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Honour Essential to Psycho-social Integritychallenge of dishonourable leadership to the nameless- / -Introduction Varieties of honourTwo forms of "honour": Beyond honouring power and tolerating difference Honour-related challenges of the disciplines [Annex 2] Honour: "Finite games" vs "Infinite games" Honourable "Nomenklatura" vs Unhonoured "Nameless" Integrative function of honour in interdisciplinarity and interfaith understanding Conclusion References IntroductionIn a society that is critically challenged by "truth" in every field, it is possible that "honour" transcends truth in its significance for social coherence. It may have a superordinate role. This may have always been the case, which would explain the extent to which its trappings have become a focus of attention. It could be argued that, in a period of increasing social turbulence marked by crises of law and order, that the role of honour will come to be seen as even more vital and fundamental. Whereas its role at the highest levels of society may be increasingly called into question, the recognition of its role in some form amongst the most disadvantaged, and even amongst street gangs, is of striking significance. The challenge for society is that strategic decisions, if made by any leadership, are now made without honour -- or are quite incapable of being proved to have been made honourably. This is the case despite the honourable trappings that may accompany such decisions: ceremonies, treaty signatures, etc. Those at the highest level may even be subject to indictment, impeachment or be justifiably accused of lying to, or deliberately misleading, those they represent. Maybe honour is of greater significance in providing coherence to social initiatives than rationality. This is the case in heroic action to save life (such as by emergency services), in terrorist suicide missions. In contrast to many qualities, honour is readily recognized across cultures and languages. The unusual lack of confusion or ambiguity in this regard suggests that it may be associated with a more fundamental and universal understanding. There is now far greater capacity to present and declare anything to be honourable -- as an act of public relations -- than to recognize something that is. Curiously dictatorships are strongly focused on the trappings of honour as a means of shoring up legitimacy for their regimes. In this sense the perceptions triggered by the rituals of honouring provide a form of keystone. Honour might be considered to be inherently dissociated from the preoccupations of most disciplines and from their practice. By extension, honour might therefore be considered as distant from any form of interdisciplinarity. This assumption is challenged in what follows. It is argued here that, on the contrary, honour is central to effective interdisciplinarity, if only because of its cognitive implications. A sense of honour and acting honourably conditions practice of a discipline -- as is often most explicitly articulated in relation to the martial arts -- but notably in the light of widespread preoccupation with "academic integrity". Failure to imbue the practice of any discipline with honour can then be understood as putting the effectiveness of that practice at significant risk. The question is whether what is understood as honour does indeed have some form of superordinate cognitive role in interdisciplinary practice. It would of course be an exaggeration to assert that all leadership today is in some ways dishonourable. It is however fair to assert that those leaders who remain honourable are, through their undeclared knowledge of the behavior of their less honourable colleagues, tainted in some measure by their complicity in that dishonour. Essential nature of honourHonour as a fundamental existential experience: Basic to this question is the distinction between the honours accorded to others in various tangible forms and the honour felt to be due to someone. The one is expressed through forms and the other is fundamentally experiential. The two may of course be related, and ideally the forms may be experienced as appropriately reflecting the inner judgement. The emphasis may of course be placed on the forms with little concern for their experiential significance. Some dimensions of the existential understanding of honour may include:
Just as dishonour may destroy an individual, honour may be the key to the rise and decline of collective identity (civilization, team, etc). In reflecting on collective honour, such dimensions raise questions as to whether (in the eyes of the past , the future, or extraterrestrials):
Honour and integrity: There is a natural assumption that integrity tends to be honoured -- in some measure and possibly only after a lifetime of being progressively appreciated by others. Such appreciation may however be broad in scope, encompassing:
There is a curious symmetry to be explored in the relationship between honour and integrity -- as notably held by gender symbolism, celibacy and the dishonour associated with adultery or rape:
Honouring exemplars: Honour is typically accorded to those who exhibit exemplary behaviour to the point of being recognized as role models for the future. These may include:
Varieties of Honour and Dishonour: distinguishing intrinsic honour from honourable externalities [Annex:]Varieties of honour Two forms of "honour": Beyond honouring power and tolerating differenceIn reviewing the variants in the Annex, a major distinction can usefully be made between:
The two may be further characterized by analogy with two distinct crystal forms:
The distinction between internal and external forms of honour is well made in the words of Steven Dutch (The World's Most Toxic Value System, 2001):
One or other form of honour may be emphasized to the seeming exclusion of the other. For example:
