Billy Hepner
Single Combat
12/6/12
Personal Honor Code
As we have looked at honor and violence in the ancient world over this past semester, we have learned about what drives the different kinds of combatants and their personal values as well. These themes of honor can be applied to my life today in a few ways that are relevant.
Honor has a few different meanings for me. In general, I feel like it stipulates a certain amount of integrity and honesty. This is when communicating and dealing with friends, family, and acquaintances. Also, my honor depends on my everyday attitude and how I approach life. I compete in swimming as well, and that has another definition of honor for me. Someone who competes with motivation, maximum effort, and heart has honor. If I can leave the pool after a competition or race knowing that I gave it everything I had, than I will be content and know that my honor was held successfully intact.
Honor should play a role in modern life throughout all people’s lives. It was an integral part of both athletics and combat in the ancient world thousands of years ago, and so it is today as well. Honor is like a personal ethics system for all of us. It helps regulate what we do when we are competing, interacting, or learning. We all have different definitions of our own honor and what defines us as people, but honor has one underlying theme; it helps us to be better people.
One of the major differences between the involvement of honor in ancient society from today is that much more violence was involved. Many combat sports were played, there were frequent wars, and violence as a theme was looked at in a more relaxed manner. Today, most people aren’t involved in violence in day-to-day lives. Our society has become much more docile. We as a people are also more aversive to violence. This brings about the question of whether or not violence can have a purpose in my own life. I have to say that I am not any different from the normal population in this respect, as I am against violence and fighting. Could violence have a purpose in my life in any way? No way that I can think of. No aspect of my life right now requires or even involves anything remotely violent. The sport that I do is about as nonviolent as it gets; it is a time-oriented competition (not competitor oriented), and we even have lane dividers to separate each competitor. I could not and do not want violence in my life. If mandated to be violent (a draft, possibly), then I would struggle with what to do. I guess I will have to cross that road when I come to it (if I ever do).
Honor plays an important part in my life, both athletically and generally, and it should play a large part in our society as a whole. Also, the connection that violence and honor once had in ancient society isn’t the same today, both for me personally as well as the vast majority of people.