Your Honor

I've been in  discussion about honor as of late.  Seems some people want to define the word by how they feel rather than to focus on what the word actually means.

From Dictionary.com: "honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions."

From this I would say that if you say you are going to do something you keep your word.  Even if it costs you more than you thought it would.

From this I would say you focus on what is fair to all sides.

And from this, if you state  belief, you live by that belief.  You strive to be honorable because people know you will follow up on what you say.

I've observed the claim of being "honorable" made by some persons and alliances under the most dubious circumstances.

I've seen terms of war broken because the leader of the alliance figured out after agreeing to the terms, that the terms were favorable to the other side. 

I've seen an alliance add members to their alliance, large members, after they agreed they wouldn't issue any new invites.  Then, when confronted with their dishonorable actions, they made no effort to claim that they had not broken their word, and just went about their business.

I've seen an alliances promise to leave players of two or less cities out of the war, and then attack a player with two cities.  When confronted, no apology, no admitting of error, just silence.

I've see an alliance claim they want a fight to be fair, and then have four of their players, with over three times the population and twice the number of cities, join in the battle.

I've seen an alliance, claim they want a fair fight, allow their "champion" to add his alt after he was unable to siege the first city he tried, even though he was a third larger than his opponent even without his alt. 

I've seen words given and then broken on at least four occasions.  Is that what it means to be honorable? 

And this alliance insists they are honorable!

Words have meaning.  If they didn't and we could all just make up what we would like them to mean it would be a pretty brutal place.  We aren't the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland and words don't mean "whatever we want them to mean, nothing more, or nothing less."

The word honor can only be applied to those who honor their own word.

HIGH stands for Honor, Integrity, Generosity and Humility.  I"ve thought a lot about the first and find that there are no perfectly honorable people but there are those who fool themselves by saying they are honorable and then don't honor their own word, and those who admit they fall short and try to correct it.  That's what I do because once you've lost your honor you can't even believe yourself.

Those are my thoughts on honor.  What are yours?

AJ