Worf lived in human cultures for most of his life, never directly experiencing Klingon ways until his adult years. In that way, he developed a very romanticized view of Klingon culture that didn't reflect reality. Meeting Klingons with their own views on the meaning of honour challenged his preconceptions.
Dunno if anyone gives a shit but if you're stoned like me during the covid times you can stream all of the new movies on InstaFlixxer. I've been watching with my girlfriend during the lockdown :)
In the MMO STO, at that time period in the timeline of Star Trek, Wolf's attitude towards Honour had begun to gain traction within the Empire. Having a few followers who sort to uphold personal as well as group honor. This attitude caused tensions and in the storyline of the Klingon faction you have to deal with those tensions in a couple of the quests.
One thing missing, I think, is coverage of why the Klingons would respect the Federation enough to sign a peace treaty with them. It is covered indirectly by the Quark part, however. While a Klingon might initially mistake the Federation as a bunch of cowards afraid to die, greater inspection would prove that the Federation (or at least Starfleet) is not afraid of death, that they are willing to face death for the good of the Federation. It's just that they don't seek combat, and prefer to use other means. Klingons might see the Federation as fools for wasting times with talk when they could be fighting, but when the Federation sees no alternative, they'll fight as fiercely as any Klingon. Perhaps even moreso, as the Federation often weakens itself, as it tries to fight non-lethally. Again, Klingons might see leaving your enemies alive as foolish... but they would also see that this entails putting your own life at risk. A Klingon may not be able to understand the desire to preserve all life, but they can respect the willingness to risk your own life to uphold your values. Lastly, for all the apparent foolishness, the Klingons cannot deny the Federations achievements. They may not understand it, but in the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation is one of the greatest powers to be reckoned with. Though they do not seek out combat, they are capable of standing on even footing with those who do. So, in the end, the Klingon Empire sees a group of people who are willing to die for their own code of honor, and who achieve great success through that code. A Klingon may never understand the Federation, they are far too alien for them to have any interest in joining the Federation, but they are nonetheless worthy of respect. And to not show respect to one who so clearly deserves it, would be a crime against honor.
The reason the Klingon's respect the Federation are acts such as when the Enterprise-C went down fighting a Romulan attack to defend a Klingon attack. The Federation may not seek battle but they do their duty even on pain of death.
This was really good, I think a lot of fans mistakes Worf's view on honor and Klingons for what the Klingons are supposed to be. While he is our most familiar window into the culture he is himself looking in from the outside from a perspective probably more in common with a human.
I do, however, think that Martok represents the best of Klingon honor. Honor is important to him, but he does not let his own personal desires get in the way of the Empire as a whole. Ironically, this is much like the Ferengi from an episode that Chuck hates far more than I do. "The Grand Nagus cannot let his personal greed get in the way of the greater greed of Fereginar." Selfish concepts like honor or greed are going to have to be a core component of any society. You cannot run a society on good vibes, after all. But the best leaders are those who seek to use power to better their society as a whole, rather than just themselves. It may be glorious to die in battle, but it is even more glorious to win the war. If it came down to it, and Martok had to make the decision, I think he'd rather die an inglorious death, rather than lose the Dominion War. I'd imagine that Kahless could see no greater glory than to ensure the victory of the greatest war the Empire had ever fought.
That's not a mistake. SF Debris goes into exceptional detail, the only problem is that he is 100 percent wrong. The other Klingons also believe in internal honor, else they would not go to such extreme lengths to conceal their own dishonorable behavior. The different between Worf and the other Klingons is that he practices his beliefs free from hypocrisy. He has constructed an idealized version of Klingon society, a utopia if you will, and most Klingons simply can't live up to it.
@@erentheca I have to disagree. Most Klingons _don't_ care about or believe in an internal honor code. They do care about being _seen_ as honorable. They know about and understand a level of internal honor, so the hide their dishonorable acts to appear to be honor when seen from the outside for the external honro only.
its interesting to compare Worf to of all people Garak in regards to the the exile from their homes, and most importance values of their people manifests itself in each. Cardassian life so frequently emphasized duty to the state to the point where even the highest form of their literature is something like "The Neverending Sacrifice", a repetitive epic glorifying generations of the same family's dedication to the nation. Garak himself exemplifies this better than anyone as it is perhaps the only unambiguous motive he's ever shown to have is the good of Cardassia. And yet much like Worf's notions of internal honor differing from the Empire's external values at points, what is best for the state becomes a matter of interpretation by many various Cardassians. Aamin Marritza's desire to stand trial for the sins of the Occupation, Rusot's hopes of restoring the empire of old by betraying Kira, Tekeny Ghemor working with the dissident movement to overthrow Central Command. All different and all believing they were doing what was best for Cardassia. Even Elim's most hated enemy in Gul Dukat, while certainly motivated by naked self interest, could defend the move to join the Dominion as necessary to save his people from themselves. Its notable then, that Garak holds on to his personal devotion to Cardassia to the end of the series, just as Worf retains his own internal honor in spite of the struggles it gives. Despite the obvious advantages it would bring, both continually refuse to compromise their own personal interpretation of values (honor and selflessness to the state) when certain authorities demand it. The tragedy of course is that the home Garak sacrificed so much for, is in many ways gone for good when his exile finally ends.
I do love that scene. Besides the obvious tragedy of it, it reminds us that Garak was never on our side. Sure, he may have grown to like the cloying bubbly happiness of the Federation over time, and seen it's virtues. But in the end, he wanted a proper return to the police state he was banished from. For all that Garak was a true ally of the Federation, he still held values that the Federation would consider atrocious. It reminds us that Garak did not grow as a character, not in the traditional sense. Rather, his goals aligned with the Federations more and more as the series went on. It means we have to look at his continued allegiance not through a change of heart, but through aligned goals, and perhaps a bit of fondness for his new allies. While Garak would kill every last one of them if it would bring his Cardassia back, I could see him being as pleasent about it as possible, making the death quick and painless, while leaving the corpse unmarred, to allow for an ideal funeral.
So I want to call out that chivalry as you described is more of a romantic view of the past than how they saw it at the time: at the time, the knights wanted to win fights too, so "chivalry" may also include "effective in combat" and "loyal to lords" as higher priorities than the other things.
Bushido is very internal, with Vertical Honor attached to it I'd say. You were meant to show yourself as someone with truthfulness and integrity, while also having your personal achievements. As for Chivalry, I recommend Geoffroi De Charny's book of Chivalry as he was a Knight, living by the code, and had the opportunity to die in the way he surely loved - Next to his king in battle ( _King survived the battle_ ). One amusing tidbit that Charny writes is that you can be so fat you can barely walk, but as long as you hold the spirit of chivalry and desire to do chivalrous deeds, you are a Knight in his eyes. You just couldn't be lazy. Lazy was the devil.
