What Is Honor?

By Kevin A. "Silverwolf" McKee.

Honor is an ephemeral concept. You can rant and rave about how people these days don't have any sense of morality or honor, and will do anything just to get ahead. Then, five minutes later, you can turn around and make somebody else have the exact same rant. No two people's senses of honor are exactly the same, and this creates conflict with both sides thinking they are in fact the ones that did right and are just.

Honor in games, then, can be used as an agent to trick players to advancing the plot, a main plot device itself - or an unintentional X factor that can add flavor to the game world. An example of this would be the "druid peace pact" in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Although it has declined over time, the "druid peace pact" was a concept invented by the players themselves, where all druids in the game, regardless of Horde or Alliance affiliation, would leave each other alone and/or lend assistance where needed. This wasn't built-in to the game system. It wasn't designed to happen. But due to the lore of the game, and the honor of the players involved, it happened anyway.

The concept of honor can be related to the notion of chivalry - which some say is archaic. The more decadent our culture becomes, the more chivalry becomes archaic, generally speaking. Whether this is a bad thing or not, I cannot say. Honor can be a powerful tool for good, helping complete strangers form bonds with one another and assist each other in times of need. Honor can also become a weapon of evil, spinning webs and continuing cycles of hatred, all in the name of honor. Much of the same can be said for religion, but that remains another blog entry.

The problem with honor is that it has become a rather confused meaning throughout the centuries. It was something akin to the warrior's code, originally...a code of conduct for how one should live his life. In slightly more modern times, it became much more negative in nature. If you offended someone in any way, it became an affront to his honor, usually ending in a duel situation. Thus, honor metamorphosed into a system of suffering, ending many innocent lives because of its imaginary ideals: ideals which nobody could live up to and would eventually become the death of a civilization. In this light, it is perhaps a positive ending that honor has become such a muddled and dead thing.

And so, I personally come to this conclusion. Honor is a conditional system. In this time and place, it may be the best we are allowed to have. In an ideal world, though, honor would be almost certainly considered an evil thing. In said ideal world, unconditionality would have to take precedence. You don't save someone's life because they may one day repay that debt. You don't spare a fallen warrior's life on the battlefield because he may one day return the favor. You do it because it's the right thing to do. I'm curious, what impressions do you, the readers, have of honor?