The distinction is particularly evident in the case of expressions of power to which people may be obliged to be attentive in order to thrive, or even to survive, in a given social context. Honouring processes in response to the powerful may then be necessarily contrived or difficult to distinguish as genuinely felt or meant. Symbols of power, such as weapons, may be acquired to elicit such power-determined response -- especially in cultures that value machismo. In complex societies power may take a variety of forms that may well be incommensurable -- for example the power of the priesthood in contrast with that of the military, or that of business. The various forms of power may then have to be duly honoured -- as representing different domains -- in a sustainable system of governance. The matter becomes more complex when difference is not perceptibly associated with power, and may well be understood as some form of weakness or impotence. The traditional male view of females may be framed in this way. At best difference may then be tolerated or exploited without being genuinely valued. This may be evident where disciplinary "pecking orders" prevail in academia, or where religious faiths are viewed as variously distant from a particular doctrinal truth -- to the point where some are framed as "unbelievers". It is particularly obvious in understandings of racial "purity", to the point of distinguishing degrees of progressively "impure" coloration. Such distinctions may be embodied in caste systems, for example. The challenge is to create a framework of understanding that honours difference as a celebration of requisite variety in the subtler dynamics of a complex system. The most illustrative analogy is that of the environment in which species of great variety, and extremely unequal power, coexist and are necessary to each other's survival. Systemically their relationship may only be apparent as weak, and easily ignored, signals. The extent to which the varieties of human beings (or their belief systems, sets of values, or disciplines) are to be understood -- and honoured -- as co-equal in ensuring the viability of the human race remains to be understood. Again this is not a question of simply tolerating difference but of appreciating and honouring its function. In an uncompleted book by Paul Feyerabend (Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being, 1999), he specifically aims to show how "specialists and common people reduce the abundance that surrounds and confuses them". He is concerned with the challenge of incommensurability and the puzzle of how scientists immersed in incommensurable paradigms can even communicate -- and thus find themselves locked in abstractions and absorbed in self-generated problems. He therefore focuses on the irremediable ambiguity of discourse. He uses a passionate speech about honour by Achilles in the Illiad that stuns his audience. Feyerabend notes that scholars have seen this as the historical point of rupture in the meaning or concept of honour. In his review, Bas C van Fraassen (The Sham Victory of Abstraction, 23 June 2000) argues:
For van Fraassen, to explain why later readers of this epic find this comprehensible:
Honour-related challenges of the disciplines [Annex 2]Honour: "Finite games" vs "Infinite games"The relationship between titles and honour is fruitfully explored through the study of games by James Carse (Finite and Infinite Games, 1986) [ review | review | review | review | review ]. He distinguishes between "finite games" that are played for the purpose of winning and "infinite games" played for the purpose of continuing the play. This distinction might be usefully related to that between the two forms of honour identified above, namely internalized and externalized. In that sense the distinction could be related to games as follows:
"Finite games": Titles as honourable outcomes of game-playing: Carse argues that what one wins in a finite game is a title, whose effectiveness depends on its visibility. He makes the following relevant points:
"Infinite games": Honour as authenticity in contrast to the honourability of "honours": Carse effectively distinguishes between those invisible characteristics of honour that are better understood as deriving from sensing the strength of an infinite player -- in contrast with the visible "honours" and titles deriving from skill in finite games to acquire power. The sense of "authenticity" (integrity, etc) in its various connotations perhaps best describes the dramatic understanding of honour. This is notably sensed in the contrast between:
Such authenticity is recognized in phrases like "walking your talk", or through the "word of honour" implicit in handshake agreements. Theory as paradoxical provocation: Carse explicitly recognizes the role of paradox in infinite play, and Plato's role as a poetry-maker (a poietes) engaged in infinite play in the invention of his Republic (effectively based on finite games). It is therefore important to avoid the playful trap implicit in Carse's own articulation (above) -- in the light of the points he makes about Plato:
Honourable "Nomenklatura" vs. Unhonoured "Nameless"Whilst many strategic considerations relating to social development effectively ensure that those involved are appropriately titled and honoured, there is almost no concern with the honour sensed in relation to authenticity and integrity -- whether by players in the game of social development or its audience. As Carse points out: "finite players acquire titles from winning their games, we must say of infinite players that they have nothing but their names.... Titles are given at the end of play, names at the beginning". With the focus on the titles of those involved "the attention is on a completed past, on a game already concluded" which "effectively takes a person out of play". Paradoxically, to the extent that the untitled are considered "nameless" -- the "nameless multitudes" that are the preoccupation of development -- all such untitled have is their name. This is not the case with the "the nameless ones" of Argentine who disappeared when the military junta took over in 1976, as noted by David Bryant (Anonymity is the road to nothingness, The Guardian, 16 April 2005):.
