It occured to me on my way to work this morning that the concept of honor is rather silly at best, and more often quite dangerous if you really believe you have it.
Think about it, what good is honor supposed to do?
Right of the bat we can all name a number of really stupid things which are associated with honor: honor killings, for instance, where a member of the family is murdered for insulting the families honor (you wonder how the honor ever actually tells people it has been offended), or duels which was a sport between aristocrats. Then there is the honor of dead people which can linger on for centuries, a certain prophet comes to mind, and it seems even dead objects like flags, banners, documents or nations can have honor which can be invoked to kill or maim others.
What are the legitimate invocation of honor as a reason to act a certain way? When is honor not simply equivalent to legitimizing poor sence of humor, hypersensitivity or lack of impulse control? If a person says something offensive to one, its wrong because it is hurtfull and honor play no part of the equation, and if one do something to help others because of ones honor, should one not still strive towards doing good for the sake of doing good?
When a person says: "I have honor", what does that really mean, effectively? Which situation can that person think of where he would react in a different way did he not have honor?
The only ones I can think of are situations where I might invoke honor as a way to act differently than i would advice others to do, so I think the term should just be done away with.