Chapter 7 (Part 1) Honor and Degradation, Debt The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Honour as a fragile virtue wrapped around dignity requires violence to maintain it
Dear Reader,
I am back from my mother country, Spain. I say this without any form of enormous anger or resentment (except to say that I have always regretted the destruction of the local cultures with so little evidence of what came before) but a kind of curiosity about any lingering cultural connections that I may still feel. After all, 300 years of colonial history between Spain and the Philippines (erased by Hollywood), seems distant, yet forges an ancestral love-hate bond akin to a parent and child.
I found it in food.
This is a heavy meat-eating country (very delicious, almost as good as Australian meat) that also loves its bread, seafood, and rice. The squid ink rice (rizo negra) is very delicious (not in the picture) and we have enjoyed it in different cities. Much of the basic cuisine tastes like home including roasted suckling pig and stews. I am very delightfully surprised. Sadly, the language is not a direct connection. Spanish is no longer a lingua franca in the Philippines removed as a study requirement in 1992. There are tons of excellent literary works that I wish I could read.
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75d1ed1b-34dc-4d2f-9630-5d4745f8b733_4624x3472.jpeg)
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc50b4384-8096-497f-af90-4836b0b0dd84_4624x3472.jpeg)
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7aa3573c-eed4-4678-a5b5-99bba1458b9e_4624x3472.jpeg)
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fadc27857-bc33-43e5-98a6-1b24220067d1_4624x3472.jpeg)
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff87762fc-702e-4f50-91d9-feecaff0669a_4624x3472.jpeg)
![Sourdough bread, lentil stew, albondigas meatballs, patatas bravas, the sumptuous dining at Palacio Real](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f059d8c-3efc-49a0-aaf1-1e79584578e0_4624x3472.jpeg)
Perhaps, I could share details separately, but what a delightful experience when you travel without any specific plan or expectations. The result is simple abundance! More in separate posts.
We’re back to our regular programming.
I am glad we are starting fresh with Chapter 7, another long chapter but one that dives deeper into the historical roots of violence, honour, and markets. Let’s spend the summer diving deep into the timeline of human history to answer how our concepts of morality and freedom (from debt) evolved.
Today, we tackle the first section. The forthcoming posts will focus on each of the historical case studies that Graeber cites.
From the edge of Holanda,
Melanie
Honour as the root of debt
Graeber poses some interesting connections about debt/money and its links to violence, particularly slavery and its mirror, honour. The tie between the two is what he has observed as a matter of timing and speed
slavery, as an external force, is a sudden tear in the context of people’s lives as an outcome of war, imprisonment, kidnapping, punishment, or debt; it renders the slave socially dead
honour means integrity but in Graeber’s calculation is a precursor of violence that occurs slowly and most times invisibly or embedded within cultures
Graeber posits that honour is a thin thread that leads to violence. For him, it encapsulates the source of not only violence but also answers the questions:
why debts are equated with losing one’s honour
why the ability to strip another person of dignity is the foundation of honour
Honour as violence
The reason why honour has a double moral meaning is because Graeber traces it as surplus dignity. It is not dignity per se but one that overlays it. Therefore, honour, like dignity, could be lost and needs to be defended. Honour is fragile because it could be stripped away by others. Knowing that it is possible makes honour the next door neighbour of violence.
This brings us to its relationship with slavery. It operates in two halves.
Slavery is a layered practice of degradation.
First, an individual is stripped from context and alienated from all social relationships, past and present
Second, having suffered social death, a slave has no long-lasting moral relationship which means he cannot enter into contracts or promises
Third, any contract or promises entered can be rendered invalid at anytime by the master
The only relationship that is real is with his master. Therefore, a master’s source of honour is his ability to convert people into commodities and maintain the relational violence with his slaves. Anything that runs counter to this impacts his honour. This ‘unnatural’ state is what makes the practice of slavery baffling. Though the practices of degradation is immoral, it seems the institution of slavery is one where it is a necessary evil and difficult to eradicate.
![Frontispiece of The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa The African published in 1789 in London Frontispiece of The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa The African published in 1789 in London](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffec77a81-c511-47e9-9e21-7e1dd010065f_2000x1755.jpeg)
Graeber brings up a common problem about the institution of slavery. One account by Equiano, born in 1745 somewhere in the Kingdom of Benin but was kidnapped and sold to British slavers, who took him to Barbados, and eventually landed in Virginia, demonstrated an interesting fact. He did not defy the institution of slavery until he converted to Methodism and sided with the activists against the trade.
Graeber links this to the notion of honour. You would think that someone who was a former slave would be the first to oppose the institution, in this case, it was not immediate. This is where Graeber cites the discomfort in honour as a value. It only has weight through society’s approval. This means that Equiano’s aim was to recover his honour through attaining what is seen as valuable and honourable at that time. He became a successful annuity bond seller and real estate landlord. He achieved wealth and standing in the community. It is difficult to destroy an institution that is the source of one’s new found honour. This is what Graeber calls as the most profoundly violent aspect of slavery.
All societies based on slavery tend to be marked by this agonizing double consciousness: the awareness that the highest things one has to strive for are also, ultimately, wrong; but at the same time, the feeling that this is simply the nature of reality.
Round-Up
Honour as a virtue has a dark mirror relationship with violence. Graeber argues that dissecting the concept of honour will unravel how:
debt slavery is not perceived as criminal despite practices of degradation
debt, money and markets necessarily require honour (and its implicit force of violence) to exist and implement
Graeber believes that studying the virtue honour across human history will show us indirectly how debt came to be related to violence. In this post, Graeber argues that honour as a virtue requires violence to maintain it such as in the institution of slavery. The violence continues to be exacted even once a slave buys his freedom like Olaudah Equiano but who must strive to attain his honour in society. This explains why he accepted the practice of slavery until his conversion to Methodism.
Honour, violence, and debt would be similarly tied together in the forthcoming posts. Honouring our debts would later become a high virtue that requires tremendous imposition of violence and practices of degradation accepted by society. Next, is the practice of cumal, a Medieval Irish practice of slavery.