I remember back in the 2020 general election season when a bunch of headlines and stories popped up that Joe Biden commented that he didn't need to do anything to win over Bernie Sanders voters because they would vote for him no matter what, and he could go ahead and take them for granted.
I remember thinking: Well, was this a public challenge and insult that Sanders voters need to push back against? Or were these private remarks to staff that got leaked? (...I mean, I would expect him to have these thoughts. It's technically true and kinda based TBH). But which was it? Private strategy or public insult? Way to bury the lede.
I've come to the conclusion that political pundits and mainstream media don't really understand Honor Culture in its current form. Especially when much of the mainstream media class seems to honestly think they can just scold and insult people into changing their minds, and wonder why it rarely works outside their own social class.
I also realized that I myself have one foot in Honor Culture after assuming I was only Dignity Culture — which has traditionally been held up as the default Hogwarts house in America.
Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning wrote a 2014 scholarly paper (and eventually a book) on the differences between the old Honor Culture and the current Dignity Culture, proposing that they are being supplanted by a new Victimhood Culture. An Atlantic article by Conor Friedersdorf, "The Rise of Victimhood Culture" posted Sept. 11, 2015, summarized some of their viewpoints. Friedersdorf followed up several days later with "Is 'Victimhood Culture' a Fair Description," quoting critics who proposed "Vigilance Culture" or "Empathy Culture" rather than "Victimhood Culture" as better names for this contemporary third option that is heavy on the dramatic offense-taking. I'm going to call it "Validation Culture" because I think that better captures what is going on.
Baseline Rights
I posted before about "Authoritarian Postmodernism" which is connected to Critical Theory and nominally a leftist movement, but is actually reactionary to the core. The rise of the internet means the parameters of who gets to say what have been blown up, and just going onto social media or blogs means you're going to be exposed to a bunch of content you wouldn't get from just reading a newspaper or picking up a book or walking down the street in real life. You're exposing yourself to random people's random thoughts, and you're going to find some of the content disagreeable to the point of being feeling personally offended. The line between public space and private space gets blurred.
Most people agree that everyone has certain baseline individual rights, such as the right not to be physically attacked and the right not to have one's property or labor stolen. A “right not to be offended online” does not exist. But except for a few hardcore libertarians, most people also agree you can't build a society on individual rights alone. Even if no one is entitled to any other particular person's resources, and there is no direct physical violence involved in economic distress, allowing people to languish in poverty just seems wrong, for example. Besides individual rights, most people also want a degree of honor, dignity, validation, and belonging — and upholding these depends on the cooperation of others.
Honor / Shame Culture
"Sir, can we agree that duels are dumb and immature?"
"Sure, but your man has to answer for his words, Burr."
- Hamilton (2015)
So, I've seen Honor Culture described as getting your sense of self-worth externally from the opinions of others. I think it is more complicated than that — at least the modern version of Honor Culture. It's more like, a practical sense that there are assholes out there who don't give a fuck about your internal self-worth and will try to hurt you regardless — and it is your personal responsibility to demonstrate externally that you and your family won't be pushed around.
Honor / Shame Culture is found in many different societies, and some theorize that it tends to take root when resources are scarce and rule of law is ineffective. In pushing for private gun ownership for self-defense, there is a saying that "When seconds count, the police are minutes away" — especially in remote rural areas of the United States, far from law enforcement and emergency services, where "minutes" is an understatement and even your closest neighbors may be quite a distance away.
Even then, I think the physical violence aspect of Honor Culture also gets exaggerated. Yes, the old-fashioned version of Honor Culture was associated with vigilante justice and getting into physical fights — but even in the olden days, such duels were a last resort when an insult couldn't be resolved peacefully. This is a great song from the Hamilton musical:
Having to maintain your honor is stressful, and having to respond to any public challenge is stressful, because most people don't like drama. That's why there is usually an emphasis on being polite, and making sure an insult was actually intended before retaliating. Most people in an Honor Culture society cooperate and try not to give offense to each other.
