The Art of Manliness - #402： Why Honor Matters

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in today's world

00:00:19.100 honor is typically thought of in terms of integrity it's doing the right thing when

00:00:22.960 no one else is looking but traditionally honor meant having a reputation worthy of the respect

00:00:27.360 of others and if people think about this traditional type of honor these days it's usually

00:00:31.380 in a negative way associated with pistol duels honor killings and toxic shame but my guest today

00:00:36.280 argues that for moral life to be robust and vital a culture of honor is absolutely necessary his name

00:00:41.580 is tamler summers he's a professor of philosophy at the university of houston co-host of the podcast

00:00:45.420 very bad wizards and the author of the new book why honor matters today on the show tamler and i

00:00:49.960 discuss honor what it is why it disappeared from our moral ethos and vocabulary and why we should

00:00:54.560 bring it back tamler makes the case that honor culture fosters community and encourages risk

00:00:58.460 taking for the sake of excellence while our modern dignity culture atomizes us and encourages us to

00:01:03.160 play it small he then makes a counterintuitive argument that the contained aggression and

00:01:07.020 violence that honor promotes can have real benefits and shares one way honor is making a comeback in the

00:01:12.080 form of the restorative justice movement we in our conversation discussing why stories of honor are so

00:01:16.340 appealing to humans and whether it's really possible to revitalize honor in modern western society

00:01:21.100 after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash why honor matters tamler joins me now

00:01:26.260 via clearcast.io tamler summers welcome to the show thank you for having me so you just published a book

00:01:46.180 i was telling you this before the show when i got the book review copy i was so excited to see it

00:01:52.580 because you know we wrote a long in-depth series about this topic a long time ago and when i was

00:01:57.600 writing it i was just there's nothing on this topic out there your book why honor matters let's define

00:02:04.900 honor because i think it's one of those words that gets thrown around a lot but i don't think a lot of

00:02:11.600 modern folks really know how to define or describe it or if they if you ask them like what is honor

00:02:17.960 they'll usually give a definition that means like integrity right living according to your own

00:02:22.800 personal values but that's that's not what honor is so walk us through what is honor and sort of what

00:02:29.360 are the you know the founding fathers said when they swore upon their sacred honor or what achilles

00:02:34.640 talked about when he talked about his honor well i think i'm one of those people who has a hard time

00:02:39.260 defining honor and you know in spite of having written a book about it but part of the problem

00:02:46.220 with it is it is a word that's kind of an umbrella term that applies to so many different things so

00:02:53.900 many different kinds of you know it can be an adjective to honor somebody it can you you call judges

00:03:01.620 your honor you know there's honor it can be a verb honor thy father and mother you know but i i think

00:03:08.820 one of the helpful things if you look at some of the anthropology and some of the work that's

00:03:14.000 written about it is this distinction which you talk about on your blog actually and i would point

00:03:19.100 listeners who aren't familiar with that series that you did because you did it a while back right it was a

00:03:24.800 few years ago yeah 2013 yeah so you talk about this distinction that frank stewart introduced between

00:03:32.280 horizontal and vertical and vertical honor and that's i think a helpful way of sort of pinning down how

00:03:39.880 what honor is and how it's essentially tied to being in a group so so let me just talk about that

00:03:49.160 horizontal honor is it's it's it means if you have horizontal honor that you're entitled to a level of

00:04:00.580 respect or respect or esteem just by virtue of belonging to an honor group and honor groups vary

00:04:09.640 there's so many different kinds of honor groups but when you're in an honor group just belonging to it

00:04:16.380 just being a member of it entitles you to a certain degree of respect or esteem so for example being a

00:04:24.160 made man in the mafia you just just for being a made man you get a bunch of privileges within that

00:04:33.140 structure the people in the community have to treat you with a kind of respect or diff or deference

00:04:40.120 now i'm taking this from the movie donnie brasco but i guess you get called a friend of ours rather than a

00:04:46.860 friend of mine and you definitely don't pay for drinks or dinners and you know importantly and this

00:04:53.620 is this is in the research on the mafia once you're a made man other mafiosi can't steal from you they're

00:05:01.720 not allowed to assault you they're not allowed to hit on your wives or girlfriends and that's just

00:05:07.220 because it's not for anything that you've done it's just because you're a made man in the mafia

00:05:14.180 so that's the kind of the defining feature of horizontal honor is that it is distributed equally

00:05:22.080 to all group members just because they belong to a group it's not tied to a specific action

00:05:31.060 or your actions or your achievements right so when we say your honor to judges we say that just because

00:05:39.880 they're judges not because oh that was a that was a great decision that you handed down or that you

00:05:46.340 wrote that was a great verdict it's just unless they get disbarred or they retire they're just

00:05:53.760 entitled to this form of respect and and uniform military who some airlines allowed to board a plane

00:06:00.920 early and will often say thank you for your service again we don't know what they've done

00:06:06.620 to serve our country but just by virtue of belonging to the military we think they're entitled to that

00:06:13.140 a degree of respect so that's horizontal honor the kind of honor you get from just from belonging to a

00:06:20.240 group vertical honor is kind of the flip side of that vertical honor is the thing that you compete for

00:06:28.180 once you're in the honor group and vertical honor unlike horizontal honor can't be distributed equally

00:06:37.240 among the group members because that's how you move up and down in the hierarchy is based on how much

00:06:46.640 vertical honor you either have or lose within the group and you have it or lose it through your actions

00:06:54.560 and through your achievements and sometimes you know these your your status either going up or going down

00:07:04.160 sometimes that's formal like with rank in the military sometimes it's more informal you know being

00:07:13.340 this is an example i use in the book being the comics comic like there's within the stand-up community

00:07:20.500 there are comics that are known as it's just this kind of informal title you're the comics comic you make

00:07:29.220 even the comics laugh right and that's kind of an honor that's an honorable position to hold not that you

00:07:37.680 get any money for it not that you get any kind of official recognition that's just how you're known and how