This suggests that a fundamental trap in the current institutionalization of social change processes and development programmes -- and "making the world free for democracy" -- is that they are intimately bound up in, and defined by, finite games. This is recognized in the frustration felt by change agents with the extent of "game-playing" to which they are exposed, whether in the bureaucracies they have to deal with or in unfruitful relations with their peers. In Carse's terms, this "theatre" is in contrast with the "drama" of reality for the nameless (which the media may portray) and the challenge of embodying them into development as an infinite game -- "a vision of life as play and possibility" (Carses's subtitle). Reminiscent of the emerging style of "open source" software development, the potential challenge of sustainable development, understood as an infinite game, might then be reframed in Carse's words as :
This poses a real change for "participatory democracy" as currently conceived, where it becomes mathematically impossible for elected representatives to interact with the nameless multitudes they represent -- other than impersonally (through communications euphemistically described as "personalized"). It is very hard to have a real dialogue with someone with a title. (cf Practicalities of Participatory Democracy with International Institutions: Attitudinal, Quantitative and Qualitative Challenges, 2003). Elected representatives, like other honourable bearers of titles, can be usefully distinguished as members of the Nomenklatura of modern society. The term was used to describe the elite of the USSR -- deriving from the Latin nomenclatura, meaning a list of names, understood here to be of a necessarily exclusive nature. It provides a useful contrast to the untitled "nameless multitudes". It is of course much easier to transform the nameless into the kinds of depersonalized, dehumanized units that can be allowed to starve or be subject to ethnic cleansing. A title may be understood as a kind of one-stop "instant explanation" -- a form of conceptual shortcut for busy people. It bypasses any need to recognize the complexity from which the title has emerged -- or to comprehend the discipline which enabled that emergence. The endorsement of a celebrity avoids the need for further reflection or due process in policy making -- as with Jamie Oliver's endorsement of improved school meals (Gaby Hinsliff. Blair acts on Jamie's plan for schools. Guardian, 20 March 2005). UNICEF, for example, has a programme of International Goodwill Ambassadors; UNESCO also has Goodwill Ambassadors. Endorsements by Nobel Laureates may similarly be sought to advance intellectual and other agendas -- again bypassing considered debate. Naming in this context is of course related to the process of nomination -- of being proposed as a candidate for a titled position. Of related interest is the notion of denomination. This is conventionally used in distinguishing both religious denominations within a faith [more more] and.monetary currencies -- by implication as part of a larger (unnamed) set. Disciplines might also be fruitfully understood as "denominations". [A "non-denominational" religious group (usually Christian) is one which does not necessarily align its mission and teachings to an established denomination. Some religious bodies consciously reject the idea of a denominational structure as a matter of doctrine. Theological denominationalism ultimately denies reality to any apparent doctrinal differences among the "denominations", reducing all differences to mere matters de nomina --"of names".] From the perspective of finite game-playing and its pursuit of titles, sustainable development may be understood as conceived in terms of "entitlements" -- whether entitlement to the benefits of "development" (goods and services) or to the benefits of "environment" (quality of life). It becomes the sustainable development of entitlements. Such entitlements may then be intimately related to the property associated with acquired titles, whether real estate, "goods and chattels", or intellectual property. In effect it is the titled who are the "winners" in the finite game of life, with the nameless being framed as "losers" and "nobodies". It is understandably easy to set aside moral scruples regarding the collateral damage associated with their elimination of nameless "units" in warfare (carpet bombing, weapons of mass destruiction, etc) or through ethnic cleansing procedures (gas chambers, etc). Cynically it might be said that "nobodies" have been categorized as those whose bodies are scheduled to be preferentially eliminated! From the perspective of infinite game-playing, there is a counterintuitive dimension to undertaking sustainable development understood in this way:
Effectively Carse pleads for recognition of the culture that enables infinite play, arguing that:
"Ennobling" the Nameless as infinite players: The response of the Nameless to the East Asian tsunami of 2004 provided a major surprise to the Nomenklatura of the world. Whereas the latter were prepared to add the area to other zones of minimimalistic response like Dafur, the level of donations and initiatives by the Nameless forced the Nomenklatura to engage in a much higher level of promissory response to match the level of participatory engagement of their populations. However even the UN Secretary-General was forced to recognize that such official pledges were as often fulfilled as not.
