamped down so that's the bridge that just needs to happen yeah
01:03:13.040well taylor this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work
01:03:17.680well so i've just developed a new web page tamler summers.com and you can see some of my publications
01:03:26.400some of the books that i've written and uh and and it's being updated but yeah that that's a good
01:03:32.400place to go and then you can follow me on twitter at tamler you can listen to my podcast so we can
01:03:40.000maybe start approaching the art of manliness and the itunes rankings get some of the little vertical
01:03:46.800honor that might come with that um it's not vertical honor i thought we decided it wasn't yeah it's not
01:03:51.920i don't know do you ever look at the rankings you have i do yeah i do but like i don't even know how
01:03:59.040they're they determine them no it's like the the especially the yeah the rankings within the
01:04:06.160categories but i guess the rankings of the episodes are more determined by downloads but the ranking i look
01:04:12.160at that yeah so do so but uh yeah so very bad wizards this is a podcast i do with david pizarro
01:04:18.560who's a cornell psychologist and it's a very informal often dirty bad language inappropriate jokes on
01:04:27.040issues in moral psychology that's awesome so you can check check out that and yeah i guess that's it
01:04:35.520cool well tamler thank you for your time it's been a pleasure yeah thank you thank you for having
01:04:40.400me it's been really fun my guest today was tamler summers he's the author of the book why honors
01:04:44.480matters available on amazon.com and bookstore everywhere you can also find more information
01:04:48.080about his work at tamler summers.com also check out his podcast very bad wizards also check out our
01:04:53.200show notes at aom.is why honor matters we can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic
01:04:58.960well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
01:05:11.520make sure check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy the podcast
01:05:15.520i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it to take one minute to give us a review on itunes
01:05:18.960or stitcher helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is