Cultures of honor

[Hügo Krüger]

Do libertarians still take abstract concepts like honor seriously?

I recently finished a book called 'Why honor matters' by Tamler Sommers which looks empirically at different honor cultures around the world. Steven Pinker in his 'The better angels of our nature' cited honor as the reason why many societies are so violent today. During the last century, most western societies made a tradition from honor to dignity. As a result we ended up being less and less violent.

Sommers claimed that Steven Pinker is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I tend to agree with him. South Africa is probably a violent society, because we take honor to seriously. I have seen quite a few times how people can react with the nation of "se dit in my gesig of ek bliksem jou" of the tenancy. However honor also forces people in a way to act decently and respectfully to strangers. It holds that a collective identity is somewhat necessary.

My view is that if we ever want to tackle the country's high crime rate then we will have to deeply talk about using our deep sense of honor for progress and non violence. I do not see how we can get rid of it.