Can People Recover Honor?

This one went live on Bubblews in 2014. Dump it or recycle it? I chose to recycle it. 

"A blush of red for shame" was the intended message of the color patch Bubblews demanded...

Above is what Morguefile pulled up for "blush." Below is a link to (for once) a relevant song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Mnp6VAmEc

People often use the word "honor" to refer to displays of appreciation for something someone else has done. That's not what I have in mind. I'm talking about our internal sense that we have done what *we* should have done, first, and other people's perception that we have done what we should have done, second.

According to Ayn Rand's philosophy, a sense of honor is the only measurement people need to behave according to "unsentimental" "Objective morality." Rand apparently believed that a sense of honor is hard-wired into all humans.

According to more recent studies cited by Susan M. Cain in Quiet, Rand was objectively wrong. Hereditary physical traits shape a healthy introvert personality, but are extrovert personalities defined only by the lack of these traits? Some researchers think that what *really* makes people extroverts is failure to develop what these researchers call "a sense of shame." Whether it's described in terms of honor or shame, the point is that extroverts apparently just blunder through life without knowing when they're doing the right thing, except as what they do earns reactions from other people.

I'm glad I'm not an extrovert.

In July 2014, hundreds of Bubblers who also used Chatabout were informed that that site had just arbitrarily decided to halve payments that several people had already earned under the terms of their original contract. BubbleWS responded the next day with threats, at some point in the future, stop paying Bubblers altogether.

I was appalled to see some Chatters posting that they'd "eventually get used to" receiving only half their original pay...which was low enough. As if they hadn't noticed that, even if they could afford to sit around Chatting for hours without pay, many people who use Chatabout could not. Several Chatters had major disabilities; not all of them even got pensions. So these pathetic brainwashed were saying that they were willing to "get used to" enabling someone else, who was neither poor nor disabled we may be sure, to yank the lunch money out of some hungry wheelchair dweller's hands.

That's not something I want to "get used to." That's not something I think we should tolerate for a minute. People who failed to picket Chatabout's headquarters were inviting BubbleWS to refuse to pay us a few motnhs later.

How can demands for payment for work done be enforced? In a democracy they certainly ought to be enforced by laws that give corporations no privileges above those of ordinary individuals. The law ought to state that until Chatabout had made every possible effort to pay every Chatter the amount they originally offered, plus a fee for their inconvenience, the owners of Chatabout would have their assets seized and sold and, if necessary, their wages garnished.

 
But, as we all know, corporations exploit loopholes in the law...such as the fact that poor people, especially those with disabilities, aren't likely to file a lawsuit to recover five dollars, which is the amount most Chatters lost. The system wouldn't make it profitable to do so.

So what should all of us be doing about people who lack a sense of honor? In an enlightened society we don't kill them, at least not right away. We try, first, to correct their behavior by stirring up their evidently defective sense of shame. In other words we "shame" these people. We make it painfully clear to them that we no longer trust them to do the job in which they behaved shamefully. We don't have to hate them; there may be other jobs they can do very well. But we want everyone to know that what they did was shameful and cannot be tolerated.

A good example might be former President Richard Nixon, who cheated at the game of politics and got caught. Apart from that he may not have been an altogether bad man, or even an altogether bad President, but the United States made it very clear that Nixon's behavior as President was shameful and would not be tolerated. After a few years of public disgrace, Richard Nixon became a reasonably successful novelist and enjoyed an active and prosperous old age.

But we have too many bad examples of people who cheat and steal keeping their jobs, keeping the money they promised to pay for work that was done, even being allowed to spout pop-psychology cliches about forgiving and moving on. Thieves, which is what people who don't pay for work that has been done are, like nothing better than to change the subject from the fact that they owe other people money to blather about those people's "feelings."

Imagine if "Fix Facts First: Feelings Follow" were a federal law.

Chatabout site manager: "I understand you feel dissatisfied now because chaaange..."

Judge: "Fix facts first! Feelings follow! In addition to the $5 or $10 you owe each of those 10,000 people you will pay each of them $100 for every attempt to redirect a conversation about facts into a conversation about feelings."

With that kind of reforms we might even be able to restore common decency to the civil law system.

Chatabout site manager: "Butbutbut the original contract said I get to stop paying when I run out of money!"