00:07:44.520 people will treat you in a certain way because for the moment at least you are the comics comic or like

00:07:52.800 we both do podcasts right and unfortunately for me your podcast is ranked higher in the itunes rankings

00:08:02.980 than our podcast so right now for the moment we're coming at you but right now you have more vertical

00:08:11.640 honor as a podcaster than we do well maybe i don't maybe because like it's people outside the group of

00:08:18.500 podcasters who are determining that that vertical so like maybe it's like it's not vertical honor right

00:08:25.200 am i the podcaster's podcaster yeah no that's actually a good point in fact are you the podcaster's

00:08:30.740 but we don't really know have podcaster's podcasters yeah you're right it's too diffuse a community

00:08:37.080 really and it's so spread out and you know there are these famous podcasts that i've never heard of

00:08:43.360 even 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

00:08:49.960 it's actually a a really good point that when things are too anonymous and there's no way of really kind

00:09:00.260 of allocating this form of respect then the honor structure disintegrates and there really isn't one

00:09:09.160 for podcasting no pod no honor amongst podcasters no honor right exactly i guess there are ceremonies

00:09:16.640 and stuff right like awards but yeah it's sort of self-congratulatory but i guess that's what

00:09:22.800 honor like vertical honor is it's self-congratulatory you're you're honoring what the values that you guys

00:09:28.640 in that horizontal group honor yes exactly and it's not i mean to say that it's self-congratulatory

00:09:35.600 it makes it almost sound a little petty but it certainly doesn't have to be if you're

00:09:40.480 you know you're the captain of a of a hockey team or something like that that's really you know people

00:09:47.180 really respect that and and and what you did to earn that title and you know it's not something that

00:09:57.320 the person just tried to do so that that the player so that he could put on his resume or something like

00:10:04.440 that you know it's something that means a lot it's just a part of their identity so just to recap so

00:10:11.020 like honor is about group right that's important that's an important aspect because uh and we'll talk

00:10:16.220 about why that's important here in a bit honors about group you really you're i mean in a way you

00:10:21.400 own your honor but you don't right like it's dependent upon other people as well recognizing

00:10:26.440 your yes your honor it's about respect and then you can have honor within a group and just by being

00:10:34.720 a member of the group but then you can get more vertical honor by doing certain things let's talk

00:10:39.120 about you talk about there's certain rights and privileges that come with being part of an honor

00:10:44.960 group and having that honor but there's also responsibilities yeah what are some examples and what

00:10:50.180 happens if you don't live up to those responsibilities yeah so once you're in an honor group you have

00:10:56.100 a certain set of responsibilities you know maybe so if you're to go back to the mafia example

00:11:04.300 if if you're a made man in the mafia now you have to you're bound by the omerta value you're not allowed

00:11:12.200 to cooperate with the authorities and if you do that's one of the ways you can get kicked out of

00:11:19.280 the honor group you are bound to pay certain amounts of money to people who are higher up than you

00:11:29.740 in the mafia structure and if you don't do that you'll lose vertical honor and if you and and at a

00:11:38.220 certain point you can get booted out of the the group if if you don't live up to your responsibilities

00:11:46.100 and and i think this is one of the this is one of the sort of misconceptions people kind of think of

00:11:51.640 it of belonging to an honor group as just these unearned privileges especially when they're talking

00:11:57.080 about horizontal honor but they're not unearned in the sense that often it comes with certain burdens

00:12:05.080 burdens of hospitality burdens of taking risks in defense of your group even being willing to sacrifice

00:12:12.840 your life i mean think of the navy seals and the kind if you belong to the a unit in the navy seals

00:12:19.280 you are bound never to leave one of your fellow officers in in in the field even if they're dead

00:12:28.940 you're not allowed to leave them on the battlefield without bringing them back and that's an obligation

00:12:34.120 that you get because you are bound by the code of that honor group and you need this kind of shared

00:12:44.600 code this shared commitment the shared value system in order both to allocate vertical honor within the

00:12:54.360 group and to know when someone haven't hasn't lived up to their minimal responsibilities to even have the

00:13:01.760 horizontal honor and you also need it as a way to motivate people to to sacrifice in such a way that

00:13:10.620 they're able to live up to their responsibilities and in some case exceed go above and beyond the call of

00:13:17.300 duty and that's where the role of shame comes in that's one of the critiques people often give

00:13:21.600 towards honor cultures that oh there's this toxic shame but you know shame can actually be a strong

00:13:28.200 motivator to get you to do you know this hold up to your obligations that you have for being part of

00:13:33.340 that group yeah and you know shame has can have its downsides but i think we're all learning right now

00:13:42.580 what what happens when you have a culture of shamelessness i mean you know one of the almost

00:13:51.540 funny things about trump is how little shame he has about just flagrantly lying or misleading

00:13:59.000 the the public right i mean he he will this is this is a guy that is not burdened by that feeling of

00:14:10.480 shame for better and for worse i mean in my view mostly for worse but or you know another example is in

00:14:17.000 the book the banking crisis that was caused by a lot of people who afterwards just refused to take

00:14:24.680 any responsibility for what they had done to the entire country and there was no structure really

00:14:31.500 in place to to shame them into not into you know or or or punish them or lower the amount of respect

00:14:44.260 that they were getting within their own communities and and and and so it has a real downside when

00:14:51.140 there's no there's no set of principles that when you fail to live up to them you will feel shame and

00:14:59.160 you will be shamed by others well let's talk about you know why this sort of you know you can be shameless

00:15:06.320 today you know for you know from a lot of for many centuries honor was sort of the guiding moral paradigm

00:15:12.480 for people living in the west but now it's not anymore why is that what changed well as we were

00:15:19.460 saying before honor needs a group honor as a value system needs a group to function it is essentially

00:15:28.160 social and it cannot exist for individuals in isolation so for the whole motivational and ethical

