Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "websofvarok"
Reviewing The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen
The Honor code: How Moral Revolutions Happen by Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York, W. W. Norton, 2010.
How are human beings motivated to discard ancient or long-term practices that do harm? In this thoroughly researched, notated, and indexed book, Princeton professor Appiah tells three compelling stories of how codes of honor gone awry were finally brought down by the one thing that could undermine their powerful, damaging hold on human society—shame.
The first story tells how dueling in defense of honor was brought down. The second story, the binding of women’s feet in China, ended for a similar reason. The war against women in Pakistan is still being fought. Here again, historical honor plays a huge role. In all cases a sociological sense of honor trumps compassion or common sense.
This brings to mind our current situation—our obsession with the need for economic growth in an overpopulated Full Earth. Can we Americans face the fact that we have used up resources at a great rate? Can we be shamed into changing our ways and cutting back—demonstrating to the world how to Not overuse the Earth?
How are human beings motivated to discard ancient or long-term practices that do harm? In this thoroughly researched, notated, and indexed book, Princeton professor Appiah tells three compelling stories of how codes of honor gone awry were finally brought down by the one thing that could undermine their powerful, damaging hold on human society—shame.
The first story tells how dueling in defense of honor was brought down. The second story, the binding of women’s feet in China, ended for a similar reason. The war against women in Pakistan is still being fought. Here again, historical honor plays a huge role. In all cases a sociological sense of honor trumps compassion or common sense.
This brings to mind our current situation—our obsession with the need for economic growth in an overpopulated Full Earth. Can we Americans face the fact that we have used up resources at a great rate? Can we be shamed into changing our ways and cutting back—demonstrating to the world how to Not overuse the Earth?
Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction
Expanding on the ideas portrayed in The Archives of Varok books for securing the future.
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