Judge: "So, you will pay each of them $500 for presenting an unethical contract. You will take a day job and your wages will be garnished until your debt is paid. Additionally you are ordered not to use the Internet for any purpose until your debt is paid--you might have to go back to the age of telephones!"

Chatabout site manager: "Oh, noes! People would see me using a phone like some poor ignorant slob who didn't know how the companies are trying to cheat people out of a safe, affordable service! I'd be sooo embarrassed...I'd feel ashamed!"

Judge: "That's the POINT."

People with deficient senses of honor/shame do show emotional reactions such as embarrassment when others tell them they've done something shameful, so embarrassment may be a way to connect with whatever circuits their brains do have for learning to recognize shameful behavior.

When people have disgraced themselves by acting dishonorably, human societies have not always made it easy for them to recover their honor. There has, however, usually been an understanding that brave, loyal, generous behavior can "clear the name" of a person who has lost honor...although, in some cultural traditions, examples of behavior that has had that effect have involved the person's dying in some noble sacrificial way. 

"Sacrificial" is a point that needs to be emphasized. In cultures where the sense of honor was recognized in a corrupt way, the question has been raised whether mere suicide restored the honor of the individual. It doesn't. Suicide shows that the individual didn't want to live with the consequences of what had been done. When the person who committed suicide was the victim rather than the perpetrator of the shameful act, like Lucretia in ancient Rome, that may arouse reconsideration of the way society reacts to a shameful act, and accomplish some good for others besides the person who committed suicide. Lucretia was regarded as a noble lady but not a good example to follow. 

More typically, as when nameless, unadmired businessmen commit suicide rather than publicly admit bankruptcy, suicide seems to be the coward's way out of doing anything that might have restored honor. If your business has failed to pay its debts, the reasons for that may not be "because you are an idiot who shouldn't be allowed to carry around a postage stamp," but you still need to do work, probably low-status work because that's what you are likely to be offered, to pay off those debts before asking people to trust you or a business for which you are responsible again. Suicide only adds to the shame of any heirs or successors you might have had. 

Traditionally young men could hope to restore their honor in military service. Sometimes the meaning of this idea seems crass and unacceptable today--a man would try to repay his debts with loot from the other country in a war. Sometimes it seems genuinely honorable--in a just war, the homeland is being attacked, and soldiers risk their lives to defend it. Americans like this idea so much that the opportunity is now offered to young women too. "If you can't find a job that will pay off your student loans, join the Army. Con suerte you can put in seven years of service while we're not at war, travel and see the world as some sort of guard or nurse or pilot, and earn a military pension without having to take a single human life!" It's served many young people well and, rather than thinking of "the service" as an alternative to an education, today young Americans often count on their veterans' benefits as a way to fund their education. If the only blot on an American's honor is debt the person sees no way to pay, and the person is strong and healthy, military service is an ideal way to restore honor. All the person has to do is serve honorably. 

The difficulty for some people is that, as we grow older, it can be hard to maintain the strength and fitness military service demands. "What? They take scrawny little girls and sloppy fat boys and put them in jobs where they spend most of the day sitting down!" Yes, but it takes a certain level of fitness and toughness to stay alert enough to steer a plane or monitor surveillance devices, even while sitting down. So the Army may tell a forty-year-old slacker to go home and find some other way to pay his debts. Hillary Rodham Clinton famously claimed to have been told, in her thirties, "You're too old, you can't see, and you're a woman! Why would Uncle Sam want you?" Sailors have different responsibilities than soldiers so the Navy has traditionally accepted people who are physically disqualified for other branches of military service. People who don't do physical work or exercise regularly aren't even fit for the Navy. Fit, healthy veterans may be welcome to re-enlist even in their fifties, but couch potatoes may not even find a place in their neighborhood fire department or emergency medical service crew. The U.S. and Canadian armed forces publish booklets illustrating the specific moves they find important to maintain "fighting trim" for each branch of service. People working in health care fields are advised to use those books as daily workout guides, too. The workouts can help prevent back injuries at fifty or broken hips at seventy.