00:15:38.340 structure to work you need a collection of people that know each other and that are bound by a shared

00:15:46.980 set of principles and values again you need this shared set of values because that's how honor is allocated

00:15:55.280 within the group but you know in the last few hundred years in the modern world and especially in the west

00:16:04.100 these communities these societies were growing much bigger and crucially much more anonymous and so

00:16:13.260 the currency of honor whether you're you receive honor or dishonor that gets devalued because nobody really

00:16:21.820 knows who you are to begin with right i mean i i was thinking about this just the other day how rare it is

00:16:33.460 that i interact with somebody that knows who i am that has the slightest clue who i am what i've done

00:16:41.300 the good things that i've done the bad things that i've done i mean in 90 of my day-to-day interactions

00:16:48.340 that 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

00:16:55.800 just you know when i'm not at home and honor needs people who care about their reputation and their

00:17:05.240 status within a community but if you don't have that community and nobody knows what your reputation

00:17:10.600 is well then the whole motivational engine that drives behavior in honor cultures is stripped away

00:17:19.000 so that's one side of it is just society is getting bigger and more anonymous the other side of it is

00:17:27.960 is ethical and one of the downsides it's undeniable that one of the downsides of some honor cultures

00:17:36.520 is that there is a kind of oppressive structure that imposes restrictions not just on a person's

00:17:49.000 a person's role and behavior but on what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do

00:17:55.320 so like in some cultures girls are prohibited from getting an education right because that's not deemed 1.00

00:18:03.800 a proper role and to sort of find out who you are and what your values are you need to to be able to get

00:18:12.680 an education people do want people have a desire to shape their own identity and they have a resistance

00:18:22.520 to being assigned a certain kind of role in life and i think the morality of dignity which is a morality

00:18:32.920 that is centrally focused on protecting individual rights and expanding individual freedom

00:18:42.280 autonomy that reflects that sort of aversion to honor culture is kind of telling me who i am what i can do

00:18:56.120 what i can't do and you know i mean it's so complicated but that in conjunction with free market capitalism

00:19:05.160 and it all sort of led to honor being downplayed both as a kind of an ethical set of an ethical value system

00:19:15.880 and also as something that can even function to motivate behavior and to shape people's attitudes

00:19:26.440 well let's talk about the ethics of you know contrasting honor and dignity culture so dignity it's all about

00:19:33.880 the the the individual the worth of the individual you have value worth because you're a human being you

00:19:39.400 exist so how does dignity culture motivate individuals to do the right thing or how do they even determine

00:19:46.680 what's the right thing like with honor like each group had its little code and the way they enforced

00:19:52.120 that was through shame and also giving you know vertical honor you know to to be excellent at the code

00:19:58.600 what is what's dignity culture how does dignity culture figure out what's right and wrong and then how do they

00:20:04.720 either enforce or motivate the those ethical behaviors yeah i mean so this is one of the problems of dignity cultures and

00:20:11.860 it's a big one that because it focuses on individual rights and autonomy and respecting people's autonomy respecting their

00:20:23.600 personhood it's mostly if not exclusively just telling us what not to do don't violate their rights don't

00:20:33.520 infringe their autonomy but it but both at a again at a theoretical and i think even more importantly in a

00:20:40.080 motivational level it doesn't really have anything in place to get people to perform acts of positive virtue

00:20:48.960 you know when you say do the right thing dignity is much more focused on getting people not to do the

00:20:55.200 wrong thing not on doing the right thing so um there's there's nothing you know

00:21:05.040 something like acts of courage acts of risk taking dignity just doesn't have much to say about that

00:21:11.920 because to not take risks or to not to not be brave doesn't off most of the time doesn't violate

00:21:19.920 anybody's rights it doesn't infringe on anybody's autonomy now we're honor cultures and the norms of

00:21:28.800 honor cultures one of the one of the guiding sort of principles that seems that most of them have in

00:21:36.160 common is that they attach great positive value to acts of courage that benefit the group and that

00:21:43.360 and they have a whole set of norms that encourage bravery and strongly discourage being a coward i mean

00:21:52.800 if you're a coward in an honor culture your status goes down but dignity has nothing like that and even

00:21:58.160 at the level of the morality of it there's nothing really wrong with being a coward that the ethics of

00:22:04.560 dignity doesn't really have any attach any negative value to that and i think that's led to one of the

00:22:13.520 most frustrating things for me about modern life is how risk averse we are as a culture and we don't have

00:22:21.600 a moral language to try to change that and i give a bunch of examples of this in the book and like what i

00:22:28.640 call my cranky chapter the chapter where i start about all the things that are wrong when we have

00:22:36.400 rejected honor to such a degree right like making bike helmets you have to wear a bike helmet now when

00:22:42.880 you ride a bike because you're gonna fall off and crack your skull open i know that's yeah that's a

00:22:49.680 huge pet peeve of mine i have to say though i i feel like i'm winning that at least here in houston it

00:22:56.560 does seem like the tide is turning against bicycle helmets well yeah and i think i mean it actually

00:23:02.240 i think it doesn't say something like bike helmets actually make you less safe right like because

00:23:07.280 drivers see you're wearing a bike helmet so they drive closer to you and then because you're wearing

00:23:11.760 a bike helmet you you think you're safe so you're able you do dumb things but when you're not wearing

00:23:16.720 a bike helmet right you have to be more careful pay more attention and the drivers treat you like

00:23:23.680 they they stay further away yeah i mean there are some studies i mean that's the ultimate irony of

00:23:29.040 this and and of many of these cases is that the actual risk is so minuscule or maybe in this case

00:23:35.840 non-existent that but but i don't even rely i i try not to rely on those kinds of studies because that

00:23:43.360 just plays their game exactly you know what i mean uh right i don't i don't even like i it's fine if

00:23:50.160 it adds a little risk to your life so let's talk some more about honor because you have this whole

00:23:55.920 chapter one one aspect that's often attributed to honor or people think go hand in hand is

