DISHONOUR / HONOUR

Honour everything in life. And honour everyone. Whether they have earned it or not, doesn’t matter. Honour the very best in them, and accept nothing less.

Give them something to live up to, and they might just surprise you.

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If you feel the need to dishonour or disrespect someone, what you are effectively saying is, “I have no honour or respect for myself. Putting other people down is the only way I get to feel better about myself.”

Bigging them up would make you feel better about yourself, in truth. But you would need to let go of the ego, and no way is that going to happen!

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Human beings have some very strange ideas about honour and dishonour.

We have the situation, in some parts of the world, where the parents marry off their daughter to someone else’s son.

And, when the daughter doesn’t buy into this arrangement, there have been times when the father, and other members of the family, have killed her.

Why? “Because she has sullied the name of the family. She has defiled the honour of the family.”

I’ll be honest here. It seems a little bit strange to me if you consider that killing your daughter is more honourable than the fact that she dared to challenge your authority.

Yes, how dare she refuse to spend the rest of her life with someone she feels no love or affection for? Someone she feels no intimacy or connection with? Clearly, she is evil incarnate …

“Well, she sullied the name of the family. She defiled the honour of the family.”

Right, so killing her – that restores the honour of the family???

“Hey, Mr Daughter Killing Family Man … For once in your life THINK. Put your pathetic fragile little ego aside – and recognise the magnitude of your stupidity.”

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But this is what humans being do. They do the most idiotic and ridiculous things in the name of honour. The honour of the family. The honour of the gang. The honour of the country. The honour of God.

Well, Nazism was all about restoring the honour and the pride of the German nation. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution was all about restoring the honour and the pride of the Chinese nation.

The irony being that many Germans and Chinese consider these acts the most shameful that have been done in the nation’s name.

It all comes down to the need to assert your will. More so, it is some very, very frightened grown-up little boys, who never received the respect or the admiration they craved when they were growing up. And some of these people will go to any lengths to get that respect and admiration.

This is precisely the reason why so many of our leaders and our rulers act the way they do. Saddam Hussein? Robert Mugabe? George Bush?

“Yes, you must do what I say – OR ELSE!”

The tragedy being that enough people buy into their whole “You will respect ma authoritah” drama to enable them to assert their will. More fool us. And them.

Never mind the honour of the family, the honour of the gang, the honour of the country, the honour of God … What about the honour of life? Where you recognise that everything is sacred and you give it the respect and the honour it is due?

© Phillip A. Klein March 2008