Note that the code of Chivalry and the code of Bushido was developed long after these warrior classes stop being warriors. Not to say that there where no seeds to these codes in there time. But is was not as fully developed as people often thing. Samurai before the Edo period where a lot more focus on there station more then how to act morally. There was a expectation that you do follow you commanding officer. But like the Sengoku period before it shows, there was a lot of backstabbing. That is not to say that there was no honor codes before that in Western or Japanese feudal society. But like the video brought up. These codes where more external codes about one place and how honor relates to the group. It would slowly become a more of a internal code with time. Was this natural development of the code? Or just a reflection of a more centralized society where the lower warrior classes would be marginalized? That I do not have a clear answer for. But it is quite interested how one see some parallels in both how Chivalry and Bushido developed.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Ezrie's analysis of Klingon politics and honor code when Worf was struggling what to do about Gowron. She pointed out that Worf designed his life around his ideal and romanticized view of what Klingon honor should be, but as a society they've been comfortable with naked rejection of those codes for the political convenience. In a meta example of why you joked that we might turn this video off for hearing the word "honor" too many times, Ezrie gave us a clear example of why we as an audience consider the term a bad joke when discussing Klingons. Many of them might have these personal examples of honor, but as a nation they couldn't keep a straight definition and just made it suit their situation. The revelation led Worf to do precisely what he stopped the other Klingon from doing in "Redemption" - challenging a wartime Chancellor.
When Worf was victorious, he refused the Chancellor's robe, and gave it to Martok, who did not want the job, but Worf thought him worthy. Worf visibly acted out his rejection of external honor in favor of internal honor. He didn't want power for himself; he wanted power for the best.
While discussed in Redemption and The Way of the Warrior already, this is still a good video to put up on YT for those that either don't know or can't watch about your main site with the full videos. Hoping down the line we'll get the rest of the other Trek side videos, like the ones about holograms & ethics, Prime Directive, language of Darmok, first contact with alien species, and the rest of the character bio vids.
Thing is Samurai's code of honor wasn't about what we might consider honor based on romantic view of past. It was more about loyalty to one's own lord and being willing to take they own life if needed than fighting against equal or greater enemy. After all Samurai weren't afraid to do things like test they new Katana by waiting on road and attacking peasants who happen to walk by. In this way House Kurita mechwarriors in Battletech universe that are basically Samurai in Space have shown honor more towards that romantic view of past than honor that historical accurate Samurai had like when one of they regiments were forced to massacre populace of entire planet by order of they lord they committed suicide after that because of they shame or how they didn't want to fight superior enemy that was Clan Smoke Jaguar with they own terms that were honor bound based on what Clans consider to be honorable.
"After all Samurai weren't afraid to do things like test they new Katana by waiting on road and attacking peasants who happen to walk by." This most certainly never happened. At least not with a Samurai in his Lords' Domain. Maybe with a Ronin or a Samurai during War in another Lords Area. Killing a Peasant of your Clan, just because you wanted to test your sword, would have ended pretty badly for all parties involved: 1. The Samurai gets punished. Maybe even has to kill himself. 2. The Daimyo has to appease the peasants or risk a revolt. Those were pretty common at the time. You don't provoke the peasantry! 3. He certainly loses respect and thereby honor, because his retainers go around murdering subjects of his lord, without cause or command, just to test out new weapons. (
I always figured that Klingons radically reinterpreted their warrior culture in terms of "honor" when they were forced to sue for peace with the Federation. They needed the Federation to trust them, because they needed the Federation more than the Federation needed them, so they re-jigged their culture a little to make it more palatable to the UFP. And once that relationsjip was well established, the idea of "honor" wasn't as necessary, so we start seeing it disregarded.
The whole discussion about the 'is Klingon reliance on cloaking technology honorable' is moot when you consider that the word for 'honor' in any contemporary existing language never directly translates 100% into the word for 'honor' in any other contemporary language, and always contains its own culture-bound nuances. So the word we and the other human characters hear rendered as 'honor' is only the best approximation the UT can manage, and the internal Klingon definition may be quite different. And it must be, because we have all sorts of examples like dishonor transferring from the father to the son, or certain forms of ritualized murder being honorable, or the killing of wounded enemy noncombatants being honorable for both the killer and the victim, etc, which do not fit with the modern Western notion of 'honor.'
The idea of killing a seriously wounded enemy as honorable is one that many look at today as criminal. But if you look at it in the way those who were fighting at that time did it makes perfect sense. To have fought face to face, and seen how brave, noble, and fierce that now seriously wounded opponent is to not give them an honorable death would be an insult. To leave them to suffer and die in a bed, wasted by infection and disease is not "a warriors" death, while giving them a quick end on a field of battle with their comrades and fellow warriors is. To think of it another way, when we have a pet that is suffering, we often have it put to sleep. That is considered the merciful thing to do. The same with a person who is beyond saving with a fatal disease, we give the option of DNR - do not resuscitate so they can die and end the suffering.
I was just thinking about how for samurai, it was not just honourable but mandatory for a samurai to use the bow, but for many westerners, a bow was dishonourable. Also, in some native american cultures, counting coup - touching the enemy without violence - was very honourable, and it wasn't honourable to strike an unarmed opponent (from what i gather). This made no sense to the Westerners who had much less of a sense of honour, except the personal honour of duelling and defending your folks with your life. Honour to your nation made sense to many countries, but to others it was honour to defend the monarch or emperor. And Spartan honour was Never Get Caught. You could break every rule if you weren't caught. Also, trading was dishonourable (but done). In many cultures, a history of having been a slave meant permanent dishonour, but in Roman culture, it just seemed to be something that you could get past to some degree - Diocletian even managed to get to be Emperor. I think the soldiers tended to be pragmatic and not so worried about the social niceties, and they didn't seem to care about how humble his origins were.
Id say Worf sparing the child at the end is external honour. He is showing mercy and could easily say "i am showing mercy. The crimes your father put mine through have been paid for. Do not mistake this as an act of weakness, it is not. It is an act of mercy, born out of honour and the hopes that one day, you may regain your own honour."
I suppose Klingon honour is more like duty. You have a duty to your culture and society to challenge weak leaders, to destroy the enemy in battle, to serve your rightful lord when demanded, to meet challengers directly and without hesitation, and to shun those who do not. All neatly packaged together into one word, honour. Which also means it changes as the situation demands. "It is honourable to follow bad orders as they were given by rightful rulers" and so on. Is it honourable to us in the part of the world that watches star trek? No, but our values are different to the empires values.
Interesting that the one thing they could have changed about the klingons was instead of a warrior based culture, they could have done a hunter based one. Then the use of stealth and stalking your opponent and striking without warning would be justified. Glory and honor can be earned by defeating worthier prey, in a sense their culture could be similar to the Predators, where dishonor is suffered when defeated by prey and thus suicide is required.
Good ol Quark, I forgot how much I loved that episode. ALSO, let us not forget when Worf took on those Jem Hadar in the prison/incampment 371... Dude is a MONSTER. Love it.
