Honor in the sense of "if I do good things I will be respected, if I do bad things people will be repulsed by my very presence, and this system makes me actually materially change my behavior for the better and not just be a hypocrite".
Honor in the sense of "if I do good things I will be respected, if I do bad things people will be repulsed by my very presence, and this system makes me actually materially change my behavior for the better and not just be a hypocrite".
The honor you're describing is why multi-billion dollar companies all have their own "charities" and spend so much money on PR. They want people to believe they do good things so they are respected.
How would we describe honor without the social mediation? Is lying the core component?
I think honor is a little different that just wanting to appear good for social approval. I think that's part of honor, but not the whole thing. I'm not sure if lying is core, but presentation might be.
But I'm not sure what definition I'd give.
I know honor is something that's been academically studied by historians, sociologist, anthropologist etc but I havent read any of their research.
honour is about respecting social conventions, that means that, unfortunately, it is usually conservative, however there is a real cost associated to it, it's not something easy to do, so I am not sure simple charity would describe it, I think we can say it's a relic form of collectivism, sacrificing individual needs or means for a collective benefit. If you're interested about practical applications, tribal justice in Yemen and in general the tribal system there is fascinating, don't get put off by the name, it has a lot of good ideas
They get a tax deduction for it.
Better to spend the money on something vaguely worthwhile than just hand it over to the government which will just waste it.