Honor cultures have a deep attachment to their reputation (the image people have of each other) that often revolves around their religious beliefs. They're so devout and loyal to the strictness of their beliefs. Any affront to their codes of conduct affecting the image of a person or family is treated seriously.
In the Middle-East in some places, honor killings are known to take place. A woman can be dating a Christian man that the family views as an insult and offense to their culture and beliefs. In the end, she doesn't cave in to their pressure, and they murder her, feeling proud about it too. They defended the honor of their beliefs and the reputation they garnered from upholding or ignoring those beliefs. They felt justified in what they did. Their sense of honor and reputation gave them pride. Brother proud to murder their sisters, husbands proud to murder their wives. Belief truly is dangerous. Reputation can go wrong...
Honor cultures are still around in the West as well, such as has been studied in the US south by social psychologist Ryan Brown. The south has been called the "culture of honor". The inner workings of cultural behavior shows some important causes to problems like murder rates and health issues.
Dignity or Honor?
Anthropologists typically characterize dignity cultures as the typical value on people being human. They are reluctant to be overly defensive and violent at a challenge to their reputation as a point of honor. It's either not big enough a deal to bother with, or if it is, like slander, then it's taken to the court.
Honor cultures contrasts the value of simply being human by supplanting it reputation as the most important value. Defensive justification is used to avenge insults to their name. I am reminded of the stereotypical image of dueling in past history, with the white glove slapping someones face and saying "I challenge you to a duel!" (either guns or swords)
There is honor and reputation culture in other parts of the West, like the military, police, and everywhere else in some form.
Feelin' Good
The image of honor, duty, loyalty, etc., carries people far. It's a self-motivator to subsume yourself into an idea/image that is greater that yourself, and you feel good about it. If you feel good about it, if other people around you make you feel good by being friendly, getting your back, giving you gifts, prizes, awards, medals, or whatever, then it matters less what it is you are doing to get this attention, reputation, honor and loyalty from others.
If everyone in a group believes something is right, good and true, whether it objectively is or not, then they can believe that to be the case and live in subjective morality. This is how many cultures operate, and we can see it quite clearly in the honor cultures, especially the religious ones, and most prominently are the ones related to Islam and honor killings. Reputation, honor and duty can all be used against us to have us do evil things according to beliefs we were fed much of our lives.
Resistance is Futile
This ties into the strength of the current condition and flow of a culture or society, and how hard it is to break free from. The pressure to conform to the existing condition is strong. If you don't live up to the standards of those around you, right or wrong, you can face harsh consequences, from shunning and ostracism to outright murder.
Women are often expected to replicate an image of virtue, chastity, pureness, as faithful servants to the husband. Men are to be strong and independent, not allowing anyone to walk over them in any way. Their reputation is most important, and they will defend and uphold that image they have worked to create, lest other believe in the new image entering people's minds about you. And if you don't defend your "honor", then your reputation falls anyways.
Social peer pressure acts to keep us all locked in a prison of fear, afraid to speak what is right, good and true. We are both the inmate and the guards of out own social prison.
With all that pressure to be strictly adhering to false bullshit, any bump or deviation from that rigid delusions of belief results in a quick backlash corrective measure to smack that out-of-place bump back into line. Deviation, dissent and disobedience is not a part of that social group construct.
Violence
With insults and offense to reputation or honor, things can get violent for many people. A social study between the north and south of the US, done 20 years ago, showed that southerners where more likely to react aggressively to insult or being bumped into. Further research showed felony homicides of killing during another crime were equal, yet argument based killings resulting from disagreements were more common in the south. The research only held for white people though in both locations.
Religion
Does religion factor into the "culture of honor" in the US south? After all, the "Bible Belt" is another moniker for the south. It turns out in studies conducted in the USA and elsewhere, that no definitive link can be established between religion and honor cultures. Religious beliefs are not required for reputation and honor to be important for people.
Reputation Replacing Decentralized Law Enforcement
If there is an absence of law to deal with injustice and retribution, and the increase in poverty that results, a reputation system seems to develop to keep people in check.
If something happens, and there is no one to help you, then all you have is your word.
What is your reputation in this society? Are you an honorable person? Do I trust your word?
Then I can believe what you say happened, or not. Trust is what we have between people. We can never know if what someone says is true or not if we didn't live it with it them. We trust what people say because we implicitly expect everyone to value truth and honesty in life as a basic automatic common sense. This can be used to manipulate us. Once a falsity, belief or delusion is accepted as reality, it becomes ingrained, protected, and reproduced into the minds of successive generations. Then we are locked in the falsity and live a false way of life, until enough people wake up to shatter the false construct society is based upon.
A result of needing to have a good reputation, is it tends to get people to try to be good to keep a good reputation. So when you get in a spat with someone, or someone stole your stuff, or you need to defend yourself or your property, the power of centralized collective authority is more decentralized into each individual who is trusted to act according to the reputation they have gained from their previous actions. If something bad happens with an untrustworthy individual, then the conclusion is that chances are they are to blame.
