Honor

by Fred Reed

Honor is important to militaries, which need to regard themselves as distinguishable from hit men for the Mafia. They aren’t, of course. Both kill people they don’t know on orders from people they don’t know in order to make a living. Is this not literally true?

Note that the notion of honor has nothing to do with right and wrong or human decency, and seems to be incompatible with them.

Usually people concerned with honor wear clothes with feathers on them, or with shiny things stuck to them. In the past, aristocrats wore gaudy attire, often with gold buckles or medals from some king or other, and clanked around with swords. Sometimes they wore codpieces so as to look as if they had large genitals, a doubt about which is an essential element of honor.