00:24:01.360 aggression and violence you make a kind of an interesting case you know sort of dignity cultures

00:24:07.520 say oh aggression and violence is bad because that violates the rights of others so you avoid it

00:24:14.080 but you make the case that actually no aggression and sometimes violence can actually be good and

00:24:19.760 virtuous and bring communities close together so walk us through that uh counterintuitive argument

00:24:25.920 yeah i mean so under in certain conditions and i and the condition that i focus on in the book is when

00:24:36.720 the violence is contained when the threat of escalation is contained then violence

00:24:47.280 can well there's a couple of things it can be a safe way to release pent-up aggression that has been

00:24:58.480 building up that kind of resentment and bad feeling and then it's a way it's a kind of release for

00:25:05.600 that it can also be a way to prove your courage right prove that they and prove the fact that you'll

00:25:13.200 stand up for yourself prove uh show demonstrate the self-respect that you have it can be it can show your

00:25:22.160 loyalty like to your friends so one of the examples i use is this bar fight culture in lafayette louisiana

00:25:31.200 and you know that that there's an honor code that guy that these people if they get insulted they

00:25:38.160 get into fights outside the bar and the the basic core principles are just honor principles stand up for

00:25:47.280 yourself stand up for your friends and um and they have in that case informally certain sets of constraints and

00:25:57.360 boundaries to keep the violence for from getting out of hand they you know once the fight is over once

00:26:02.800 the person can no longer defend themselves if you still go at the person at that point it becomes

00:26:08.800 dishonorable so that's now like once you win it's over it's also dishonorable to fight somebody who you 0.70

00:26:16.400 know you can beat right this is a thing that saved my ass number of times because i was a talker in the 0.82

00:26:23.520 bars when i was younger but i couldn't i can't fight you know like i anybody who would almost 0.96

00:26:30.720 certainly have kicked my ass but like sometimes because especially when i was younger and i looked 0.94

00:26:36.640 even younger i off like up till i was 25 i looked like i was still in high school people would just be 0.98

00:26:42.240 people would just say you know all right because it just it wouldn't have been honorable to to fight me

00:26:49.440 so so they have all these built-in kinds of constraints fair fight equal numbers and it is

00:26:56.480 a way to prove their self-respect and loyalty to their friends and to kind of enforce and clarify

00:27:05.040 certain boundaries i talk a lot about this book by elijah anderson about the inner city neighborhoods

00:27:12.400 in philadelphia and how fighting there even among friends can be ways to kind of prove your worth

00:27:19.120 and also again to establish norms and boundaries within a friendship what you're allowed to say

00:27:26.560 what you're not allowed to say and then you know maybe the best example is or the one i go into the

00:27:33.440 most detail is the nhl in hockey where fights are again a way of bringing the team together building

00:27:42.640 solidarity within the team but also a way to keep people from engaging in really because it's such an

00:27:52.480 inherently violent game so taking cheap shots that could either take out your star scorer for for a series

00:28:01.760 or for the season or for their career there's this sort of established informal code in place that allows

00:28:09.840 people to stand up for their teammates when someone takes a cheap shot at them or to you know if if

00:28:19.440 the team is frustrated because they're getting destroyed to allow them to take out some of that

00:28:27.280 frustration in a relatively safe way and again there there's this built-in form of containment there's

00:28:34.000 the hockey officials who are these master psychologists kind of trying to figure out exactly when a fight

00:28:40.800 should happen shouldn't happen when to stop it when to let it go and you know at a at a larger level

00:28:48.080 the league office so that if brawls get completely out of control then they can step in and and prevent

00:28:55.520 them right so i mean it's something without that honor culture the culture of honor violence sounds like it 0.95

00:29:01.040 could escalate like people just go right to i'm just going to kill you and annihilate you because i mean 0.83

00:29:06.720 like you know if the individual is the highest thing and you know a dignity culture the worst thing 0.99

00:29:11.440 you do to somebody is just kill them right like just take away their identity is that is that you think

00:29:17.120 that's what's happening now or am i reading too much into that so it's funny because this is something i'm

00:29:24.880 working on hopefully with in in the new york times but that was the thing that that they are that they

00:29:32.080 were trying to press me is does low-level violence actually prevent lethal violence or greater violence

00:29:39.520 and i and i was thinking about that and trying to think if i could honestly say that low-level violence

00:29:44.800 actively prevents more lethal violence and i'm not sure that i can say that well certainly sometimes

00:29:53.840 low-level violence does escalate into into lethal violence and so right there's definitely going to

00:30:01.600 be a lot of cases where so so i think what the the claim that i that i will that i feel confident about

00:30:11.520 is that low-level violence when constrained by the right kind of honor codes or by something else

00:30:19.200 can definitely be a safe way of releasing aggression and preventing further harm but sometimes you do need

00:30:28.560 forms of containment in place that don't come from the specific honor culture so one example that i talk

00:30:37.120 about in the book is gangs in urban america they used to settle their disagreements with fists they had a lot of

00:30:48.880 beefs but the beefs would end in fist fights rather than gun fights but then all of a sudden guns came

00:30:55.600 into the picture and so a lot of those beefs would escalate into in into gun fights and you had uh you

00:31:03.680 know skyrocketing murder rates and the best programs the best policing programs of a way of containing it it

00:31:12.240 does come from outside so it's not part of the honor code but what it does is it just takes the guns out

00:31:20.960 of the picture it doesn't stop them from engaging in their in their activities it just means that when

00:31:28.480 violence occurs guns can't be involved so if you take that out of the picture then some of the the good

00:31:36.960 stuff that comes from violence the way of proving respect the way of earning respect even often from

00:31:44.240 your opponent right like if i ever did get into a fight and i would lose it even as a loser you get

00:31:52.080 respect just because you showed a little heart right and so some of the good stuff can come without where

00:31:58.880 it and when when the threat of actually dying or getting seriously hurt is taken out of the picture

