What makes a man?

Doing the right thing, regardless of the cost.

Yes, doing the right thing, and not allowing yourself to be swayed by popular opinion.

That includes the opinions of your friends.

Thinking an issue through, and making up your own mind.

Being man enough to admit when you are wrong, and going forward from there.

Learning from your mistakes.

Keeping your word.

Being in it for the long haul.

Acting correctly, even when afraid.

Kindness
Fidelity
Knowledge seeking

What is the right thing? Your gut will tell you.

The above is true for women of honor too.

If - Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Yes, that it!

Re: What makes a man?


What makes someone honourable? Doing something other people say 'that's honourable' to. Otherwise, nothing.

What would you say is honorable Mr. jones?

Unfortunately 'what is honorable' is something other people say of me, and if I say it of myself it is only by imagining others saying it of me. If I want to say of other people 'that is honourable', it would mean nothing to them if they did not have me in mind.
But shouldn't I consider the case of 'what I believe to be honorable', irrespective of whether the person I address it to has me in mind? Yes, to answer your question, I can say what 'I' think is honourable of someone, but only by imagining that others are listening or attending to what I think is honourable, otherwise my judgement of what is honourable is empty.

So, to sum up, what is honourable lies in the public domain, and no-one can privately express what is honourable. Another example of something that lies purely in the public domain is 'accent'.

A man has a choice between freedom to go about his life as he wishes, in any peacful land he chooses. Although there is no threat to his family or his land he leaves his family to die on the front of a battle defending a cripled nation who's ideals he himself holds true, which in the end cannot be saved. Although the man dies and leaves his family to their own means, and his children without a father, he manages before dying to save a single person from certain death and see them through to safety.

Did he die with dignity, or shame for deserting his family?

Being honerable is putting others before yourself, doing what's right without thinking of the cost to yourself and following through on your word.

As usual, Mr. Jones expresses as though with authority, a thoroughly wrong-headed and out-of-touch concept of a widely recognized idea. Honor exists far more in the mind of the individual than in the eyes of the public. Individuals are those concerned most with honor, if anyone is concerned with it all. For some, this means that they are concerned with whether or not they see others as being honorable, certainly, but not only is there little reason in the contemporary social milieu to think that this is a broadly based consensus, there is good reason to suggest that for most people, a concept of honor simply does not exist. Throughout history, those most concerned with honor have been most concerned with themselves, and thing which "touch their honor." This may have been an obsessive absorbtion with self, such as the sort of thin-skinned attitude which lead to so many silly, needless deaths in the ages when dueling was prevalent, or it may have lead to an obsession with governing one's own behavior, for which many, many historical figures are noteworth. The most signal American example was George Washington.

I agree wholeheartedly here with those here who define honor as an adherence to a personal ethos. Sadly, in American society at any event, there are few who ever consider such a concept, except those military officers obsessd with a concept of "duty, honor and country."

Good morning, Breathe. There are two ways to look at what is honorable:

Lovelace:

I could not love thee dear so much, loved I not honor more.

or

A man's word used to be his bond; It was with my father, anyway.

it seems that everyones answers save dear Jones, seem to point honor as choices that a man makes. Honorable is something a man has full power to make of himself.

So then my next question is... where have all the honorable men gone?

I can think of my father, who worked 90 hours a week my entire childhood to pay for our house food and clothes.
My grandfather who ran a farm, while laying the foundation of Berkshire township, and supporting it by being the corner stone as fire chief, and all this after growing up as the eyes for his blind father. Nevermind that he was laid open from calf to mid-back by a run away horse drawn plow at age 19.

But these men were hardly leaders of many. And thats what intrests me the most.

Without Honor.... how can we define a leader?

Robert Lee is known to American history as the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Fewer people may know, however, that after the war, in the years remaining to him, he became President of Washington College in Lynchburg, Virginia. While there, he involved himself very much in the lives of his students (it was a small college), and often wrote out for himself passages in which he expressed his feelings about subjects relating to education and character. I thought you might find of interest the following passage which was found among his papers after his death:

The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the citizen, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly--the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total absence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly or unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He can not only forgive, he can forget; he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be the past.

A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.

(Emphasis in the original document.)

Lynchburg, Virginia, Setanta? Wow! That was a revelation. Did that predate Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia?

Well, whatever, Lee was indeed a man of honor and obviously knew whereof he wrote.

Washington College became Washington and Lee University after his death. The Virginia Military Institute is also in Lynchburg.

er, Setanta, honey. You're confusing Lexington and Lynchburg.

Without Honor.... how can we define a leader?

An 'adherence' to a personal ethos is made by something constructed from plastic, micro-chips, and scientifically defined as having AI (AI : 'artificial intelligence')
An adherence to an ethos is an abomination and an idea which rightly, has been trounced over the centuries.
It doesn't even make sense. On what basis are we supposed to decide when to 'adhere'? Do I look stupid? Well then. Do us a favour.

J.J., honey. What are you talking about?