In modern days, defending one's honor is less likely to involve physical violence — there are many other alternatives and again, the point is in demonstrating that one can't be insulted or bossed around so easily. Literal fighting may not be an option, but neither is ignoring something or giving in to keep the peace.
In honor culture, external deference to authority figures is more important than private obedience. I've puzzled over upwardly-mobile, middle-aged parents complaining that their straight-laced, obedient Generation Z teenagers occasionally talk back, when the same parents wax nostalgic about sneaking out for sex and drugs when they themselves were the same age... Apparently, the key term is sneaking out. If you were never actually caught breaking the rules, then no disrespect happened.
There is also a tension between things you have to do to be liked in theory, versus being respected in practice. In his early American history book Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer describes this tension for women in the old Virginia / Cavalier regional subculture. On paper, wives were expected to be obedient to their husbands — but in real life, they got admiration and respect if they were strong-willed and pushed back. The inland rural Borderer regional culture, also described by Fischer, was very heavy on Honor Culture as well.
In the past decade, many of the same voters who chose Barack Obama in 2012 also chose Donald Trump in 2016. It's not rocket science: Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton insulted a large part of the electorate (and some insults are bad enough it doesn't matter if they weren't intended to be public). If you claim "47 percent" of people are takers and moochers, they will push back and vote Democratic. If you call another large chunk of people "deplorables," they will push back and vote Republican. It's not a great mystery.
"Well guess what? I'm from West Virginia. I'm not from where they're from. And they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they'll be submissive." —Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia)
Nowadays, people from Honor Culture backgrounds are puzzled by how easily targets of "cancel culture" and "callout culture" capitulate and apologize when they did nothing proportionately wrong to begin with. Like, Who are all these people who let others boss them around? Where is their self-respect? Don't they know apologizing will make things worse? If you give a mouse a cookie...
To the extent that Honor / Shame Culture overlaps with rural cultural conservatism in the United States, it goes pretty far in answering the question, "What's the matter with Kansas? Why do they vote against their own economic interests?" While Honor Culture is somewhat collectivist in the sense that group loyalty is considered important and that one's status and reputation within the group is a big deal, that status is earned individually through strength, bravery, competence, and self-reliance.
Those individually cultivated traits are key. As more-or-less an Honor Culture leftie, I am forced to admit, anecdotally, that people from "Trump Country" really do have more backbone when it comes to having each others' backs, or at least getting out of the way and not actively sabotaging individuals who stand up for themselves. This phenomenon also puts context to a lot of the right-populist anger directed at institutional liberals. Who are these utter cowards, and why do they get to be in charge of us?
It has also been my experience that rural, working-class conservatives do, in fact, care about their own economic well-being: they want good-paying jobs to be available, and when they have the option to vote for isolated issues rather than party politicians, they often lean left on workers' rights. What does not particularly catch their interest is anything they perceive as welfare expansion, or as inefficient red tape. As far as welfare goes, all but the extreme right agree that the truly vulnerable ought to be cared for. However, in being unconditionally cared for, one forfeits the respect and social status of being an economically self-sufficient adult. And the distaste for demeaning bureaucratic red tape, well, should be self-explanatory.
And there is definitely a downside to the "shame" part of the "Honor / Shame" dynamic. It is not morally wrong to lose a fight or (usually) to avoid a fight, but people are looked down on for those kinds of things — often things they can't control. It also puts people in a bad headspace if they're expected to demonstrate strength through financial independence and then some — but the bar for financial independence is unrealistically high compared to the old days. Housing costs, medical bills, and overall costs of living are rising at a faster rate than wages. Denigration of perceived weakness often leads to an unhealthy "might makes right" mentality. And in Honor / Shame communities with more of the group collectivist emphasis, "weakness" is broadly redefined to mean anything that doesn't conform to the group. Intense conformity and "strongman" worship can lead to authoritarianism, and shame and loss of agency can lead to radicalization.
Next up: Dignity / Guilt Culture