00:32:07.040 and you know this guy david kennedy who who who who instituted this program in boston and has been

00:32:14.320 trying the group violence intervention it's been trying to institute it all over the country and has

00:32:19.120 had great success when it's allowed to be implemented properly he tells this story in his book don't shoot

00:32:26.720 about in boston where they cut homicides by more than half in one year through this program the the

00:32:36.320 marker of success was when one of the cops came in and he was like singing practically he was so happy

00:32:43.440 he said i just saw a fist fight i haven't seen a fist fight in years that was the sign that the strategy

00:32:50.480 was a success well another point you make about dignity culture when it comes to violence is that

00:32:55.680 dignity cultures don't have a good response to when violence is being done to you or you're oppressed

00:33:03.200 but honor culture does yeah so honor culture encourages i mean like i would say the core as i understand it

00:33:12.960 the core principle in an honor culture both at the level of the individual and your group is stand up for

00:33:20.080 yourself stand up for your group handle your business and so dignity cultures don't have that now obviously

00:33:31.600 if somebody is assaulted or threatened their rights have been violated so what a dignity culture does is

00:33:37.280 they find ways to punish you or lock you up or put you away whereas honor cultures encourage the people

00:33:44.640 involved to sort out their own conflicts and they this isn't just through acts of violence and acts of

00:33:54.560 revenge they have structures in place to mediate conflicts and because you know especially if you're talking

00:34:03.200 about within group disagreements a real feud will disrupt the harmony of the group and even a feud with other

00:34:12.800 other 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

00:34:24.800 kind 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

00:34:38.800 face 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

00:34:50.800 and these often have the special benefit of bringing communities closer together just because conflicts are exciting and people and and

00:35:00.800 and people have opinions about it and this is how norms get shaped and and further clarified

00:35:07.840 is through these uh sessions these kind of media this mediation process

00:35:14.800 of conflicts and that's that's exactly what we've lost in our culture i mean if you look at our legal system

00:35:22.560 and then you look at some you know how conflicts get sorted out in in uh smaller honor cultures

00:35:32.480 it couldn't be more different one is completely bureaucratic alienating to both the victim and the offender

00:35:41.040 and it just keeps them it keeps them entirely sort of separate from each other and the other actually allows

00:35:48.480 them to learn about each other to learn what they did and how it feels and what they can do to take

00:35:57.360 responsibility and make it up to them yeah i mean i thought that your your chapters you kind of talk

00:36:02.480 about how honor you injecting honor back into our jurisprudence might have a lot of benefits because

00:36:10.400 the dignity culture like as you said like the when you're a victim when the state brings a case against

00:36:16.080 the perpetrator it's they're not bringing it on behalf of you right it's on behalf of the state

00:36:21.200 the people i mean why do you think that idea of you know a third party enforcing the law

00:36:30.080 has you say you know it's maybe it's contributed you know the united states have one of the largest

00:36:34.480 prisoner populations in the world how has dignity culture the jurisprudence that's come out of dignity

00:36:39.600 culture contributed to that you think yeah i mean this is the chapter it's a like this is

00:36:44.800 chapter six in the book it's probably the thing that i'm most proud of most excited to pursue in

00:36:51.280 further research and and it's related to a lot of my early work on responsibility and free will i think

00:37:01.360 that and there and there's so many elements to how rejection of honor and honor values has led to what

00:37:10.640 what i think is maybe the greatest moral ill of our society mass incarceration and so there's at the

00:37:20.400 practical level there's again this resistance to violence of all kinds like any act of violence is

00:37:27.600 considered a a violation of rights and so it has to be punished and so this is how you have like

00:37:35.680 zero tolerance policies for fighting in schools you you fight you get expelled or you get suspended

00:37:42.400 and that's led to the school to prison pipeline and then you had all these you know violence shoots

00:37:48.720 up starting in the mid 60s you know through the 90s and all of a sudden there's harsher sentences and

00:37:55.120 three strikes and you're out and a ballooning prison population as a result of this attitude towards

00:38:01.680 sentencing for violent crimes so at the practical level just when you become so scared of violence and

00:38:10.080 so concerned for the safety of individuals who aren't violating other people's rights then the only way to

00:38:17.680 handle the fact the inevitable violent conflict is by diverting the violence into prisons rather than

00:38:25.600 you know letting mostly affluent citizens have to take a little risk that they might be a victim to

00:38:33.600 it and then at a theoretical level this is where i think it's the biggest fraud that the morality of

00:38:42.480 dignity has kind of perpetuated so you know punishment itself is a violation of someone's rights you're

00:38:51.600 you're kidnapping them you're putting them in in a prison in some cases even killing them and so they

00:38:58.080 have to figure out like why that's okay that they do it and so they come up with this framework the this

00:39:05.440 ideal of blind and impartial justice that punishes people criminals according to their culpability

00:39:16.160 right according to the severity of their crime and the level of the degree of blame worthiness that

00:39:24.080 they had for committing it you see this in all these supreme court rulings that is the guiding principle

00:39:31.360 criminals once you're talking about uh once you're in not a civil case but a criminal case

00:39:38.400 they have to be punished according to their culpability and people of equal culpability

00:39:43.520 have to get the same punishment and that whole system that whole uh framework is just built on both

00:39:54.800 empirically false and incoherent ideas about autonomy and responsibility and it by definition excludes the

00:40:07.680 victim the victim the victim just becomes a vessel to determine how severe the wrongdoing was but their

00:40:16.080 interests their desires their needs all of that is considered completely irrelevant to the criminal's

00:40:23.680 culpability because most of the time criminals don't know their victims and so they don't know how much harm

00:40:30.640 the victim will experience through their crime or how much you know what the victim wants afterwards

00:40:38.160 all that stuff doesn't play into assaulting them or mugging them or robbing their house or whatever it is

00:40:45.120 and so the victim is now removed for the from the equation and and and very often doesn't want to be

