IS HONOR FADING?

 

 

Across cultures and time, honor and manliness have been inextricably tied together.

If we take even a cursory look at history, honor pops up over and over again as a central theme in literature and life.

The epic poems of Homer are primarily about honor and man’s quest to achieve and maintain it.

If you read Shakespeare’s plays with open eyes, you’ll find that honor and manhood take center stage as reoccurring themes.

 If you were to ask someone, “What is honor?” you’d likely be answered with furrowed brows and head scratches.

To define honor, as with pornography, with mere words is hard.  But you know it when you see it. 

Or do you?

 

Honor=integrity is the point to which the definition of honor has evolved ... at least to me.

Has honor become unnecessary and irrelevant in a society

 where, left to ourselves, we need not behave consistently, let alone be consistently well behaved?

Honor must be built on solid bedrock, and that is why it is fading from memory.

Post-modernism is distrustful of anything that claims to be universal or permanent.

H ow virtuous are we?
O nce gone, integrity is hard to reclaim
N ever soil your good name
O nly love creates true honor
R espect all to create a world of honor 

(with thanks to SOURCE OF INSPIRATION
http://patcegan.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/is-honor-obsolete/ )

As a concept, honor has certainly dropped out of sight in modern society.

To me, Honor is a Virtue, like Loyalty, or Courage, and as such possesses inherent value.

But not only that, it is the supreme Virtue and towers over the others because it provides a framework for behavior

that can serve as a guide in situations fraught with uncertainty, peril or temptation.

The lone man stranded on a deserted isle has no need for honor.

But as soon as men interact with others, the need for it begins to arise and swiftly grows urgent.

The need for fairness, for civility, respect and trust manifests itself, and this need is satisfied (or left unfulfilled) via behavior and action.

The honorable man acts a certain way not because of how he feels,

but because he recognizes it is the right thing to do, and his reason allows him to conclude this.

After my two emails yesterday to Freddie, my supervisor, he emailed me that he would talk to the lab tech's supervisor --

but he has a supercillious attitude towards everybody outside the lab.

In fact, the lab departments of Lifeshare belong to a completely separate entity known as Systems.

Some years back, the lab supervisor saw the lion and tiger puppets in Khaki uniforms in the back seat of my car

that I use periodically to visit old customers who are in the hospital or their children,

and I cheer them up with terrible jokes and worse voice-throwing.

Their names are Joshua Lamb (the lion) and Solomon Cain (the usually wise tiger who has a problem with temper.)

He visited Sandra, my best friend, when she still had a store

 and sneered that they were child-molesting aids I used -- he did it in front of her customers.

He is a judge in the Miss America Pageants here, and at the time her business catered to beauty contestants.

She could not afford to offend him.

If you hadn't guessed: He is a bully, too.

She couldn't afford to ask him to leave, so she left the store and stayed away until he was gone.

Sandra called me and hotly told me NEVER to apologize to him when hospital calls necessitated me awakening him.

And yes, he had made fun of me for doing so at that time as well.

So I do not hold out much hope for what Freddie will accomplish with talking to that man.

There were times the lab supevisor came to work years ago on the weekend with alcohol heavy on his breath,

and I did not report him. He seemed competent to do his work is the reason why.

I told Freddie at the time about what the lab supervisor had said to Sandra in her store in front of customers.

He, too, got hot and looked for him in the lab, but he was not there.

I counseled restraint since the lab is the favored child of the Medical Head of Lifeshare --

and they have already down-sized our department since we are considered low level, easily replacable personnel.

Last year, Lifeshare was considering eliminating my supervisor's position when they reduced Product Management here in Lake Charles.

Upon my interview with those deciding our fates, I did not say why I should be kept,

I instead listed all the things my supervisor had done beyond the call of duty,

even so far as risking his life and health by staying at the center through five hurricanes. 

(I knew because I volunteered those times to stay with him.)

I then showed printed index cards on what studies said were the qualites of excellent, hard to come by, supervisors

and listed how my supervisor fulfilled all of them.

I said all jobs had dignity but few jobs were noble. What my supervisor and I did were noble jobs,

and I was proud to work with him and for Lifeshare.

We both kept our jobs.

But can good men keep their honor

in a world where it is not valued?

 

And the mysterious gunman has cursed blood -

great, now everyone will think I copied from PENNY DREADFUL