I grew up in Russia and have met a few people who subscribe to the "honor" philosophy of life, where personal insults must be repaid by personal violence up to killing. Such people can be fun, intelligent, charming. But I will never enter any serious business or personal relationship with anyone like that, and will teach my children the same.
> I see this as a real danger even if - especially if - we eventually succeed in meeting everyone's needs. In a society where everyone is continually satisfied, the growth of an egocentric world-view is all but guaranteed. Just look at how easily things that were wild utopian fantasies or fabulous luxuries a few decades ago have become "rights" in contemporary American society. In a society where instant gratification is the norm, any obstruction of the will, however trivial, will be seen as a direct personal assault. The more routine gratification becomes, the less able to cope with interruptions people will become...
I agree and feel like this can at least partially explain the rise of PC, identity politics and the culture war.
Isn't a nation which can prefer disgrace to danger prepared for a master and deserves one?
Our reaction was disproportionate, it did not go through proper legal channels (For reasons including them not really existing in the international sphere), the rhetoric used to enlist young men to fight these wars smelled heavily of it...
* Referring to Iraq, there's a good argument to be made that it wasn't so much an overreaction as a seizing of opportunity.
* For violence against Muslims in the USA there was some of that, but I don't think it was either widespread enough or widely accepted enough to be considered a reaction by "the United States"
* For immigration policies, maybe, though again I think it's pretty clear that that's more to do with political parties than a US-wide reaction.
"Honor" is not a cultural failing, it is a failing of legal structures.
Where such systems don't exist, our rhetoric is not far off from this line of thinking.
To give a topical example, there does not appear to be any insult which affects Trump: if you hate him then the insults prove you right, but if you love him then the insults are just fake news.
* In some places and some eras, insulting Our Leader was punishable regardless of whether the insult was true. I think this is a bad law, and only falsehood-based defamation should be an offence — but even then there is a problem because humans treat lists of more than seven-ish items as endless and the internet’s perfect memory means you can probably show any given person has said or done more than seven socially unacceptable things.
In societies where 'honor' killings take place, insults do cause third parties to have an unfairly diminished regard for you.
Here's an example closer to home - when a drug dealer gets ripped off for $500, he doesn't care about the money. $500 is nothing to him. What he cares about is appearing like an easy mark, which opens the door to everyone and their brother stealing from him. It's why the correct response to that kind of insult, in that kind of industry, is to go to the offender's house, and break their skull open by dropping an ATM machine on it.
He isn't killing someone for $500. He's killing someone to make it clear that he will not be taken advantage of.
Trump doesn't need to do that, because me insulting him on Twitter will not result in other people ripping him off. He is protected from that by a working legal system. My insults are not damaging, and even if it were, he would be able to sue me. Drug dealers, and people living in the mountains of Albania have no such recourse (Or do not trust it.)
Nothing better illustrates the thar mentality better than the fury directed by Islamic militants against Danish and Norwegian cartoons of Mohammed. Sacrilegious art in other cultures can offend and get people angry but the lunatic response of radical Islamists is in a class by itself. It's the shrieking, out of control petulance of a three-year old throwing a tantrum. People infected with this attitude will be utterly incapable of recognizing wrongdoing by their own society, utterly incapable of taking criticism or recognizing the need for correction. This is remarkably close to the image of Hell painted by C. S. Lewis in his books Perelandra and The Screwtape Letters: a paralyzing self-absorption that imprisons the individual in hate and impotent rage while simultaneously blinding him to any possibility of escape.
This doesn't seem like a question of legal systems.
I am also getting this impression.
I think that while I am talking about libel and slander, vkou is talking about the need to be taken seriously?
All of these things have elicited death threats. Again, the difference is that in our society, the threat of law keeps those people from carrying them out. A few decades ago, the threat of law did not, and lynch mobs were common.
Long story short: you're making category errors left and right.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi
Do you not think this is part of the constellation of social ills of honor killings?
Obviously, murder is a very serious form of retaliation, but with no path for de-escalation (a trial, a judgement by a religious, or community elder - or a feudal warlord), eye-for-an-eye will eventually reach that point. Let's not forget that most cultures, including ours, prefer, or at least tolerate revenge over turn-the-other-cheek. It's why it's so easy to treat criminals as subhuman - those that have done wrong have to be punished.
Most people see themselves as the heroes in their life story. When I harm Bob, and Bob escalates, and harms me back, I won't see it as just desserts - I see it as Bob harming me, context be damned. I will retaliate. (And so will he.)
The characteristic that marks non-thar-ness is a strong desire to deescalate. Willing enough to retaliate, but unwilling to retaliate in greater proportion. Overretaliation leads to a toxic society, but a society that punishes offenders only enough to disincentivize uncooperative behaviors builds a cooperative society which has citizens not living in fear of dumb mistakes.