Your logic and passion in conveying it was quite engrossing. Great video. I would love to know your sources for these ideas of internal and external honor so I that I can learn more, as research for my own science fiction
Some of the best episodes of TNG are those in which Kilingons' decadence is portrayed. So you have an exiled conflicted Klingon such as Worf being "pure" and idealistic, while the empire itself is ruined by corruption and deceive. But also those rare episodes of VOY in which Torres is confronted with Klingons' spiritual believes that she, as an engineer, comes to respect as part of her heritage. I loved almost all TNG era Klingon episodes.
You have brought many logical reasons why Worf is an interesting character. His character archetype would normally be boring but in his case it was interesting to the end
Loved your video on Garak and Klingon honor. If you can find the information, I'd love to see you do a video on the Galra Empire of Voltron: Legendary Defender. Even though they stepped away from their customs and traditions, I feel like they would greatly parallel the Klingons in honor, culture, traditions, and other aspects.
I'll never understand the concept of Klingons not allowing women to be on the council, since they seem to have no issues with females serving on ship crews, being warriors, having honor, being the heads of houses, etc. You even have a TNG episode where a seat is offered to, of all things, a half Human/half Klingon. It's right up there with that one TOS episode where they claim that there were no female captains in Starfleet at the time. While I can write that one off as the ravings of a deeply bitter and mentally unstable woman who could never make it as a captain, the fact that the council has no females on it cannot be. And it will never make sense to me.
Why should Klingons having females serving on ship crews, being warriors, having honor, and being the heads of houses mean that they should also be on the Council? Also keep in mind that there was only one depiction of a female serving as the head of a noble house, and that was with special dispensation of the Council at the end of a very abnormal legal case. Remember, gender roles aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, and the fact that Klingon male and female are more-or-less equals in _some_ social contexts doesn't imply that they are or should be in _all_ social contexts.
It's a very strange thing to give them near universal equality in almost every aspect that we've seen, especially in regards to power when it comes to being the head of a great house, from which the council draws its members, yet it denies them a seat on said council. Perhaps it's explained in some canon source I'm unaware, but if it hasn't, I'd love to see the reasoning behind it from the Klingon perspective.
There's no incongruity there, as canonically it's explicitly stated Klingon women cannot lead great houses. Leadership of a house passes from a father to his eldest son, and if the house leader dies without male issue, the house is dissolved, unless the widow ritually remarries, in which case leadership of the house passes to the new husband. There was only one depiction in prime continuity of a female leader of a great house, that being Grilka, and the entire plot of the episode was about her seeking special dispensation from the Council to allow her to retain leadership of her house after her husband died. The Council did eventually grant her leadership but it was clearly shown in the episode that it was not the social or legal norm for such a thing to be done. See: DS9 S3EP3: _The House of Quark_ Also, I would say that attempting to superimpose the current Western notion of 'gender equality' on the Klingon culture is what's generating broken results for you, as the Klingons have never been depicted as caring for such a concept, so it's more likely they see the examples of [ship crew], [warrior], etc, as social roles which are not gender-specific, and don't consider these to have any bearing on the social roles of [house leader] or [Council member], which _are_ gender-specific.
STD is Abramsverse and not in prime continuity. As far as the Undiscovered Country goes it may be an example of a social role that was not gender-specific and then later became so.
You know what of all the 24th century series the one I watch most has to be DS9. I find it more interesting and multifaceted than TNG and VOY. Very deep. After Worf Quark has to be the most interesting character of all the DS9 cast. He hates the Federation yet at the same time respects it. As he said in one episode about root beer he hates it but if you drink enough of the stuff you begin to like it. Insidious.
Things like chivalry were never a list of fixed rules, they varied a lot by individual. So a 12th century knight might act just as Worf does, while surrounded by knights who act like the other Klingons do.
Excellently crafted video. I’ve thought about the seeming casual hypocrisy of Klingon honor on screen and I think your analysis most adequately reconciles the apparent contradictions. I think, then, it would simply be easier to use the words ‘glory’ and ‘integrity’ to make clear distinctions on concepts. The problem is this: I think Klingon society is fully aware of the notion of integrity, but many individuals willfully and brazenly fall short of integrity in pursuit of glory-and they have the convenient escape route to do so all because those two concepts are ambiguously related just enough to unfortunately be be synonymous with the same exact word: ‘honor.’ This is, unfortunately, a lazy way of taking about honor. It’s the same kind of lazy thinking that I see within my community. People want recognition and esteem without the the hard work of sacrifice, and they conveniently attach honor to having something -material things, titles, influence-that others do not but covet. True honor, sadly, is only internal. But rarely celebrated. Our society lauds the sociopathic and the self-absorbed hedonist. Somehow, a large swath of us have ironically conflated envy with admiration-and THAT is the most perverse result of all.
This is like being a Nigerian born in the states. I have an idea of what it means to be Nigerian, but i am met with harsh rebuke by my own people when i challenge them to be honorable, honest and to bow your head to no one. Instead of seeing it as an improvement to our current ways back home, they laugh it off and continue on with being basically pirates, or saiyans. I swear, i feel like Worf or Bardock just about every day.
You know chuck, you mention Klingon not being Samurai is kind of funny since i often bring this essay as a good explanation of how Samurai and Japanese media view Samurai honor vs Western Media project their view of honor on them. Klingon understand of honor is fairly close to the of Samurai
You know I did notice till now that you mention Samurai in one breath with "Chivilirous Knights" and "White Hat Cowboy" as opposed to Klingon idea of honor. This is kind of funny since I couple of times to explain the actual way in which Japanese Warrior Culture (Note: Samurai simply means "retainer". It a word used to describe anyone in employ of feudal lord, not just knights) view honor as oppose to applying the chivalrous typical of European medieval epic-poetry.
You might want to look up shadiversity's video on Chivalry. It takes it in context that is the same conflation of terms that is the subject of this video. Reputation vs code of conduct.
REFORMED TRINITOLOGY: 1 John 2:19 ✝️ + "Honor is a man's reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men.“ - Jack Donovan 🤔
i have to disagree on the idea of mention "samurai" as different from the klingons, the idea of honour among samurai was, historically, very similar to the klingon view on honour, when one ignores the romanticized view on the samurai of today, one recognizes that personal honour was always secondary to external honour, putting one selves honour above that of your lord was considered shameful, if your lord found out that you had the chance to slay one of his enemies by stabbing him in the back and you didn't do it, you'd be shamed forever, if not executed for such a thing. there is a reason why so many samurai warlords employed shinobi against their enemies, so much so that even some members of the samurai class where also shinobi. if a samurai was able to gain an advantage over his enemies he would most certainly do it, the moment guns where introduced to japan during the sengoku period, the islanders making them had to start mass production because every single samurai warlord of the time was like "I'll take your entire stock!" upon seeing the advantages of such weaponry.
you could have simply used the kinght's oath from Kingdom of Heaven. this ties everything together Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright, that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong; that is your oath.
