How Has Honor Changed Over Time

Honor has a lot of different meanings, from high respect, to privilege, to moral sexuality, but through the many years the thought of honor existed, “The term honor has always been a word used to describe men and women of high moral worth or great achievement”(Honor). An honorable person is a selfless person, one that can be trusted, a person who you can depend on, a person who will always do the right thing and will never let anyone down. People of earlier times were taught honor from a young age and to be honorable was their goal in life. Unfortunately, as time goes on, the value and importance of honor is decreasing drastically. As people’s moral values and beliefs change, and so do their views on honor.
Honor has changed a lot over time
Some cultures put a lot more emphasis on honor and are willing to go alot further in the name of honor than others. The Japanese people, for example, are a people that with strong emphasis on virtue. Around the time of World War Two, the Japanese people, after realizing that their troops were no match for their enemies, came up with a special attack unit now known as the Kamikaze Pilots. This unit consisted of dedicated pilots whose mission was to use themselves as ammunition and crash themselves into their enemies. This act of suicide they justified as Honor. It was believed that dying for your emperor and for your country would be a glorious and honorable death. It is insane to believe that in the name of honor people agreed to this act of suicide. According to research done by Justin McCurry, “By the end of the war, more than 3,800 pilots had died” (McCurry). When interviewing former kamikaze pilot Horiyama, Horiyama justifies his actions when he says, “We didn’t think too much [about dying], we were trained to suppress our emotions. Even if we were to die, we knew it was for a worthy cause. Dying was the ultimate fulfillment of our duty, and we were commanded not to return” (McCurry). In other words, for the Japanese people dying in the name of honor was simply the right thing to do. In our modern day society this act of obtaining honor seems insane and uncalled for but this
Because people have grown so distant from God and no longer follow the original commandments and rules set for them, they, on their own, have distanced themselves from being honorable. As sin becomes more popular, and evil more acceptable throughout society people begin to hate each other and themselves. They lower themselves in their own eyes and this make becoming honorable impossible. “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.”(Manly Honor). In conclusion, honor has changed greatly over time and the importance and value of being honorable has decreased drastically. Honor is something people used to fight so hard to obtain and tried so hard not to lose but no matter what society says or thinks, honor is the value of a person in his own eyes, so as long as a person fights for what he believes in and continues to hold his values, no one else can take his honor away from him. “Gentlemen; my honor lies in no-one’s hand but my own, and it is not something that others can lavish on me; my own honor, which I carry in my heart, suffices me entirely, and no one is judge of it and able to decide whether I have it. My honor before God and men is my property, I give myself as much I believe