Many of the honor culture southern states have looser gun control laws which empower the individual to take care of themselves. Despite such as upside, the mentality is often too focused on an image of self and the defense of egos turning into violence. Rapes and domestic homicide are up compared to the north, but again for whites only. Reputation and honor valuation correlates with likelihood of committing a rape or murdering a spouse. Men who score higher in honor ideology, focusing on the image they have on themselves and how they perceive others to perceive them. also objectify women more, and believe they should have more power over women.
Emulating Gangsterism Honor
Looking at urban-youth gang culture, and the more developed "professional" gangster criminals, they are all about reputation, at least in their portrayal in the fictional media.
What else are they about?
The tough guy, killer type, who doesn't take shit from no one, demands respect to his image he projects, jeeping that reputation and honor intact in social circle.
Isn't it sad that this is adorned and adulated by young men growing up? Be a badass. Be an asshole. Be a jerk. Emulate gangster culture with money, drugs, whores, guns, murder, it's so cool! There are many youth falling for this popular image to imitate.
The "don't be a pussy" Pseudo-Manliness
This factors into how many men don't seek help and try to be ultra independent. Any sign of needing help, is a sign of weakness, and can lower your reputation especially among fellow stereotypical macho-man mentality. Mental health issues are not dealt with the help of others since that is to admit it. And ti would signal they can't deal with it on their own. This might explain the lower anti-depressant but higher suicide rate in the south.
The emotional side of life is also deemed as inferior and frowned upon by some. Showing emotional "weakness" affects reputation from both men and women. We wouldn't want to be weak, like women, right? That's what calling someone a "pussy" is about, inferring that they are weak and cowardly by referencing stereotypical imagery of a helpless weak woman. How's that for insulting women in general? All you have to do is call a man a "pussy".
Positives
The positives of honor culture is, as I have mentioned, related to doing good. You have a drive to keep a reputation of goodness, and that leads to actual good deeds, even self sacrifice whether that is good or not. South soldiers in WWII received more medals of honor for dying while trying to save others.
The south also has a reputation for politeness. This is important when you are trying not to say things that may offend of insult someone, lest a conflict, duel or death come about. Northerners tend to slowly build up and show their intolerance for annoyance and finally show some anger, while southerners are polite for a long time, until they erupt in anger.
This is the downside to being polite, is it masks being open and honest about situation and other people, which can build resentment. Taking that back to the crime rates, domestic issues, etc., this can help explain it. Instead of dealing with issues when they are smaller, people are letting all the issues build up, and then it erupts at some target who bears the brunt of everything together. Repeated little things not dealt with, end up getting someone stabbed in an argument, or a spouse murdered because it was the tipping point in their overflowing cup of unresolved resentments.
Politics and War
Those who feel they need to be macho, and keep up appearances and images about the nation, can tend to make threats to not appear weak or a "pussy" as some say. Otherwise, they think they appear weak and it affects their reputation as a "strong man" to lead the nation. But then, they have to follow through on the threat if the other person doesn't do what they want.
So even if they were right or wrong, they need to follow through, or else their reputation will be affected worse than if they never made the threat to begin with. A lot of conflicts in nations are psychological in origin, with insecure leaders who are trying to uphold images and manipulate perception to create the illusion of "order" and "good".
With all this correlation between honor, reputation and certain behavior, it might be an indicator of a real cause, and it certainly seems to be so, But researchers are still looking to prove it with more data to alleviate doubt about the burden of proof. Replication of results is desired. Reducing complex social behavior to a simple answer is something many of us do in oversimplification.
Conclusion
There is much value in honor and reputation, both as an individual and a society. What we do matters. People's trust in us is based on what we do, and our reputation garnered from previous behavior. The way we view others, and how they view us, can be accurate or inaccurate and based on falsity. Anyone can say anything against you and besmirch your standing in the community, how people will look and talk to you, how they will cooperate with you if at all, and if they will engage in economic exchanges with you for reciprocal survival in a society.
As long as people have an accurate idea of the objective reality, i.e. truth, and the objective moral behavior between individuals in that reality, then honor and reputation can serve us well. A public ledger of reputation, with a trustless identity, can be used to track and verify any claims against people, possibly categorizing them as "unfounded", "partially corroborated", and "conclusively verified", or something. This way abuse is mitigated by a requirement of evidence of some kind, in writing, picture, audio or video, with a variable weight of strength attributed to a piece of data or claim.
Those who don't live up to the standards of what is actually right, good and moral, will face the consequences of being known as such, through a public ledger. Reputation can be a powerful tool for good, as long as the idea and image used to compare people and measure their reputation, is also based on what is actually right, good and true.
[References: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
@krnel
2016-11-14, 7pm