I am a person with a lot of Internal Honor, as aI value my integrity very high in order to be seen as a person others can trust and rely upon. This was a good video, but I'm saddened you didn't ad the comedic part about Honor and Courage being Worf's... Yeah x3
This is an interesting video, but I disagree with this distinction of "internal" versus "external" honor. I don't think it accurately describes what's going on here between Worf and the Klingon Empire. For the sake of discussion, I think we can use the word "honor" interchangeably with values, ethics, or morality, since "honor" serves as the moral foundation of Klingon society. But all individuals, whether they be human or Klingon, have their own individual values, and their own ideas of honor. The "external" honor presented here is really just the manifestation of a specific concept of personal honor and values that is accepted and shared by the individuals within a given society. So it's not that Klingon honor is based on one's relationship to the group, it's that the group (in theory) takes action based on a concept of honor accepted by all of the individuals within it. That is the basis of it's authority over the individual. In other words, if individual Klingons believed the Empire itself was dishonorable or weak (their version of immoral), then they would feel honorable (or morally righteous) in rebelling and fighting against it. Which is exactly what happened. An individual Klingon, Gowron, believed the High Council of the Empire was corrupt (dishonorable), and collaborated with other individual Klingon's against it. Which is why the honor of Mogh was eventually restored. So honor itself is the highest law, not the group, and even the High Council is subject to it. But my point is that the distinction of "internal" versus "external" honor doesn't make sense. Worf is a product of his environment, and the other Klingons are products of their environment, and that is the only significant difference in this context. In theory, Starfleet operates on just as much "external" honor as the Klingon empire does, but they just define honor differently and they reward and punish honor and dishonor differently. Worf's idea of honor conforms to Starfleet culture, which is precisely why he resigns from Starfleet. He doesn't want to operate against Starfleet regulations because that would be dishonorable according to Starfleet. Worf accepts that, so the conflict here is not really between Worf and Klingon honor... it's between Starfleet honor and Klingon honor. To be honest, I would describe Worf's honor as an obvious synthesis of Klingon culture and Starfleet culture. It only gives the appearance of being "internal" because he has conflicting allegiances and influences. For the most part, what this video describes as Worf's honor is really the influence of Starfleet breaking through Worf's expression of Klingon honor. Which is why Worf is willing to accept the authority of Gowron in the same way a Starfleet officer accepts a higher ranking officer. It's not really political, it's that Worf has been conditioned by Starfleet and he is simply not ruthless enough to kill Gowron at the drop of a hat. But at the same time, he cannot appear weak to his own brother, so he has to express his Starfleet influences in a way that makes sense in the eyes of other Klingons. He's really playing a dangerous game in this regard. And his decision to spare the boy's life is another example of his Starfleet conditioning. But to a large degree, his concept of honor conforms with Klingon honor. The framing in this video just gives the wrong impression about this. Worf operates as if he has honor because in reality... he does have Klingon honor. He accepts the decision of the High Council because he knows that in reality, he is still honorable by Klingon standards. The entire story line of "Redemption" is that the House of Mogh is, in fact, still honorable according to the Klingon concept of honor, despite the decision of the High Council to claim otherwise. So his name is honorable not just by Worf's own standards, and not by Starfleet's standards... but by Klingon standards. And the dishonor handed out by the Council was a lie. It's the Council that was actually dishonorable by Klingon standards. So framing things as if Worf doesn't care how he is viewed from within the Klingon Emprie is just wrong. He cares qutie a bit because he knows the House of Mogh has Klingon honor, and therefore he also has Klingon honor, and he wants the rest of the Klingon Empire to recognize that fact.
"A discussion about *a key aspect of the Klingon culture and the various ways it's been portrayed across twenty-years of Star Trek, one of the most enduring franchises in science fiction* is not the most interesting subject for a scifi channel." Sound about right? ; )
honor is important to klingons the same way indoor plumbing is important to all species yet that makes neither indoor plumbing nor honor an interesting scifi topic to discuss.
Not really a good comparison I must say, you try to draw similarity between an essential life style and rules, morals with sewage management. Honor is different from species to species as we have seen from various sci fi shows or books disecting the Klingon one is still within the realm of the channel's focus, plus it is his channel, he talks about what HE wants to.
Worf lived in human cultures for most of his life, never directly experiencing Klingon ways until his adult years. In that way, he developed a very romanticized view of Klingon culture that didn't reflect reality. Meeting Klingons with their own views on the meaning of honour challenged his preconceptions.
Indeed, it would be like someone from today going back to medieval times and trying to operate on the romanticized view we now have of it.
Dunno if anyone gives a shit but if you're stoned like me during the covid times you can stream all of the new movies on InstaFlixxer. I've been watching with my girlfriend during the lockdown :)
@Sonny Ahmad yea, been watching on instaflixxer for since december myself :)
In the MMO STO, at that time period in the timeline of Star Trek, Wolf's attitude towards Honour had begun to gain traction within the Empire. Having a few followers who sort to uphold personal as well as group honor. This attitude caused tensions and in the storyline of the Klingon faction you have to deal with those tensions in a couple of the quests.
One thing missing, I think, is coverage of why the Klingons would respect the Federation enough to sign a peace treaty with them. It is covered indirectly by the Quark part, however.
While a Klingon might initially mistake the Federation as a bunch of cowards afraid to die, greater inspection would prove that the Federation (or at least Starfleet) is not afraid of death, that they are willing to face death for the good of the Federation. It's just that they don't seek combat, and prefer to use other means. Klingons might see the Federation as fools for wasting times with talk when they could be fighting, but when the Federation sees no alternative, they'll fight as fiercely as any Klingon.
Perhaps even moreso, as the Federation often weakens itself, as it tries to fight non-lethally. Again, Klingons might see leaving your enemies alive as foolish... but they would also see that this entails putting your own life at risk. A Klingon may not be able to understand the desire to preserve all life, but they can respect the willingness to risk your own life to uphold your values.
Lastly, for all the apparent foolishness, the Klingons cannot deny the Federations achievements. They may not understand it, but in the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation is one of the greatest powers to be reckoned with. Though they do not seek out combat, they are capable of standing on even footing with those who do.
So, in the end, the Klingon Empire sees a group of people who are willing to die for their own code of honor, and who achieve great success through that code. A Klingon may never understand the Federation, they are far too alien for them to have any interest in joining the Federation, but they are nonetheless worthy of respect. And to not show respect to one who so clearly deserves it, would be a crime against honor.
The reason the Klingon's respect the Federation are acts such as when the Enterprise-C went down fighting a Romulan attack to defend a Klingon attack. The Federation may not seek battle but they do their duty even on pain of death.
I thought it was because they figured the Organians would probably interfere again like they did in "Errand Of Mercy".
@@BioGoji-zm5ph lol no, that was a one-off thing.
@@peppercallahan8286 Um, the Organian Treaty was directly mentioned by Klingons in The Trouble With Tribbles in the second season.
