Honor Before Reason Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Roland: Amusing as this trope description is, bitter much? :-)

Ruthie A: You know, I find the introductory paragraph rather hard to believe. I just don't think most people would be that heartless. I know some people might be scared, or not think they would be able to help, but to not help someone in serious trouble because they're afraid of messing up their shirt? I just don't think people would act like that.

Ronin Aquila: I envy you, for you have had the good fortune of not meeting too many animals known as the cynic. I have severed my ties with many former "friends" because they keep telling me to stop caring about a starving kid I met on the streets, and then go and watch some heartless cynical crap called "Family Guy" wherein its okay to laugh at orphans and cancer patients because apparently, it is "cool" and "smart" to be a black hearted cynic.

I created this trope as an angry reaction to cynical animals who think that being happy is more important than being honorable and caring for other human beings.. I for one would gladly live without laughter than live without honor.

Gemmifer: But removing the links to Lawful Stupid and Martyr Without A Cause as exampels of the trope done wrong was still unneccessary. I put them back into the text.

Austin: Yeah, I'd agree. This site is anything but neutral, but the opening paragraph isn't written with the grace that most articles are. I think someone should reword that so that it's less extreme.

T Matt: This text is ridiculous. Not only is the openning paragraph demonstratably untrue but the closing paragraph about a "return" to some "more honorable" age is nonsense. Modern humans are nicer than our historic counterparts: we have concepts like "human rights."

Austin: I edited the opening paragraph, because to say "most" people wouldn't help is a big generalization.

Shay Guy: Did the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann cast ever actually display this? —- Shay Guy: Removing TTGL until anybody can cite an instance of this. And Kamina's overall "manliness before reason" ideal doesn't count.

Cromage: Removed a bit of bias in the article. It can come back if you demonstrate that it is true. =P (alas, no [citation needed] markups in this wiki)

I also propose renaming this trope to Honor Before Practicality. It's not like people who act honorably aren't using a form of reason; it's just that if you view the world as a constant series of "jobs" that have to "get done" then you'll use reason in a different fashion than people who have other views on the world.

Sunder The Gold: I can get behind Honor Before Practicality.

Also, if this trope is going to be contrasted against Shoot The Dog, it's more like Sentimentality Versus Practicality — shooting a rabid dog is heartbreaking, but not dishonorable.

Also, removing the following, as Aldaris is an example of Lawful Stupid if anything.

Judicator Aldaris in Starcraft. As evidenced by the following line, on why he refuses to kill Cerebrates (who control entire swarms of Zerg):
Aldaris: Nevertheless, we must stand resolute. For attacking defenseless Cerebrates is not the way of true Protoss warriors!
- It actually goes a bit farther than this. Aldaris does eventually try to kill a Cerebrate, but finds that it doesn't work; the Cerebrate is regenerated. The only way to kill them is with Dark Templar, a caste that the Protoss had long since exiled and whom the Judicator consider unclean and blasphemous. This leads to a minor civil war among the Protoss while they're in the middle of being invaded by the Zerg.
  - There's also the minor matter of him considering, not the Zerg, but Tassadar, who DARED to consort with Dark Templar to be the greatest danger to the Protoss race as a whole. He also sincerely believes that his more "honorable" strategies are actually winning the war against the Zerg, despite losing the outpost Antioch, as well as Praetor Fenix getting killed.

Some natter:

In The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Kafei promised to have his wedding mask, and so hides himself away after it gets stolen, vanishing without a trace as far as his friends and family know. Better to have your fiancee wondering if you're alive or dead, to his way of thinking, than to show up without the mask and say "sorry, this Sakon guy yoinked it, but I've got A Simple Plan to have it back by tomorrow night."
- To be fair, the reason he was in hiding wasn't because the mask was stolen, but because the Skull Kid had de-aged him into a small child, and he couldn't be sure that his own family and friends would recognize him. The only reason the black market shop owner whose backroom he was hiding out in recognized him is because of his Keaton mask, which had no significance to anyone else—thus implying that he wanted the Sun's Mask back in part because it would serve as proof of his identity.
  - Thing is, that's never mentioned in the game. It certainly sounds like a better explanation than the in-game one, but... why isn't it the in-game one?
  - It must have been mentioned at least once, because in the ending, when we see their wedding, the camera focuses through Kafei's eyes. He's certainly taller than before. In the Majora's Mask manga, it's explicitly stated that Skull Kid cursed him to look like a kid again.

fleb: There's no possible way this could ever fit onto the main page, but I have to mention this passage from The Wheel Of Time The Fires of Heaven parody: [1]

Rand: Too bad no one killed Couladin when we had the chance.
Rhuarc: That would violate ji'e'toh.
Rand: ji'e'toh restricts you from stopping madmen warlords?
Rhuarc: Yes. The rule is madmen warlords can try to kill you, and everyone near you, and everyone else who isn't near you, and everyone they know, and everyone they thought was looking at them funny.
Rand: What does ji'e'toh let me do?
Rhuarc: You can mutter under your breath.
Rand: Shaido dogs.
Rhuarc: Now you're getting it.

