{"id":4115,"date":"2011-02-06T14:59:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T21:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=4115"},"modified":"2011-02-06T14:59:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T21:59:39","slug":"the-honor-code-how-moral-revolutions-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/06\/the-honor-code-how-moral-revolutions-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.<\/i> A friend recommended this book by philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah<\/a>. Here’s the book’s home page<\/a> with links to interviews with the author. And here my Amazon link to the book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Appiah is no libertarian purist (and may be no libertarian at all), but he makes a case about moral and social change that probably rings true with a lot of us. If a practice is widespread, generally accepted, but becomes objectionable (foot-binding in China, dueling in Europe, female genital mutilation or honor killings in Muslim countries, etc.), governments may fail in all their attempts to ban it, and moralists and religionists may fail in all their attempts to shame others out of it. But one day, when people begin to perceive it as a matter of personal honor, or to put it in more modern terms, once they decide it’s tacky and uncool or something only an ignoramus would do — it stops. A practice that has endured for centuries is swept away in a generation.<\/p>\n

I haven’t read the book yet (definitely going to). But I’ll bet a lot of us have had similar thoughts every time we’ve watched the fedgov try to achieve some “moral” purpose through law and punishment. At best, the government simply rides (and distorts) a trend that had already begun at the grassroots (e.g. the civil rights movement). At worst, government creates more chaos than the original “immoral” thing it was attempting to curtail (e.g. Prohibition, the war on some drugs). Sounds as if Appiah has given historical and philosophical grounding to some very sound, commonsense concepts. He also seems to have a lot to say about governments of one country and their failures in attempting to influence the lifestyles and moral practices of people in another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. A friend recommended this book by philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah. Here’s the book’s home page with links to interviews with the author. And here my Amazon link to the book. Appiah is no libertarian purist (and may be no libertarian at all), but he makes a case about moral and social change that probably rings true with a lot of us. If a practice is widespread, generally accepted, but becomes objectionable (foot-binding in China, dueling in Europe, female genital mutilation or honor killings in Muslim countries, etc.), governments may fail…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}