This was really good, I think a lot of fans mistakes Worf's view on honor and Klingons for what the Klingons are supposed to be. While he is our most familiar window into the culture he is himself looking in from the outside from a perspective probably more in common with a human.
I do, however, think that Martok represents the best of Klingon honor. Honor is important to him, but he does not let his own personal desires get in the way of the Empire as a whole.
Ironically, this is much like the Ferengi from an episode that Chuck hates far more than I do. "The Grand Nagus cannot let his personal greed get in the way of the greater greed of Fereginar."
Selfish concepts like honor or greed are going to have to be a core component of any society. You cannot run a society on good vibes, after all. But the best leaders are those who seek to use power to better their society as a whole, rather than just themselves. It may be glorious to die in battle, but it is even more glorious to win the war. If it came down to it, and Martok had to make the decision, I think he'd rather die an inglorious death, rather than lose the Dominion War. I'd imagine that Kahless could see no greater glory than to ensure the victory of the greatest war the Empire had ever fought.
That's not a mistake. SF Debris goes into exceptional detail, the only problem is that he is 100 percent wrong. The other Klingons also believe in internal honor, else they would not go to such extreme lengths to conceal their own dishonorable behavior. The different between Worf and the other Klingons is that he practices his beliefs free from hypocrisy. He has constructed an idealized version of Klingon society, a utopia if you will, and most Klingons simply can't live up to it.
@@erentheca I have to disagree. Most Klingons _don't_ care about or believe in an internal honor code. They do care about being _seen_ as honorable. They know about and understand a level of internal honor, so the hide their dishonorable acts to appear to be honor when seen from the outside for the external honro only.
its interesting to compare Worf to of all people Garak in regards to the the exile from their homes, and most importance values of their people manifests itself in each.
Cardassian life so frequently emphasized duty to the state to the point where even the highest form of their literature is something like "The Neverending Sacrifice", a repetitive epic glorifying generations of the same family's dedication to the nation. Garak himself exemplifies this better than anyone as it is perhaps the only unambiguous motive he's ever shown to have is the good of Cardassia.
And yet much like Worf's notions of internal honor differing from the Empire's external values at points, what is best for the state becomes a matter of interpretation by many various Cardassians. Aamin Marritza's desire to stand trial for the sins of the Occupation, Rusot's hopes of restoring the empire of old by betraying Kira, Tekeny Ghemor working with the dissident movement to overthrow Central Command. All different and all believing they were doing what was best for Cardassia.
Even Elim's most hated enemy in Gul Dukat, while certainly motivated by naked self interest, could defend the move to join the Dominion as necessary to save his people from themselves. Its notable then, that Garak holds on to his personal devotion to Cardassia to the end of the series, just as Worf retains his own internal honor in spite of the struggles it gives. Despite the obvious advantages it would bring, both continually refuse to compromise their own personal interpretation of values (honor and selflessness to the state) when certain authorities demand it.
The tragedy of course is that the home Garak sacrificed so much for, is in many ways gone for good when his exile finally ends.
I do love that scene. Besides the obvious tragedy of it, it reminds us that Garak was never on our side. Sure, he may have grown to like the cloying bubbly happiness of the Federation over time, and seen it's virtues. But in the end, he wanted a proper return to the police state he was banished from.
For all that Garak was a true ally of the Federation, he still held values that the Federation would consider atrocious. It reminds us that Garak did not grow as a character, not in the traditional sense. Rather, his goals aligned with the Federations more and more as the series went on. It means we have to look at his continued allegiance not through a change of heart, but through aligned goals, and perhaps a bit of fondness for his new allies. While Garak would kill every last one of them if it would bring his Cardassia back, I could see him being as pleasent about it as possible, making the death quick and painless, while leaving the corpse unmarred, to allow for an ideal funeral.
Sines314 so he had a flat character arc?
One particular point of Klingon honor I admire is, a warrior never lets a fellow warrior go into battle alone.
So I want to call out that chivalry as you described is more of a romantic view of the past than how they saw it at the time: at the time, the knights wanted to win fights too, so "chivalry" may also include "effective in combat" and "loyal to lords" as higher priorities than the other things.
Chivalry had many versions of the same code.
And Bushido?
Bushido is very internal, with Vertical Honor attached to it I'd say.
You were meant to show yourself as someone with truthfulness and integrity, while also having your personal achievements.
As for Chivalry, I recommend Geoffroi De Charny's book of Chivalry as he was a Knight, living by the code, and had the opportunity to die in the way he surely loved - Next to his king in battle ( _King survived the battle_ ). One amusing tidbit that Charny writes is that you can be so fat you can barely walk, but as long as you hold the spirit of chivalry and desire to do chivalrous deeds, you are a Knight in his eyes. You just couldn't be lazy. Lazy was the devil.
Bushido was also primarily a Meiji concept. The more modern understandings are of the 18th and 19th century versions of the codes.
Note that the code of Chivalry and the code of Bushido was developed long after these warrior classes stop being warriors. Not to say that there where no seeds to these codes in there time. But is was not as fully developed as people often thing. Samurai before the Edo period where a lot more focus on there station more then how to act morally. There was a expectation that you do follow you commanding officer. But like the Sengoku period before it shows, there was a lot of backstabbing.
That is not to say that there was no honor codes before that in Western or Japanese feudal society. But like the video brought up. These codes where more external codes about one place and how honor relates to the group. It would slowly become a more of a internal code with time. Was this natural development of the code? Or just a reflection of a more centralized society where the lower warrior classes would be marginalized? That I do not have a clear answer for. But it is quite interested how one see some parallels in both how Chivalry and Bushido developed.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Ezrie's analysis of Klingon politics and honor code when Worf was struggling what to do about Gowron. She pointed out that Worf designed his life around his ideal and romanticized view of what Klingon honor should be, but as a society they've been comfortable with naked rejection of those codes for the political convenience. In a meta example of why you joked that we might turn this video off for hearing the word "honor" too many times, Ezrie gave us a clear example of why we as an audience consider the term a bad joke when discussing Klingons. Many of them might have these personal examples of honor, but as a nation they couldn't keep a straight definition and just made it suit their situation. The revelation led Worf to do precisely what he stopped the other Klingon from doing in "Redemption" - challenging a wartime Chancellor.
When Worf was victorious, he refused the Chancellor's robe, and gave it to Martok, who did not want the job, but Worf thought him worthy. Worf visibly acted out his rejection of external honor in favor of internal honor. He didn't want power for himself; he wanted power for the best.
Nope it made him realize the empires problems sure. He killed Gowron because Sisko told him to though.
Much as "patriotism" means whatever the presumed patriot wants it to mean when it suits them.
So there's external honor which is defined by the group, internal honor which is defined by the individual, and friendship which is magic?
Magic however, is HERESY
I see what you put there at the end XD
Wrong. Friendship is witchcraft.
No...horizontal honor amongst peers, vertical honor to superiors, and self honor at the point they meet.