Integrative function of honour in interdisciplinarity and interfaith understandingInterdisciplinarity: Whilst honour may indeed play a fundamental role within a discipline, the question is what role it might play between disciplines in an interdisciplinary mode. Is there any honour operative between the disciplines -- beyond "academic integrity"? A first answer might be sought in the evidence regarding the operation of academic "common rooms", notably as explored by Owen Barfield (Worlds Apart, 1971) in the light of the ideal Platonic symposium -- and caricatured by Arthur Koestler (The Call-Girls: a tragi-comedy with prologue and epilogue, 1972) with a theme taken up by Irving Hexham (On Christianity and Call-Girls, 1996). It could be argued that at best there is some tolerance, by those perceived as highest in the disciplinary "pecking order", of disciplines lowest in that order. The latter are however definitely not to be taken seriously by the former. Exceptions may occur through integrative bridging centres such as the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) founded at MIT by Gyorgy Kepes. The widespread acknowledgement of phenomena such as academic "back stabbing" points to a problematic relationship to honour. It would appear that honour amongst disciplines in that context is more closely related to administrative matters, notably associated with tenure politics and career paths. Practitioners of each discipline are then obliged to accord recognition to those of others -- as fellow academics and scholars -- but this is unlikely to translate into recognition of the credibility of the other discipline. Colleagues of different disciplines may then be treated honourably through support networks -- but their research interests would not be so treated. Indeed the notion of a "pecking order" implies that, at least to some degree, the practice of some disciplines is more honourable than that of others. Paul Feyerabend (Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 1970) has been assiduous in challenging such assumptions. He emphasizes the “disunity of science” as a a collage, not a system or a unified project, that includes many components derived from distinctly “non-scientific” disciplines, which are often vital parts of the “progress” science has made (however this is understood). In the rare references to honour in relations to interdisciplinarity, it is not unexpected that there is sensitivity on the part of feminist scholars. Thus Marjorie Pryse (Critical Interdisciplinarity, Women's Studies, and Cross-Cultural Insight, NWSA Journal Volume 10, Number 1) cites Jane Roland Martin (Methodological essentialism, false difference, and other dangerous traps. Signs, 1994, 19, 630-657. 1994):
For M J Epstein (Teaching a humanistic science: Reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level. Current Issues in Education, Vol 7, 2004).
The question to be asked is whether this apparently significant recommendation regarding "honour" might not easily be interpreted tokenistically as a means of dealing with "externalities" that need to be accorded respect -- the first form of honour. Most references to honour in relationship to interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity tend indeed to be essays or lectures "in honour of... " -- namely mutual appreciation honour systems with no reference to the methodological or epistemological implications of honour. The real challenge is the possibility of a second, intrinsic, form of honour through whose integrative potential the incommensurable forms and orderings of data may be integrated. interfaith understanding: The spiritual disciplines that are the core practice of religious faiths are variously understood to provide means of understanding what is otherwise incomprehensible and inexplicable. In many ways, in epistemological terms, their perspectives are incommensurable, to employ Feyerabend's term. The many religious conflicts around the world are a more or less direct consequence of this. The challenge they constitute for each other is to some extent explored in efforts towards interfaith dialogue. In contrast with interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as described above, the nature of the fundamental integrative insight -- and how it is to be experienced -- is a matter of the greatest subtlety and sensitivity. The many efforts towards interfaith dialogue are indeed honourable -- the most ambitious being the Parliament of the World's Religions (cf Learnings for the Future of interfaith Dialogue, 1993). Honour figures prominently in such events. It may be an honour to attend. Participants may be honoured by the presence of a spiritual leader. Words may be spoken to honour other faiths, spiritual paths, and the many expressions of God. Spirituality may be honoured above religion. Commemorative events may be held to honour victims or martyrs. Participants may honour one another in their pursuit of their respective paths. But again, is this not the first form of honour -- of externalities? Or how is the distinction made? Does such explicit honouring not obscure the challenge of the nature and consequence of the learning to be obtained through encountering honour of the intrinsic kind -- that is fundamental to the integrity and worldview of the other pursuing a different path? The challenge of such honour is evident in that it is the "fundamentalists", whether Christian or Islamic, who do not participate.</ |