Another traditional way people were said to lose their honor was by being defeated, in battle or in any kind of competition. The way to recover honor, in that sense, was simple: play, or fight, or whatever, another round. Reopening wars just to recover a sense of honor is no longer recognized as an honorable alternative. Playing rematch games is still very popular. People's "honor" as champion athletes now seems to be a different thing from their personal honor; a good athlete's losing a game is attributed to the other player(s) catching a lucky break, the weather, distractions, etc., and the only reason why people ever stop paying to watch the rematches is that the athletic organizations find it more profitable to make them wait.

But some stains on people's honor are harder to clear than a debt that can be paid or a contest that can be repeated. Acts of cowardice, whether as petty as falling back on ad hominem insults when you can't answer a point in a debate, or as vile as molesting the child of someone who rejected you, all leave the same taint lingering on a person and make it difficult for others to trust or respect the person. A respectable citizen never has to play cards at all, but a person who cheats at cards is despised even when nobody is gambling on the outcome of the game. A decent human being doesn't have to be married, but a married person who cheats is not a decent human being. Only those directly involved in acting them out have any reason to care what your sexual preferences may be, but making them into your public identity amounts to "kissing and telling," which is despicable. Honorable people don't have to have children, but abandoning children is shameful. And so on.

Human societies have disagreed on what, if anything, might be said to restore a person's honor after the person has not merely fallen behind on payments or lost a competition, but displayed a shameful character. In English one cliche phrase for the way such a person survives is "roamed from town to town to hide his shame." 

Christianity has actually had some debates about whether baptism "washes away" the shame of unethical behavior in the past. In the early church, new converts from Pagan religions must often have been thrilled to hear that God would simply "wipe away" sins as heinous as human sacrifice--yet the converts themselves still wanted to restore their honor, when possible, in the ordinary way. We are not told that Jesus told Zacchaeus the tax collector what to do, but that Zacchaeus, overwhelmed by the honor of having the great Teacher visit his home, joyously proclaimed, "If I've cheated anyone, today I'll pay them back." We're not even told whether Mary Magdalene's "seven devils" were seven great sins or seven chronic diseases or seven forms of "spiritual oppression," or a combination of those; all we know for sure is that Jesus helped this beloved saint deal with some serious problems. We do know that a past that had certainly been embarrassing, probably shameful, was not considered to disqualify Mary Magdalene for the honor of being the first disciple given the Great Commission to preach the Gospel. 

We know, also, that some social shame lingered on, because the other disciples hesitated to believe the Good News on Mary's authority. There must have been some tendency to think "That's wonderful news--but after all Mary said it--how do we know that Mary even knows what she's talking about? Now that the Great Healer has gone, are the seizures and delirious visions going to come back?" (When first century Jews said someone "had a devil" they were often describing a painful disease whose primary symptoms were seizures and delirious visions.) When Jesus showed Himself to the other disciples He still had to verify Mary's word, vindicate her honor. Certainly there was some feeling of "When Jesus says someone is healed, that person is healed--permanently--even if it's Mary Magdalene." 

The question for us today is of course whether Jesus has in fact said that someone, whether it's a brain-damaged person like Donna Williams or a character-deficient person like Donald Trump, is healed. Sometimes people may even seriously believe that they've been healed, and be wrong. We want to believe that Trump has become a fine and honorable man, however late in life. We wanted to believe that Lauren Slater, being able to recognize and live with the symptoms of Prozac Dementia, would continue to write brilliant books, too.

Really restoring personal honor can seem to require miracles even today. For how long would Bill Clinton need to be a blameless husband before you could trust him? Even though Richard Nixon's only confirmed criminal activity--or James Earl Ray's for that matter--was political, would you ever have trusted them? Easy though it would be to clean up Hunter Biden's face, will anyone ever believe that he's cleaned up his behavior? 

The hasty BubbleWS version of this post (which did not anticipate the dishonorable behavior of BubbleWS' owner, Arvind Dixit) was suggested by news from the disgraced former Speaker of the House, Newton "Newt" Gingrich. Though not reelected to Congress after his divorce, Gingrich still had money and wanted to be remembered as the godfather of the self-steering car. Would you say he succeeded?

This web site is somewhat divided on the question of whether Donald Trump's effect on the United States' economy did anything to restore the personal honor he lost both by his bankruptcies and by his divorces. What do you think?

Can you think of anyone who has recovered his or her personal honor after doing something shameful?