Internal honor is a synonym to self-respect, external honor is a person's reputation and respect by others.
These crates that fell on me have no honour!
Criminally underwatched video. Definitely the best breakdown of the Klingon psyche I've ever seen.
While discussed in Redemption and The Way of the Warrior already, this is still a good video to put up on YT for those that either don't know or can't watch about your main site with the full videos.
Hoping down the line we'll get the rest of the other Trek side videos, like the ones about holograms & ethics, Prime Directive, language of Darmok, first contact with alien species, and the rest of the character bio vids.
Thing is Samurai's code of honor wasn't about what we might consider honor based on romantic view of past. It was more about loyalty to one's own lord and being willing to take they own life if needed than fighting against equal or greater enemy. After all Samurai weren't afraid to do things like test they new Katana by waiting on road and attacking peasants who happen to walk by. In this way House Kurita mechwarriors in Battletech universe that are basically Samurai in Space have shown honor more towards that romantic view of past than honor that historical accurate Samurai had like when one of they regiments were forced to massacre populace of entire planet by order of they lord they committed suicide after that because of they shame or how they didn't want to fight superior enemy that was Clan Smoke Jaguar with they own terms that were honor bound based on what Clans consider to be honorable.
"After all Samurai weren't afraid to do things like test they new Katana by waiting on road and attacking peasants who happen to walk by."
This most certainly never happened.
At least not with a Samurai in his Lords' Domain. Maybe with a Ronin or a Samurai during War in another Lords Area.
Killing a Peasant of your Clan, just because you wanted to test your sword, would have ended pretty badly for all parties involved:
1. The Samurai gets punished. Maybe even has to kill himself.
2. The Daimyo has to appease the peasants or risk a revolt. Those were pretty common at the time. You don't provoke the peasantry!
3. He certainly loses respect and thereby honor, because his retainers go around murdering subjects of his lord, without cause or command, just to test out new weapons. (
Well said.
I always figured that Klingons radically reinterpreted their warrior culture in terms of "honor" when they were forced to sue for peace with the Federation. They needed the Federation to trust them, because they needed the Federation more than the Federation needed them, so they re-jigged their culture a little to make it more palatable to the UFP. And once that relationsjip was well established, the idea of "honor" wasn't as necessary, so we start seeing it disregarded.
That suddenly makes a lot of sense.
"In space, ALL warriors are cold warriors." ~ General Chang.
I have been waiting for this video in a shareable format forever. thank you SFDebris.
The whole discussion about the 'is Klingon reliance on cloaking technology honorable' is moot when you consider that the word for 'honor' in any contemporary existing language never directly translates 100% into the word for 'honor' in any other contemporary language, and always contains its own culture-bound nuances.
So the word we and the other human characters hear rendered as 'honor' is only the best approximation the UT can manage, and the internal Klingon definition may be quite different. And it must be, because we have all sorts of examples like dishonor transferring from the father to the son, or certain forms of ritualized murder being honorable, or the killing of wounded enemy noncombatants being honorable for both the killer and the victim, etc, which do not fit with the modern Western notion of 'honor.'
The idea of killing a seriously wounded enemy as honorable is one that many look at today as criminal. But if you look at it in the way those who were fighting at that time did it makes perfect sense. To have fought face to face, and seen how brave, noble, and fierce that now seriously wounded opponent is to not give them an honorable death would be an insult. To leave them to suffer and die in a bed, wasted by infection and disease is not "a warriors" death, while giving them a quick end on a field of battle with their comrades and fellow warriors is.
To think of it another way, when we have a pet that is suffering, we often have it put to sleep. That is considered the merciful thing to do. The same with a person who is beyond saving with a fatal disease, we give the option of DNR - do not resuscitate so they can die and end the suffering.
I was just thinking about how for samurai, it was not just honourable but mandatory for a samurai to use the bow, but for many westerners, a bow was dishonourable.
Also, in some native american cultures, counting coup - touching the enemy without violence - was very honourable, and it wasn't honourable to strike an unarmed opponent (from what i gather).
This made no sense to the Westerners who had much less of a sense of honour, except the personal honour of duelling and defending your folks with your life. Honour to your nation made sense to many countries, but to others it was honour to defend the monarch or emperor.
And Spartan honour was Never Get Caught. You could break every rule if you weren't caught. Also, trading was dishonourable (but done).
In many cultures, a history of having been a slave meant permanent dishonour, but in Roman culture, it just seemed to be something that you could get past to some degree - Diocletian even managed to get to be Emperor. I think the soldiers tended to be pragmatic and not so worried about the social niceties, and they didn't seem to care about how humble his origins were.
Id say Worf sparing the child at the end is external honour. He is showing mercy and could easily say "i am showing mercy. The crimes your father put mine through have been paid for. Do not mistake this as an act of weakness, it is not. It is an act of mercy, born out of honour and the hopes that one day, you may regain your own honour."
Four years later, Worf was like, "I should have killed that ha'Dibah."
Another wonderfully constructed and well researched video, great stuff Chuck.
I suppose Klingon honour is more like duty. You have a duty to your culture and society to challenge weak leaders, to destroy the enemy in battle, to serve your rightful lord when demanded, to meet challengers directly and without hesitation, and to shun those who do not.
All neatly packaged together into one word, honour. Which also means it changes as the situation demands. "It is honourable to follow bad orders as they were given by rightful rulers" and so on.
Is it honourable to us in the part of the world that watches star trek? No, but our values are different to the empires values.
Interesting that the one thing they could have changed about the klingons was instead of a warrior based culture, they could have done a hunter based one. Then the use of stealth and stalking your opponent and striking without warning would be justified. Glory and honor can be earned by defeating worthier prey, in a sense their culture could be similar to the Predators, where dishonor is suffered when defeated by prey and thus suicide is required.
This was an awesome video. I learned a lot, I think I understand Worf better, and I think that I've got some new ideas for my own writing.
Thank you!
Good ol Quark, I forgot how much I loved that episode. ALSO, let us not forget when Worf took on those Jem Hadar in the prison/incampment 371... Dude is a MONSTER. Love it.
Thank you for making this video. I was fascinated by this when I first saw that review that had it in it.
This was brilliantly done - excellent analysis/clarification, throughout! :)
This information is incredibly intriguing. Well done!
I can't believe you have a youtube channel and I wasn't subscribed to it! I'm glad I fixed that!
Your logic and passion in conveying it was quite engrossing. Great video. I would love to know your sources for these ideas of internal and external honor so I that I can learn more, as research for my own science fiction
There is nothing more honorable than victory. KPLAA!! Lol Thanks for the video. 👍🏾✌🏾
I love hearing about Wort and Klingon Honor .
Reminds me of the nordic idea of fate. You cannot escape it but you can rise to meet it. Quark's marriage and dual embody that.
Each time "honor" is uttered during this video, we drink blood wine 🍷and warnog. Qa plaA!!!!
