When I say honor, what I mean is the idea of every individual being called to answer to everyone else. You know, the kind of thing you see from the Klingons. “You are thirty and unmarried, you bring dishonor to us” or “shame on your family for eternity because you were arrested for terrorism” or “what a disgrace you are for not having the skillset of your parents”. This goes deeper than that though, sometimes it’s more subtle, for example you might run into old classmates and all they want to know is how your brother is doing, or people keep telling you that you should live up to your sister or they might put you in some kind of shadow.
People who defend honor will often say “it is the masses who have spoken, enough said” but do you consider this self-explanatory and why? Because I have many questions sometimes that get no answer that seem to undermine the very justification of honor, for example… what defines a member of an honor culture, is the internet seen as a valid method of manifesting an honor culture, does an honor culture that faces a schism and breaks off from another become a dishonorable honor culture or equally valid, who was the first person to believe in certain ideas from which the honor culture got its conclusions, how did said person justify their ideas, is it dishonorable to find loopholes in the rules of the honor culture, are you dishonored if you save the life of someone who is seppukuing, what if this person happens to be the emperor, etc.
I associate honor with it being a part of culture and I think of the Japanese way of honor. Like Bushido.
“Japanese chivalry” existed in many forms, many of which were not chivalrous (e.g. it was totally okay for a samurai to strike down someone of a lower class, and to keep heads of their victims as trophies).
The bushido culture that seems pervasive today in their society was derived as part of a nationalist movement in Japan at the time:
Bushido was used as a propaganda tool by the government and military, who doctored it to suit their needs. The original Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882 uses the word hōkoku (報国), signifying the idea of indebtedness to one’s nation because of one’s birth. Such debt must be repaid through physical or mental exertion. This idea did not exist in earlier bushido.