00:40:52.800 removed for the equation and then for some reason once you cross that civil that line from civil

00:41:00.320 case to criminal case now it becomes the people or the state versus the criminal rather than the

00:41:07.280 victim but there's no justification for that it's a totally arbitrary line to draw and there's no

00:41:14.160 justification for matching punishments to degrees of culpability the whole thing is is based on an

00:41:22.720 on an illusion at both a practical level and especially a theoretical level and the tragedy of it is that

00:41:30.000 it's had massive practical uh it's caused so much suffering and so much injustice and you know the in the in

00:41:41.520 that chapter there's this movement called restorative justice which i think is one of the most exciting new

00:41:47.920 movements in criminal justice reform and i and it really is the it's not i don't know how explicitly it

00:41:57.680 embraces this but it's modeled on the way honor cultures handle conflict they bring the parties the

00:42:06.480 people who were uh the people who were affected by the crime the people who were involved in it it brings them

00:42:14.400 together and it just says how can we make this right how can so this somebody was wronged let's try

00:42:23.200 to come up with a solution and that solution may involve punishment it may involve prison time um or it may

00:42:29.360 involve some kind of restitution um but it allows them to meet face to face and hash out what happened

00:42:38.080 the harm that was committed and how the offender can take responsibility and try to and try to do

00:42:46.560 something to to make it to make it better to make up for it to atone for it and it's it's fine people

00:42:56.640 think of restorative justice as this kind of hippy dippy hug it out approach to justice but i think it has at

00:43:05.600 its core these really strong honor principles honor related virtues of i handle my i'm looking my

00:43:15.840 offender in the face and i'm telling them what they did and i'm telling them what i want them to do

00:43:21.120 and as the offender you actually have to like really face at an emotional level what it was what harm it was

00:43:28.880 that you called you caused and when you look at these when you just witness them the these sessions

00:43:36.480 you really see people from completely different walks of life learning to understand each other and

00:43:42.240 learning to understand their own attitudes and behaviors at such a deep level and so it's such a win-win

00:43:50.560 and uh and yet the it violates so much of this illusory framework that we've set up especially

00:44:00.960 at the criminal in the criminal at the criminal level at the adult criminal level that there's so

00:44:06.720 many obstacles to implementing it and it's just sad that as i try to show and i will continue to try to

00:44:13.600 show the obstacles aren't based on anything real they're just based on what we this this blind

00:44:20.400 impartial justice ideal that can't be defended uh and at um both either theoretically or practically

00:44:28.480 so so yeah that's a long-winded way you you could get me talking about this for hours because this is

00:44:34.560 the thing like buy stock and restorative justice it's already spreading through the schools and that's

00:44:39.760 great and it's had a really huge positive impact reducing suspensions people are starting to use

00:44:45.360 it in juvenile courts and the but the real barrier is once you get to adult criminal courts this

00:44:52.880 restorative justice movement like how do you you know we talked about honor he sort of borrows from

00:44:58.320 honor in a way but like how do you develop like that shared group honor code like do people just kind

00:45:04.960 of you know step up to the plate like they they intuitively have that honor code of like

00:45:09.600 what it means to be a member a good member of the community and like when they're confronted with

00:45:13.920 it they they own up to it well i mean the the way these things work both in honor cultures and

00:45:19.680 restorative justice is you have to have a skilled kind of mediator but one that is known to not

00:45:27.280 somebody who's anonymous not somebody who's completely impartial but someone who's part of the community

00:45:32.720 that guides the discussion right and so like if you look at it in schools for example there are people

00:45:42.800 um either one person depending on how big it is or a group of people that that run the sessions and

00:45:50.400 you know with school is a small enough community where you know these these are the values of our school

00:45:56.320 this is how you violate them how can we make this right but there's no single punishment there it

00:46:04.080 will always depend on the particularities of that conflict so it's so flexible you know like every conflict

00:46:11.440 is different and so these kinds of sessions allow the participants in the conflict the people involved

00:46:20.400 to to to get at and to address every particularity of what it was they experienced and and none of that

00:46:29.760 could be specified in advance some of it is even even a known but you do have that person that mediator who

00:46:38.640 is guiding the discussion and is you know in this case a kind of form of containment where you know if

00:46:45.680 it starts to go bad they'll stop the session and then they'll go to more you know traditional

00:46:52.240 disciplinary approaches but you know also there's the kind of informal that there are other people

00:47:00.960 that attend these sessions and they get to see how this has worked out and so just knowing that other

00:47:08.080 people are actually watching you and judging you to some degree by how you handle yourself that that has

00:47:15.200 that can have a huge positive effect and it can be a strong kind of communal feeling because everybody's

00:47:21.040 there to support each other so yeah that was another point i loved about that you made in the

00:47:25.600 book was that compared to dignity culture honor culture actually allows a lot of flexibility in

00:47:32.480 either morality or jurisprudence and by flexibility i mean that in like in a positive way it allows it

00:47:37.280 can adapt to different circumstances yeah i mean i think that honor is based in fact it's not based on

00:47:46.720 some sort of idealized version of what you want society to be if you look at those sort of philosophical

00:47:53.760 kind of the political theories that have dominated in the 20th century and still dominate today they're

00:48:00.400 they're idealized i mean this goes all the way back to lock and hobbes right you're not talking about

00:48:05.920 real people in real situations you're talking about how people would be if they were rational you know

00:48:11.840 if your role is behind a veil of ignorance what would their desires be what principles would they

00:48:18.480 choose to adopt and honor just doesn't doesn't do any of that right it is about the facts on the ground

00:48:28.080 and it can adapt honor honor norms honor values are continually evolving to meet the challenges of

00:48:38.000 the whatever environment they're facing and they don't have some kind of ideal that that is again kind of

00:48:47.280 impossible to live up to and also not even necessarily coherent that stands in the way of

00:48:54.720 the the real challenges and the very diverse challenges that any community will face so they're not 1.00