This video deserves a lot more views.
Some of the best episodes of TNG are those in which Kilingons' decadence is portrayed. So you have an exiled conflicted Klingon such as Worf being "pure" and idealistic, while the empire itself is ruined by corruption and deceive. But also those rare episodes of VOY in which Torres is confronted with Klingons' spiritual believes that she, as an engineer, comes to respect as part of her heritage. I loved almost all TNG era Klingon episodes.
Great video, very insightful! Thanks! I really enjoyed it, as always.
This is a super good commentary.
You have brought many logical reasons why Worf is an interesting character. His character archetype would normally be boring but in his case it was interesting to the end
It's possible I missed one or two, but he says 'honor' 66 times. (Including honored, dishonor, honorable, etc.)
Loved your video on Garak and Klingon honor. If you can find the information, I'd love to see you do a video on the Galra Empire of Voltron: Legendary Defender. Even though they stepped away from their customs and traditions, I feel like they would greatly parallel the Klingons in honor, culture, traditions, and other aspects.
Worf is less a Klingon and more the ultimate Klingon fanboi.
I love this video, but everytime the phrase "code of honor" comes up, I get horrible flashbacks.
I'll never understand the concept of Klingons not allowing women to be on the council, since they seem to have no issues with females serving on ship crews, being warriors, having honor, being the heads of houses, etc. You even have a TNG episode where a seat is offered to, of all things, a half Human/half Klingon. It's right up there with that one TOS episode where they claim that there were no female captains in Starfleet at the time.
While I can write that one off as the ravings of a deeply bitter and mentally unstable woman who could never make it as a captain, the fact that the council has no females on it cannot be. And it will never make sense to me.
Why should Klingons having females serving on ship crews, being warriors, having honor, and being the heads of houses mean that they should also be on the Council? Also keep in mind that there was only one depiction of a female serving as the head of a noble house, and that was with special dispensation of the Council at the end of a very abnormal legal case.
Remember, gender roles aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, and the fact that Klingon male and female are more-or-less equals in _some_ social contexts doesn't imply that they are or should be in _all_ social contexts.
It's a very strange thing to give them near universal equality in almost every aspect that we've seen, especially in regards to power when it comes to being the head of a great house, from which the council draws its members, yet it denies them a seat on said council.
Perhaps it's explained in some canon source I'm unaware, but if it hasn't, I'd love to see the reasoning behind it from the Klingon perspective.
There's no incongruity there, as canonically it's explicitly stated Klingon women cannot lead great houses. Leadership of a house passes from a father to his eldest son, and if the house leader dies without male issue, the house is dissolved, unless the widow ritually remarries, in which case leadership of the house passes to the new husband.
There was only one depiction in prime continuity of a female leader of a great house, that being Grilka, and the entire plot of the episode was about her seeking special dispensation from the Council to allow her to retain leadership of her house after her husband died. The Council did eventually grant her leadership but it was clearly shown in the episode that it was not the social or legal norm for such a thing to be done.
See: DS9 S3EP3: _The House of Quark_
Also, I would say that attempting to superimpose the current Western notion of 'gender equality' on the Klingon culture is what's generating broken results for you, as the Klingons have never been depicted as caring for such a concept, so it's more likely they see the examples of [ship crew], [warrior], etc, as social roles which are not gender-specific, and don't consider these to have any bearing on the social roles of [house leader] or [Council member], which _are_ gender-specific.
They cannot lead Great Houses in the TNG era, but they can in Discovery (Dennas) and in The Undiscovered Country (Azetbur)
STD is Abramsverse and not in prime continuity. As far as the Undiscovered Country goes it may be an example of a social role that was not gender-specific and then later became so.
Worf is the definition of arestia, Bushido and chivalry.
You know what of all the 24th century series the one I watch most has to be DS9. I find it more interesting and multifaceted than TNG and VOY. Very deep. After Worf Quark has to be the most interesting character of all the DS9 cast. He hates the Federation yet at the same time respects it. As he said in one episode about root beer he hates it but if you drink enough of the stuff you begin to like it. Insidious.
7:45 Gah!!! Watch where you're pointing that thing!
Well explained.
Worf has more honor every morning in his toilet bowl than most Klingons have their entire lives.
An honorable video!
There is honor and there is foolishness.
Things like chivalry were never a list of fixed rules, they varied a lot by individual. So a 12th century knight might act just as Worf does, while surrounded by knights who act like the other Klingons do.
HONOR!!! Great video!
Excellently crafted video. I’ve thought about the seeming casual hypocrisy of Klingon honor on screen and I think your analysis most adequately reconciles the apparent contradictions. I think, then, it would simply be easier to use the words ‘glory’ and ‘integrity’ to make clear distinctions on concepts.
The problem is this: I think Klingon society is fully aware of the notion of integrity, but many individuals willfully and brazenly fall short of integrity in pursuit of glory-and they have the convenient escape route to do so all because those two concepts are ambiguously related just enough to unfortunately be be synonymous with the same exact word: ‘honor.’
This is, unfortunately, a lazy way of taking about honor. It’s the same kind of lazy thinking that I see within my community. People want recognition and esteem without the the hard work of sacrifice, and they conveniently attach honor to having something -material things, titles, influence-that others do not but covet.
True honor, sadly, is only internal. But rarely celebrated. Our society lauds the sociopathic and the self-absorbed hedonist. Somehow, a large swath of us have ironically conflated envy with admiration-and THAT is the most perverse result of all.
This is like being a Nigerian born in the states. I have an idea of what it means to be Nigerian, but i am met with harsh rebuke by my own people when i challenge them to be honorable, honest and to bow your head to no one.
Instead of seeing it as an improvement to our current ways back home, they laugh it off and continue on with being basically pirates, or saiyans.
I swear, i feel like Worf or Bardock just about every day.
Welcome to being black.
So basically Quark was the most honorable character in star trek.
I always described the Klingons as space bikers! Does Warfs discomadation feel like removing a patch from a member?
Greek ideas of universal democracy? Hardly. Not in practice, not even in theory.
Zuko and Worf walk into a bar…
game: every time he says honor you say GLORY!
Great vid as always
You know chuck, you mention Klingon not being Samurai is kind of funny since i often bring this essay as a good explanation of how Samurai and Japanese media view Samurai honor vs Western Media project their view of honor on them. Klingon understand of honor is fairly close to the of Samurai
You know I did notice till now that you mention Samurai in one breath with "Chivilirous Knights" and "White Hat Cowboy" as opposed to Klingon idea of honor.
This is kind of funny since I couple of times to explain the actual way in which Japanese Warrior Culture (Note: Samurai simply means "retainer". It a word used to describe anyone in employ of feudal lord, not just knights) view honor as oppose to applying the chivalrous typical of European medieval epic-poetry.
Thanks for this bro
This was great
Damn good work.
You might want to look up shadiversity's video on Chivalry. It takes it in context that is the same conflation of terms that is the subject of this video. Reputation vs code of conduct.