—- Austin: I removed the Supernatural example. I don't think it's a case of HBR. It's not honor, it's love. Dean loves Sam to death (And how!) and likely couldn't live life without him, hence why he was so determined to find things out for sure. Given Dean's speech in the season three finale, the writers may have even intended for this to be selfish on Dean's part, and even Sam questions whether Dean could really kill him if he went bad. I'll leave the example here.

In the Supernatural episode Born Under A Bad Sign, when Dean is faced with overwhelming evidence that Sam has turned evil ( He's been possessed by Meg but we don't know that until much later), he still doesn't shoot. When asked by Sam, he still can't and even says he would rather die. He gets rewarded by knocked out with a pistol-whip and left in the hotel room, getting taunted about his worthlessness, a bullet (and a thumb later on) in his shoulder, getting left to drown and being beaten within an inch of his life. But that's all just a day's work for the show's favourite woobie. And just another phase in their continual routine of Breaking the Cutie.

Austin: I've found a dispute over the Broken Arrow example, so I'll discuss it here instead of letting it continue in the edit summaries.

"As an Asian, like John Woo who made this movie, I found this to be the honorable and decent thing to do. Deakin and Riley are warriors, and to have done otherwise is a sin that no hell is evil enough for. "

This is ridiculous. Risking thousands of innocent lives just for a straight up fight is not "honorable", it's stupid. Honor isn't how to fight, it's why you fight. Say Deakin had lost the fight, and then Riley had donated the bomb. Thousands would die, but would you say "Oh well, at least he went about it honorably!" I hope not. The correct choice is the one that saves the most innocent lives.

Wellington:

If this wasn't a Justifying Edit, I don't know what is. Yes, paladins work this way in Quest For Glory... that's the point of the trope!

In Quest For Glory 2, a fighter faces The Dragon in a climactic swordfight, and quickly disarms him. If he chooses to kill his unarmed foe, instead of letting him have his sword back, the game treats it as a dishonorable act... even though The End Of The World As We Know It is due to happen in a few minutes, if the hero doesn't get a move on. The VGA fan remake is even more extreme in this regard; giving the sword back leads to a truly Nintendo Hard fight. Apparently, The Dragon waits until after you show him mercy to bust out the really nasty moves.

Which is entirely the point of the honor/paladin system in the series. In other words, honor can't be discarded for any reason, especially when it would be more convenient to just ignore it for the sake of expediency (even when saving the world). In effect, this is basically saying that the paladin has to be a near-superhuman Bad Ass: to be capable of fighting honorably when the situation demands speed, the paladin has to be able to kill his opponent without resorting to underhanded tricks.

I'm cutting down its length.

Wellington:

Normally, I'd edit this down:

Xiaolin Showdown: Omi in regards to promises. At one point, Omi has to team up with one of the Big Bads to stop a race of unstoppable spiders. They do this by combining two Mac Guffins that work together to give infinite knowledge to find a way to stop them. Before doing so, the Big Bad makes him promise to only look for the way to stop them and specifically not to look for "the way to destroy evil forever". In the end, he mentions he "peeked" (apparently it's okay to break a promise but not to gain from breaking it). In later episodes the main group finds themselves in a desperate situation and begin telling him they want him to use the secret. He holds firm that he cannot because it would go against his honor as a monk even when all 3 of them think it would be better to do it anyway but he still refuses (it seems that fellowship and the fate of the world as you know it mean nothing in comparison to a small boy's moral code). The end result is as part of the Big Bad's plan, this divides him from his friends and causes him to go against their safer wishes of not listening to the villain. He ends up temporarily locked in an aggressive mood from this and pledges his allegiance to the villain. Once he returns to normal, he stays with the villain because he made that promise (ignoring his friends cries of "he wasn't himself"). In the very end they try to make it sound like Omi made the right choice by saying the Big Bad reveals that he knew Omi would peek and swapped what he saw with the secret to destroying good (they completely ignore the fact that without this, he risked everyone's lives and future suffering from evil-doers for his honor and that the world was put into peril a second time because he joined the Big Bad with a reason that equates to a promise made while drunk).

BUT COME ON. It's being cut for now; if the original poster wants to rewrite it in a way that trims the unrelated parts, they can go ahead. As it stands, I can't even understand it well enough to safely edit it.

Freezer: @Ronin Aquila Stuff it. I made this trope cos I'm sick of selling out my principals so cynical animals can have an easier time not caring. Might as well as STICK TO that principal so I won't be a hypocrite. WHAT?

Ronin Aquila: Dear Sir/Madame/Miss. I started this page in the hopes of CELEBRATING old-fashioned values that unselfishly places decency, kindness, honor and chivalry above the petty needs of one self. And in a scant half year this page has become a place for cynical people to sigh at and MOCK heroes who would lay down their own happiness for the greater good. I am going to return this page to what it once stood for. And in Greek, "cynic" does mean "dog." An appropriate way for Socrates to name a creature that has no faith in anything.

Freezer: You're aware that this is the internet and cynical people mocking things makes up half of it? (The other half, of course, is porn). And it's "sir", BTW.

Ronin Aquila: No disrespect, sir, but more accurately, 50% of it is Porn, 25% of it is cynical assholes who don't care, and I'm proud of belonging to the final 25% of angry idealists who give a damn enough to want to make a difference in this world.

Broken Chaos: Reformatted quotes and pulled the most recently added one, copied below:

"Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions."

—David Hume

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