HONOUR CODE

It fascinates me how much of a premium warrior cultures place on respect and honour. All of them - Zulu, Spartan, Samurai - I've never found one that didn't. Sparta is perhaps the most famous Western warrior caste society about which we know a fair amount. We know how their society worked and what they believed. We like to think we know how they lived. Maybe, but do we know how they thought? A lot of what we learn today about the Spartans – and other warrior caste societies – seems to us anathema. But, like the founders of religions, the Spartans need to be understood in the context of their time.

They didn’t think the way we do – we have sufficient evidence from the plays and poems of Ancient Greece to know that. In the context of their world, exposing weak or sickly infants wasn’t cruel so much as pragmatic. Medicine wasn’t all that advanced, and diseases we’ve since eradicated were often deadly.  Slavery was just part of how the world worked.  Life was nasty, brutal and usually short.

In that context, Sparta becomes less spartan and more interesting, and it stands out among the Greek city-states by the relative freedom and power of its women. I’ve always liked that about the place, and admired their strict discipline and sense of purpose.

When I started looking into other warrior caste systems, I found a certain set of similarities between them.  In all the traditional martial societies – those in which warriors were held in esteem, for whom it was a way of life and social stratum rather than a those with a professional army such as we’re familiar with today – operated by a code. From Samurai through Sparta west to the Aztecs, the warrior castes were the nobles – the powerful, educated, cultured classes (however bloodthirsty).

Despite the apparent contradiction inherent in this, it makes sense, when you think about it. It’s the people with the bigger swords and better skills who win the war, and they then become the rulers. The ruling class has money and therefore access to education, and more leisure to pursue cultural interests. This is how conquering cultures become dominant – by beating and starving (often literally) the previous culture into submission.

Facts aside, however, we no longer understand them. We’ve lost their the world-view –empires are no longer fashionable, war is undesirable and ambition, especially for women, has become a guilty secret.  Those who want to rule the world are evil geniuses or soulless conglomerates, not role models.

The overwhelming similarity among them all is one of attitude – honour, discipline, pride in achievement, shame in failure to achieve. They judged others as they judged themselves – on deeds done, not promises made; on honest courage, not spin-doctoring.

The greatest tragedy of losing our drive to rule the world is that we’ve lost this ownership of both our achievements and our mistakes. We’ve lost our vertebrae along with our focus, and that can’t be good in the long-term.