OKay am i the only one here that when ever i try to go to the website it takes me a to a car wash site?
Take a shot everytime the word "honor" is used in this video or lose your ...
"I did only what my duty demanded. I could take no other course without dishonor." - Robert E Lee
Reminds me of a great viedo called "Samurai Jack is not a Samurai"
I think I've seen this before. Is it an extract from a review?
Yes, past Callum. It used to be part of the 'Redemption' episode.
9:44 Very true. And....also because the episode was running out of time lol
I haven't been getting any alerts, I thought you stopped making videos.
SFDebris has about 1K videos on his homepag www.sfdberis.com he only shares stuff here that does not upset the all mighty Copyright Bot
REFORMED TRINITOLOGY:
1 John 2:19 ✝️ +
"Honor is a man's reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men.“ -
Jack Donovan 🤔
*honor intensifies*
i have to disagree on the idea of mention "samurai" as different from the klingons, the idea of honour among samurai was, historically, very similar to the klingon view on honour, when one ignores the romanticized view on the samurai of today, one recognizes that personal honour was always secondary to external honour, putting one selves honour above that of your lord was considered shameful, if your lord found out that you had the chance to slay one of his enemies by stabbing him in the back and you didn't do it, you'd be shamed forever, if not executed for such a thing. there is a reason why so many samurai warlords employed shinobi against their enemies, so much so that even some members of the samurai class where also shinobi.
if a samurai was able to gain an advantage over his enemies he would most certainly do it, the moment guns where introduced to japan during the sengoku period, the islanders making them had to start mass production because every single samurai warlord of the time was like "I'll take your entire stock!" upon seeing the advantages of such weaponry.
knight
preferred tactics
ambush and chevauchee
you could have simply used the kinght's oath from Kingdom of Heaven. this ties everything together
Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright, that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong; that is your oath.
I live by Klingon honour.
And Klingons r so akin to Japanese culture (not Ruskie)
I am a person with a lot of Internal Honor, as aI value my integrity very high in order to be seen as a person others can trust and rely upon.
This was a good video, but I'm saddened you didn't ad the comedic part about Honor and Courage being Worf's... Yeah x3
I wonder what kinds of Trek in jokes you'll make when discussing Full Metal Panic?
This is an interesting video, but I disagree with this distinction of "internal" versus "external" honor. I don't think it accurately describes what's going on here between Worf and the Klingon Empire. For the sake of discussion, I think we can use the word "honor" interchangeably with values, ethics, or morality, since "honor" serves as the moral foundation of Klingon society. But all individuals, whether they be human or Klingon, have their own individual values, and their own ideas of honor. The "external" honor presented here is really just the manifestation of a specific concept of personal honor and values that is accepted and shared by the individuals within a given society. So it's not that Klingon honor is based on one's relationship to the group, it's that the group (in theory) takes action based on a concept of honor accepted by all of the individuals within it. That is the basis of it's authority over the individual. In other words, if individual Klingons believed the Empire itself was dishonorable or weak (their version of immoral), then they would feel honorable (or morally righteous) in rebelling and fighting against it. Which is exactly what happened. An individual Klingon, Gowron, believed the High Council of the Empire was corrupt (dishonorable), and collaborated with other individual Klingon's against it. Which is why the honor of Mogh was eventually restored. So honor itself is the highest law, not the group, and even the High Council is subject to it.
But my point is that the distinction of "internal" versus "external" honor doesn't make sense. Worf is a product of his environment, and the other Klingons are products of their environment, and that is the only significant difference in this context. In theory, Starfleet operates on just as much "external" honor as the Klingon empire does, but they just define honor differently and they reward and punish honor and dishonor differently. Worf's idea of honor conforms to Starfleet culture, which is precisely why he resigns from Starfleet. He doesn't want to operate against Starfleet regulations because that would be dishonorable according to Starfleet. Worf accepts that, so the conflict here is not really between Worf and Klingon honor... it's between Starfleet honor and Klingon honor. To be honest, I would describe Worf's honor as an obvious synthesis of Klingon culture and Starfleet culture. It only gives the appearance of being "internal" because he has conflicting allegiances and influences. For the most part, what this video describes as Worf's honor is really the influence of Starfleet breaking through Worf's expression of Klingon honor. Which is why Worf is willing to accept the authority of Gowron in the same way a Starfleet officer accepts a higher ranking officer. It's not really political, it's that Worf has been conditioned by Starfleet and he is simply not ruthless enough to kill Gowron at the drop of a hat. But at the same time, he cannot appear weak to his own brother, so he has to express his Starfleet influences in a way that makes sense in the eyes of other Klingons. He's really playing a dangerous game in this regard. And his decision to spare the boy's life is another example of his Starfleet conditioning. But to a large degree, his concept of honor conforms with Klingon honor. The framing in this video just gives the wrong impression about this. Worf operates as if he has honor because in reality... he does have Klingon honor. He accepts the decision of the High Council because he knows that in reality, he is still honorable by Klingon standards. The entire story line of "Redemption" is that the House of Mogh is, in fact, still honorable according to the Klingon concept of honor, despite the decision of the High Council to claim otherwise. So his name is honorable not just by Worf's own standards, and not by Starfleet's standards... but by Klingon standards. And the dishonor handed out by the Council was a lie. It's the Council that was actually dishonorable by Klingon standards. So framing things as if Worf doesn't care how he is viewed from within the Klingon Emprie is just wrong. He cares qutie a bit because he knows the House of Mogh has Klingon honor, and therefore he also has Klingon honor, and he wants the rest of the Klingon Empire to recognize that fact.
1:08 thats what she said lol
Honour *
*Honour
look for your on honor.
I imagine some long-time fans of yours may have a little trouble taking this video seriously.
FBI.
My husband is a black belt 40 years plus your definition is not correct a general fights on front line not in the back this is taught by Ghengis khan
This is almost word-for-word what you said in your Redemption review. Do you have anything new to say about Star Trek?
TV4Fun2 seems worthy to be a separate viedo to me and why waste it if you already got most of the right words.
a discussion about honor is not the most interesting subject for a scifi channel ¦ |
"A discussion about *a key aspect of the Klingon culture and the various ways it's been portrayed across twenty-years of Star Trek, one of the most enduring franchises in science fiction* is not the most interesting subject for a scifi channel."
Sound about right? ; )
Do explain, how something that is of key importance to a sci fi based species is not something to be a topic on a channel with sci fi orientation?
honor is important to klingons the same way indoor plumbing is important to all species yet that makes neither indoor plumbing nor honor an interesting scifi topic to discuss.
Not really a good comparison I must say, you try to draw similarity between an essential life style and rules, morals with sewage management. Honor is different from species to species as we have seen from various sci fi shows or books disecting the Klingon one is still within the realm of the channel's focus, plus it is his channel, he talks about what HE wants to.
The most famous alien race in all of science fiction
What a pile of pure drivel.