Honor: Between the samurai sword and the smartphone screen — a journey into the human need to be seen

Source: The bushido code: when death is preferable to shame

"Even if it is clear that the samurai will lose, he must fight back. Neither wisdom nor tactics are needed for this. A true samurai does not think about victory or defeat. He dives fearlessly into inevitable death. In doing so, he will awaken from his dream. The honor of the samurai does not lie in the outcome of his actions, but in his willingness to sacrifice his life for his duty at any given moment. If you are ready to die at any moment, you will attain absolute freedom in the way of the warrior, and you will be able to serve your master flawlessly and without fear."

(Yamamoto Tsunetomo, "Hagakure", Japan, 18th century)

Explanation: The warrior who trained to die: the philosophy behind sacrificing life

According to Tsunetomo, the greatest shame is not failure in battle, but showing hesitation or fear. Honor is preserved as long as the warrior acts with resolve and loyalty, even if the outcome is inevitable death. This is the bushido code. In a traditional honor culture, honor is the only asset a person owns. Life is temporary, one's "name" is eternal. A stain on honor cannot be wiped clean except with blood. The samurai trains to die so that at the moment of truth, the biological instinct to live will not cause him to lose his honor.

Perspective: Have we changed? Between the sword and the selfie

To a modern, liberal person, the bushido code seems childish and pointless. Life is more important than honor and more important than losing to an enemy; a pointless death is pointless, adding no honor, only emptiness. And yet, the pursuit of honor still exists, bigger than ever before. Social media, performance stages, plastic surgery, cameras—everyone wants honor, effectively erasing life itself just to be seen. A fake life is not a life; it is merely living for appearances, quite literally. We are no different from the samurai, except that honor has taken on a different face: not with a sword and kimono, but with very few clothes, and an immense self-confidence with nothing behind it, just a desire to be respected. In Omer Adam's wonderful song, Ya'asu Lanu Kavod ("They'll Show Us Respect"), all they ask for is honor.

Going Deeper: Inner honor vs. external honor: the Jewish way

Rabbi A. I. Kook wrote (Middot HaRe'ayah, "Honor"): "One who pursues honor shows thereby that he lacks inner honor, and wishes to fill what he lacks with external honor."

Inner honor depends on humility, on an inner confidence that does not need constant validation from outside sources. Someone who dies for a noble cause certainly deserves honor for their courage and sacrifice; that is inner honor. But if it is sacrificing life in vain, purely for the sake of a sanctified death, without a truly worthy purpose and without realism, it is nothing more than external honor. Judaism replaced the duel with tokhechah (loving rebuke), and harakiri with teshuvah (repentance).

Culture: When life imitated literature: the duel that killed Pushkin

The book Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin, 1831) depicts the duel scene between Onegin and Lensky as distilled tragedy. Two good friends stand in the snow, knowing full well that the reason for the fight is foolish, and yet they shoot—because the social code is stronger than life itself. Pushkin, regarded as Russia's greatest poet and the father of modern Russian literature, was married to Natalia Goncharova, considered one of the most beautiful women in Russia. A French officer named Georges d'Anthès began openly courting her, and Pushkin insisted on fighting a duel, which ended in the writer's death (1837). Five years after describing that pointless, foolish duel in his book, Pushkin himself died the exact same way.