00:49:05.760 burdened by this kind of philosophical baggage that idealized systems of morality will impose on people

00:49:16.320 so you know there are as you mentioned throughout the book and through our conversation there are

00:49:20.160 downsides to honor if it goes if it runs amok yes right sure violence revenge like you know shaming

00:49:28.640 that's just you know goes beyond what's necessary so how do you bring back honor i think you've kind

00:49:34.720 of talked about with restorative justice movement but how do you bring back honor but contain it

00:49:38.880 so it doesn't so we can get the benefits without as many of the downsides because again you can't

00:49:43.120 eliminate all the downsides because then you wouldn't have honor because that's what a dignity culture

00:49:46.320 would try to do let's make let's make honor safe yeah but but like so safe that it ends up

00:49:54.800 disintegrating um because you won't tolerate just a single exception to whatever yeah no so i i but but i i

00:50:04.240 want to because i've really just been singing honors praises in this i want to acknowledge the downside of

00:50:11.920 it and i in the last chapter of the book i separated into two kinds of categories these this is the two

00:50:20.320 problems with honor that are just inherent with in the value system the first is the threat of escalation

00:50:31.040 so when you have these conflicts and because there's this guiding code to always stand up for yourself and to

00:50:38.320 always respond to challenges this can lead to escalating feuds long-running cycles of violence

00:50:47.280 and 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

00:50:53.920 hatfields and mccoys the palestinians and the israelis gang wars this is catholics protestants yes

00:51:01.920 exactly right so so so so that's something that needs to be contained and then at even maybe a deeper

00:51:10.800 level i think honor doesn't really place any restrictions on the content of the norms for

00:51:20.880 allocating honor so there's nothing within honor that will prevent really abhorrent values

00:51:31.920 from governing who gets honor and who gets dishonored and this is how something like honor killings happen

00:51:39.600 right so if you have a value system that thinks that any woman who has had extramarital sex 1.00

00:51:50.560 deserves to die and that if she doesn't the family will be shamed within the community

00:51:58.240 then there's nothing built in to honor to prevent that from being the guiding norm right so i do think for 0.99

00:52:07.920 all the shit talking i'm doing about rights-based moralities that enforcing a kind of minimal set of 0.78

00:52:15.840 rights is crucial for allowing honor to work its magic without without having some of the downsides that 0.94

00:52:25.440 that honor can bring so i do think that whatever sort of system in place there has to be if the honor

00:52:33.840 group goes outside just respecting basic human rights then at that point i think it needs to be

00:52:41.440 be controlled or contained maybe even by an outside party hopefully it could be controlled or contained

00:52:50.000 by structures that are already within the honor group because honor groups have such a resistance to

00:52:55.600 outside interference but if not then i think it does then you do need some sort of minimal enforcement of

00:53:04.080 basic human rights and some way of trying to encourage honor groups to embrace better norms

00:53:13.360 for allocating honor and shame and and dishonor and so forth and then you know i think an easier

00:53:21.680 problem although it's practically can be thorny as hell is containing the threat of escalation but i think

00:53:29.600 that david kennedy program that i talked about where you know they allow the the gangs to to do their

00:53:39.200 business for the most part but whenever gun violence happens then they crack down like crazy on on the whole

00:53:48.000 community right so so all they're saying is no guns just do your do your what do what you're going to do

00:53:56.880 but anytime if if you bring guns into the picture then we're coming down hard we're punishing every

00:54:02.240 marijuana sale we're punishing every any any bit of violence any once you sort of cross that line

00:54:09.200 then your whole community suffers and that encourages like it a i think helps to shape the norms now all of

00:54:16.960 a sudden it's not going to be honorable to gun down some guy you're beefing with and because now you're

00:54:24.560 hurting the whole community by doing that and it also allows people to i think do it prevents the kind

00:54:32.480 of arms race that can sometimes happen with in honor groups where now you're carrying guns and you're

00:54:39.760 and you're shooting people just to show just to prove that you can't be messed with all of that gets taken

00:54:47.920 care of but it requires this kind of outside form of containment on what level of violence is going

00:54:58.640 to be tolerated i mean there are other really good policing or community organizations that deal with

00:55:05.760 gang violence in a different way and really encourage strong forms of mediation bringing in former gang

00:55:12.240 leaders i talk about those two but i i i think as a better example of containment of the threat of escalation

00:55:22.160 that you know the ceasefire project are now called group violence intervention is a great example of that

00:55:28.960 okay this is great so i mean are you are you uh positive are you bullish on honor making a comeback

00:55:35.280 or do you think it's going to be an uphill battle i think it's definitely going to be an uphill battle

00:55:41.680 i'm bullish on restorative justice i think i've made that clear i i buy you know put all your money in that

00:55:49.680 but i the challenges that honor faces especially at you know in in a society like ours which is

00:56:01.280 so big and now so polarized and there's so many diverse ways that we get our our news and just

00:56:11.600 are you know like we're told from so many different sources what to think there seems like there's less

00:56:18.160 and less common ground in terms of the values to accept than there ever was now i don't know maybe

00:56:24.240 that's not true maybe in the 60s and 70s there was just as little you know and i wasn't around then

00:56:31.280 but but yeah so i mean i i think just the hugeness of american society and and modern society in general

00:56:40.400 and the anonymity makes it it makes it a struggle or a challenge at at least a kind of national level

00:56:48.960 but i think you know when you narrow the community then i think the honor sort of naturally emerges

00:56:57.920 when you narrow the focus what kind of groups are we talking about are we talking about sports teams

00:57:03.040 are we talking about a university or college talking about a school then some of these honor values i think

00:57:09.920 can make a comeback and we don't even have to do that much because you know honor once you're in

00:57:18.720 a this kind of small group where you do have shared values i think these honor related attitudes tend to

00:57:26.640 emerge without doing much i mean you see this in sports all the time and sometimes it's the coach

00:57:34.160 trying to instill this set of honor values but often it's just these things organically emerging

