Defending One’s Honor “
Honour is the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. It is his estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgment of that claim, his excellence recognized by society, his right to pride.” Julian Pitt-Rivers
Honour=integrity, respect, praise, esteem, admiration.
Defending one’s honour in some cases can be a matter of success and ruin; life and death. Even as late as 19th century America, maintaining your honour was essential to getting a good job, marrying a classy lady and accepted into higher society. Saving face was paramount and retaliation was done to prove you still had the courage that made you worthy of honour. But if taken to extremes it becomes an “irrational pissing contest.” Even in defending one’s honour one must be honourable by exercising gentlemanliness, fair play, mercy and magnanimity.
So when defending your honour, members should:
- not personally attack a member’s character or family or belittle a member using sarcasm. Just to be clear, when a member chooses to attack the author of a post rather than the content of the post, that is a personal attack.
- not post defamatory comments which include statements that purposefully injure the reputation of another by exposing them to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.
- not encourage or condone any physical violence, threats of violence, or harassment against anyone, whether members of this forum or not.
- not post confidential information about a member that could cause harm to his/her family.
I do recognise that many members feel a great deal of pain and anger about the way they have been treated by other members and sometimes feel the need to 'vent' about that.
But relentlessly negative attacks on people and organisations achieve nothing and can be upsetting and depressing for other members to read.
Let’s aim for what we can positively achieve together, of course that means sharing our pain, and sometimes our anger too, but we also want to maintain a positive focus on what we can do about our situation, and so I ask members to engage on this forum in the same constructive and progressive spirit with honour and respect.