Bitarch and the Voluntarist claim that of the two cultural models of behavior—honor and dignity—the second is more attractive to libertarians, as the first is collectivist and the second is individualistic.
Let us use the same definitions. In a culture of honor, a person’s standing is determined by how much their behavior conforms to certain high standards. In a culture of dignity, a person is valuable by the mere fact of belonging to humanity.
From this, it is easy to draw both the conclusions of the article and the exact opposite: honor is about individualism, since a person defends their own honor or chooses dishonor; dignity, however, is a collectivist thing, since only collective trends will determine what offends human dignity and what does not. Other people within a “culture of dignity” may turn out to be so valuable that any sidelong glance would humiliate their dignity, and the law would punish this, for example, with imprisonment for “inciting hatred.”
If today a person chooses to rely on the protection of an impersonal law instead of individual action, then tomorrow that same law will strip them of their dignity, and the person will have already lost the capacity for individual action in the previous step.
What is the culture of honor based on? On the fact that a person is always ready to demonstrate their willingness to defend themselves against the encroachments of others, and thereby avoids the need to repeat this again and again. Others see the readiness to repel and are wary of infringing upon another’s honor. Of course, the concept of honor is broader than the readiness for violence, but in the article under discussion, it is reduced only to this, so we will not expand the topic unnecessarily.
And what is a culture of dignity, if described in the language of a culture of honor? It is the presumption that everyone can defend their honor. I do not know if every person I meet is truly a person of honor. But I will assume this and base my behavior on it. Therefore, I will not encroach upon what is dear to them, knowing that their honor commands them to defend it. They are worthy of this. In other words, dignity grows out of honor. It limits honor, but does not deny it.
Bitarch and the Voluntarist propose to cast aside honor in favor of dignity. They want to deprive a person of the right to forcefully defend what is dear to them, while hoping that the law will be observed in a culture of dignity. But they forget to remind us that the law can become anything. A society with dignified laws (referring not to written norms, but to the actual practice of their application) will preserve a culture of dignity. A society with undignified laws will lose it. But what will compel people to fight for dignified laws and against undignified ones? Honor, of course!
To summarize. In reality, we are talking about the same thing. Respect for the values of the individual is important for building a prosperous society. But we do not agree on the means. If the NAP is reduced only to the refusal to initiate direct violence, then an encroachment on another’s freedom can bypass the NAP through indirect methods. This is exactly why the capacity for proactive violence cannot be taken away from a person. Without this capacity, a person will be unable to resist their own enslavement. Bitarch and the Voluntarist are developing mechanisms to strengthen the inhibitor of violence. If their means worked, it would make me their enemy. Fortunately, they work only on paper.