00:57:40.560 as a way of adapting to the specific context or the specific environment that people are in so at that

00:57:48.720 level i am more bullish about honor making a comeback it's it's it's almost like it's it's not

00:57:55.760 even necessarily a comeback because it's kind of already there in a lot of these smaller communities

00:58:00.960 right but i think you do see dignity culture trying to even get a toe in on those little

00:58:06.720 smaller communities that's right sort of these outside forces saying here are these rules these

00:58:11.440 regulations you don't do this don't do that and then yes it's always it's always a battle between

00:58:17.440 right and you see this with sports you know like you have the classic dignity culture there's this

00:58:23.120 guy ryan brown who's there's one of the guys who wrote against honor do you know this guy because

00:58:28.880 he's also from oklahoma no i don't so he wrote a book he's a psychologist i think at university of

00:58:35.120 oklahoma who wrote a book very critical of honor and he tells the story of going to a doctor in

00:58:44.160 alabama and the way the alabama doctor was talking about the football team the university and how much

00:58:51.280 he identified with that and how completely irrational it was for this doctor in alabama to identify

00:58:58.560 with the college football team and how we have to shed ourselves of these kinds of attitudes

00:59:05.840 where 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

00:59:13.920 so so you have this constant kind of in threat or encroachment and often it's in the language of

00:59:21.440 it's so irrational it's so irrational to care more about you know the members of your community or

00:59:27.440 your group than the whole human race right dignity is just like you you have one community and it's

00:59:35.440 the human race the other rational agents persons and anytime you start conforming your behavior to

00:59:46.560 a smaller community or smaller group and maybe favoring their interests over others you're

00:59:52.320 considered irrational or immoral or identifying with something that doesn't make sense to identify

00:59:58.320 with and so but i don't know that kind of seems like these things ring hollow i think it does say we

01:00:07.840 when you're talking about the red socks but you're not on the red socks like that doesn't make any sense

01:00:12.480 it'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

01:00:21.360 of reasoning i if if you understand it then you are not going to be talked out of it by somebody who

01:00:30.960 is yeah it's kind of in this kind of rational robotic way trying to explain to you as if you didn't know

01:00:40.240 why that you're not a member of the team you know as if this doctor didn't know that he's not a member

01:00:47.120 of the prince and died it's just so it's so ridiculous that you know but yeah so i i think

01:00:54.080 those things do ring hollow and i think you're right yeah but then you know even at the level of

01:00:59.040 within our own culture i think all of us have some honor even whether it's dormant or not we have some

01:01:05.440 sort of honor uh related virtues and attitudes that are just waiting for the right environment to grow and

01:01:12.640 to flourish and to be born or reborn right i think you're right and that's why you know movies that

01:01:20.960 stir you like lord of the rings or you know braveheart like like it yeah like or even like the godfather

01:01:28.960 use the example of the godfather right uh like you're like yeah it's kind of bad what he's doing but i

01:01:34.720 get that and i i kind of like that you respect that they're living according to their code and they're

01:01:40.480 willing to take risks and they're willing to risk their life for the family for their for their

01:01:44.720 community and although you don't necessarily embrace the codes uh or or exactly what it is that they're

01:01:53.760 fighting for just the loyalty that they're showing and the courage is yeah we feel really nostalgic

01:02:02.000 for because it's exactly the thing that's missing in our own lives is the ability to to take risks

01:02:08.560 and show loyalty to a community demonstrate that kind of loyalty i mean you you have if you're in

01:02:15.600 the military or at a much less kind of serious level if you're if you play sports that's one way of

01:02:22.880 doing it but most people aren't either of those things they're not in the military they're not on a team

01:02:30.000 they're just doing you know they're just living their lives and they don't have that kind of

01:02:37.200 community or shared value structure to to but but we still you you see it just like with these movies

01:02:44.320 the fact that the odyssey and the iliad that we still read them and and we still love them and the

01:02:51.520 you know all the greek tragedies shakespeare plays i mean these are all just it's like our honor

01:02:57.600 receptors get triggered by these things and then we go back to our regular lives not in that context

01:03:05.840 anymore and it and you know it gets tamped down so that's the bridge that just needs to happen yeah

01:03:13.040 well taylor this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work

01:03:17.680 well so i've just developed a new web page tamler summers.com and you can see some of my publications

01:03:26.400 some of the books that i've written and uh and and it's being updated but yeah that that's a good

01:03:32.400 place to go and then you can follow me on twitter at tamler you can listen to my podcast so we can

01:03:40.000 maybe start approaching the art of manliness and the itunes rankings get some of the little vertical

01:03:46.800 honor that might come with that um it's not vertical honor i thought we decided it wasn't yeah it's not

01:03:51.920 i 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

01:03:59.040 they're they determine them no it's like the the especially the yeah the rankings within the

01:04:06.160 categories but i guess the rankings of the episodes are more determined by downloads but the ranking i look

01:04:12.160 at that yeah so do so but uh yeah so very bad wizards this is a podcast i do with david pizarro

01:04:18.560 who's a cornell psychologist and it's a very informal often dirty bad language inappropriate jokes on

01:04:27.040 issues in moral psychology that's awesome so you can check check out that and yeah i guess that's it

01:04:35.520 cool well tamler thank you for your time it's been a pleasure yeah thank you thank you for having

01:04:40.400 me it's been really fun my guest today was tamler summers he's the author of the book why honors

01:04:44.480 matters available on amazon.com and bookstore everywhere you can also find more information

01:04:48.080 about his work at tamler summers.com also check out his podcast very bad wizards also check out our

01:04:53.200 show notes at aom.is why honor matters we can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

01:04:58.960 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

01:05:11.520 make sure check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy the podcast

01:05:15.520 i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it to take one minute to give us a review on itunes

01:05:18.960 or stitcher helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is

01:05:23.120 brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - May 03, 2018

#402： Why Honor Matters

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